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after just one year with Bloomerang. They doubled their unique donors improved donor stewardship and raise more funds to listen to the full interview of First Tee of greater Akron visit bloomerang.com/we are for good. Or click the link in our show notes. Hey, I'm John. And I'm Becky. And this is the We Are For Good podcast.
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So let's get started. Well,
that you love that music. I mean, his feeling pumped up.
We're so excited that you all are here. We're excited to have this conversation because here's the deal. We hear you right now. I feel like the nonprofit professional, whether they're they are browbeaten or whether they are coming in willingly. They're like, Okay, we get it. Digital Age is here, when we got these two amazing experts, Dana Schneider positive equation, also an incredible podcaster telling you how to take your mission and turn it into a movement checkout missions to move into this amazing, we also got Noah Barnett with feather and incredible individual, you are here to get the goods on social ads and what to do, no is going to bring the hype. So I think like we just want to dive into like, let's get an overview of this. Because when we thought about, we just got to get back to basics. And we have so many people in the community saying I'm ready. I want to dive into doing more in digital marketing. I want to understand what to do. I don't know where to start, like just we went to the two experts in our community, Noah and Dana, the two most equipped people who could answer this question. So start at the beginning with us, tell us where we are right now. And tell us why it matters. Dana, let's start with you.
Okay, cool. So I went to some stats that I pulled because I'm always like a data person. I think you guys know this about me. And I won't read them all. But I just wanted to quickly kind of see like what you're saying like where are we at? So there are going big numbers first 3.9 billion total social media users across all platforms. If you're curious if your person is on social, the answer is probably yes. Because next stat, the average person bounces and I noticed is me included. They bounced between seven different social platforms every month.
I believe it.
that I love the sound effects.
We do have a soundboard for that.
Now How much time are they spending on social media? The average is higher than ever 95 minutes per day. So over an hour and a half again, I believe it I probably also do that. That's low. Yeah, I was thinking so to now her platforms. I know there's like some interesting things happening on the channels. So although Facebook has received a meta has received some like not so great reviews recently. It is still the most used platform worldwide. And Instagram is second fax. Yeah. LinkedIn has the most highest earning and most educated users. So way to go pat yourself on the back, your users are making over $75,000. So Solid audience. If you're not familiar, don't use Pinterest. I think it's kind of an untapped tool for some nonprofits because there's a lot of buyers on that.
platform. So there's creative ways to use that. Tick tock, another one. So tick tock, I think is fascinating because you have the opportunity to be a substantial influencer without having a big following. So they actually have the highest engagement rate for people who have less than 5000 followers. You're like a micro influencer. And then my fun fact, obviously, is on social media ads forever. And always because I'm big on paid social media took over paid search as an advertising channel, growing 25% year over year now exceeding $137 billion annually. smokes, that's some crazy growth in the last two years. That's, like, where we're at that's like, Okay, we need to pay attention, we should have a strategy because I mean, a lot of us that grew up in nonprofit over the last 15 years, like Becky and myself for 20 years, right? It's like it started off as like, let's have the intern go handle this. And of course, a lot of shops are still like that.
Yes, second thought to everything.
And I think that's a good point, John, like I just spoke. And I just spoke a lot of places, I don't remember where I was talking about, I said everywhere, the biggest thing that you need to do in 2023, is have somebody on your team that is dedicated to social. And I don't care if that's a virtual assistant that's doing it for 10 hours a month, there's resources to do that. If you're hiring an agency, if it's a freelancer, if you hire, there's so many different ways to do it, depending upon what your budget is. But you need to have somebody on it. Because if you don't I did a podcast episode on this. If you are not excited about social media, that is totally gonna play through in the content. Yeah.
