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Nonprofits as well as businesses willl sooner or later learn to regard the Internet as their most powerful direct marketing medium.
Why?
Because the Internet allows an organization or business to engage in a kind of dialog marketing that creates opportunities to develop conversations with prospects and donors.
This dialog is far superior to one way communication of traditional marketing, such as television, radio, direct mail, and print ads. Engaging in conversations with people, over time, gives nonprofits the ability to make more and better friends, turn those friends into donors, and grow those donors into loyal donors.
Let's examine your nonprofit’s Internet involvement strategies, shall we?
- You and your organization are driven by a specific mission—perhaps even a unique market niche—are you committed to sharing that cause with more potential donors than ever before?
- Do you want to use the Internet to help take you to the next level of success?
- You have developed a website; however, is it bringing you the increased traffic you need or feel you deserve?
- You have probably produced large quantities of direct mail throughout the years—possibly even quality direct response television, radio and print. Have you been encouraged to believe, however, that if you simply transfer what you’ve done in print, audio and video to the World Wide Web, you’ll effectively be in the hunt for new donors? Maybe you are now beginning to wonder if scanning in your organization’s brochures is the best approach for acquiring new names after all.
- You are trying to maintain a positive attitude about your website, but are you feeling increasingly aggravated, confused and stressed with your results?
These are some of the concerns I've heard from nonprofit executives:
"We’ve got hundreds of people coming to our site, but no one gives us any money."
"We put a ‘donate here’ button on our homepage, but no one is giving."
"We put our direct mail copy verbatim on our site but no one seems to read it—or respond to the appeal.
"They won’t even call our 800 number and we even put it in a huge font for easy reading!"
And here's GutZy Women's advice:
Every nonprofit needs to develop an involvement strategy that facilitates the lost art of meaningful conversation and relationship building.
If you don't start a conversation with visitors to your site, why should they take time to click deeper into your site and donate money to your cause? That’s like going to the door of a neighbor you’ve never taken the time to meet and say, "Hey, neighbor, you wouldn't mind me borrowing your lawn mower, would ya?"
It’s not going to work! All you will breed is hostility. It’s the same with how you present yourself on your website; not much will happen without a compelling reason for a visitor to connect with you and your organization.
Provide an array of options, making it easy and convenient for people to become involved…and you do this by resurrecting the fine art of conversation through intentional content and a proper blog or website design.
Create interest. Promise you’ll keep your donors informed, and that you’ll continue the conversation—on the Web. Remember…the burden is on you and your website to be passionate about your subject and interesting to your user.
The most compelled visitor may never return to your site if you do not convey your cause with care and passion, and engage in a conversation that he or she wants to talk about.
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