People feel that fo sho point. Yeah. Okay. No, we're gonna kick it to you. Yeah, tell us what you're seeing and what you're,
like hard facts for the quant people. Justification as to why definitely Dana's stats, I think my thing is, is that we know that we live now in a world where attention is the most valuable currency. And if we just look at yourself, like, consider your day right now, if you're listening to this, like, where do you give your attention? Likely, if we compare that to offline mediums versus online mediums, or these other areas, you'll see the digital engagement is gone through the roof in your own lives. And I think we sometimes forget that when we go to work, and we plug in, and we're like, oh, that's not the case for our supporters. And it's like, why isn't that and now you might not be your donor. But digital engagement has increased and of intentions, the most valuable currency, we as organizations, as nonprofit communicators, leaders, we need to be reaching out and building purposeful connections, regardless where our audience is. And what we know, especially post pandemic is that digital connections is more prominent than ever. And so being proud of that being a priority for your organization, is important. Now, the other thing I'll add, though, is we're also seeing this in investments by donors. So the online giving growth has increased dramatically. I don't have the exact stats in front of me. But it's definitely growing as a channel of giving, in addition to engagement. And we're also seeing nonprofits investing more. So investing more in social investing more in email, investing more in digital advertising, I think the latest stat on digital advertising was digital advertising investments that increased about 20% in 2021, buy nonprofits, so that's not general investments, that's nonprofits are investing more. So thinking about where your peers are investing is good signal for you as well, in addition to all the other reasons to be on digital,
yeah. Okay. I mean, I'm vibing with both sides of the brain, that yellow kind of tapping with this, because I think, too, if I think back to like, all the conversations we've had on the podcast, fundraising so much comes back to listening and being a good listener. And I feel like doing digital marketing, right, in today's world, like, gives us so many more years in so many more places. And it gives us a lens to creating these movements in this community that we're all like, really focused on building brands are focused on building that nonprofits that are evolved and evolving, are focused on centering community. And so having more ears is only going to strengthen not only your mission, your case, but like your rabid fans, like they're going to understand and you're going to connect with them better as you understand what people are thinking and what they're saying. So I love that it's it's giving more credence to that so much. And so where do we want to go next? You want to talk about goals, because I feel like we're doing a little bit of a one on one today. And I want to come back on this investment too, because that's a lot of questions we see pumped up but like, when people are thinking about goals, I mean, we're right at the tail end of the year here, thinking about the new year to how how do you really appropriately set goals for digital marketing and y'all can just ping pong back and forth here, whatever. Whoever wants to jump in. Sure.
I can kick or I always go back to don't focus on everything, or else you're going to be like a champion of nothing. When it comes to social platforms, and it's too daunting, right? I know, I say the sad that people bounce between seven different channels. But where do you think that you can really excel as an organization and be creative and hone in on I mean, I say this all the time, but a primary and a secondary channel, and I do this myself, and I'm not on Twitter, like, that's just not where I spend my time, because I don't think that's going to be smart for me. So I shared a link specifically on Google Analytics, because Google Analytics can give you some insights about just naturally, what social channels are people using to come to your website. And at the end of the day, most times, we want people to get to our website to take some sort of action, right to join our email list or to donate or to download a resource or whatever it is, or to be a volunteer. And really look at in that information. When I go over, I'm looking at the bounce rate. And I'm looking at the average session duration, it gives you a little bit of ideas that like Where should we spending most of our time,
I'm going to put on my nonprofit hat here and say, from a very basic standpoint, what's a good bounce rate? You know, what's a good? I mean, should we be looking at the top two redirects? Or where could we really put our focus? Where what would you say to a nonprofit that's asking those questions?
And if they definitely look, at most time spent, I think anything that's like 50, or 50 60%, bounce rate, or lower is awesome. I've seen some nonprofits that have like 30%, which is amazing. So if you can, like the lower the better, obviously. But I think just an average, like 50 to 60 is pretty good.
Awesome. No. Any thoughts to add to this incredible conversation? And Dana, thank you for making a visual because I think it's easier for us when we can actually see where to go what to do. Yeah, I
think what's helpful for me is framework. So I have two frameworks that you can lay over top of each other to actually build goals for yourselves, as you think about your digital goals. So the first is that there's three types of digital engagement, there's owned digital engagement, meaning like your website, your email, list, things that you have ownership over for you write the rules, you decide the strategy, you decide, you decide the cadence, so that's your own channels, Website, Email primary. The other one would be your, your rented one. So this thinks about your digital ads, social media, organic, social media paid all of those places where you're renting the attention, or the opportunity to reach your audience in some way or another. And this audience may be a new audience, or it may be your current audience. If you're on social and you have a following, it's still a rented audience because you're living on rented land. And they can change the rules, as many of you have experienced over the years at any point in time. So you have your own, do you have your rented, and then you have your earned, which is how are your community, your current community actually sharing your story out. And that can be a focus where you said, Hey, we actually want to encourage individuals within our supporter group to actually be promoting our cause on their social media channels, etc. This could also be PR and press your more traditional earned strategies. So I think what's important with this first framework is think about what is our own objectives. So we know we get 3000 people to our website, and we're converting 100 of them into our donors, okay, we want to improve that conversion rate, what tactics test are we going to run to be able to improve that, hey, we have 20,000 people on our email list, or we have 20 people on our email list. We want to do better with that. But we also want to increase the activation, we drive through this own channel. So you can start taking that owned bucket and say, email and website, and what are our objectives, objectives within that for digital that roll up to our overall goals. So again, that's the first framework owned, rented and earned the second framework.
I've heard here, because I love that furniture, celebrate
that framework. That was amazing. Thank you for breaking it down Michael Scott style, like explain it to me, like I'm five years old, that was fantastic. Like it like connects
to like the idea of wealth building. It's like the idea of like, assets are where it's at, like, how can you pour into these assets and like an investment, there really is an investment. Whereas we have to realize it's just different over here, the algorithms change, you always see these threads blow up of like, what happened, Instagram changed overnight. And I feel that too, but it's like, the more strategy we're putting on those own things feels to me really like a good investment that is going to pay off in the future. And so yeah,
Reggie. Yeah. And that rolls into because you want to balance of all of them. Obviously, owned might be better, but you may only have 1000 people coming to your website a month. And that might not be enough for you to be able to hit your goals. So you have to go play on rented land, or you have to push people in your 1000 to actually promote to drive more people in, which follows up into the second framework, and I'm a consultant mind so I work in threes. And so the other one is there's three phases of engagement. So you have acquisition like Your unknown audience, hey, we want to grow the amount of people that are aware of our cause. That's acquisition, what works well, and acquisition is all three, you have your own acquisition strategy. So people are coming to your website all the time that you have no idea who they are, they found out about you somewhere else, but you don't know who they are. That's acquisition strategy that ties to owned. Acquisition also works in the rented land. So you might say, Hey, we're doing look alike audiences on Facebook to target people that look like our supporters. And we're trying to acquire new supporters into our things. So you might have a rented strategy tied to acquisition. And you might have an own strategy tied to acquisition, you also may have an urn strategy, where you're saying, Hey, we're going to encourage our current supporters to share about our mission, so that we can acquire new supporters again, so acquisition goes across all three. Secondly, a
good thing to go ahead spreadsheet out. So I just shared one too. That's like a, which actually, I would just add what Noah is literally saying, it's a tech stack, like report card. And I would add in these buckets of what Noah's talking about, and literally have your, those three different areas of owned, rented, earned. And then break down acquisition, I'm sure you have your the following buckets to what the steps are, and then kind of give yourself a grade and like, this is a great like end of the year is a really good time to just do like a analysis of where are we at? Like, what do we like? What's not working? What tools are not working? How much money are we paying for this thing? I'm literally doing this in my business right now to I'm like evaluating if my tools to make sense. So this report card, I would add in what Noah's talking about and give yourself like even a grade on how are we doing on owned and rented like? Have we done anything and rented? Do we have any ad spend budget prep for 2023? Like, it allows you to kind of have those conversations with your team or yourself?
Yeah, absolutely. And you can really build it out in the grid. So you can have like, across the top you have, you know, owned or rented on the bottom. On the other axis, you have acquisition. Engagement means like people that are engaging with you, how are you retaining them. And then the third bucket is cultivation, I just sent like a chicken, scratch a visual, I sent it to truly chicken
scratch. Let's share that out.
And so we're going to use that in the chat. So you can take that with you. But either way you kind of layer these things together. So owned, rented, earned across acquisition, cultivate or acquisition, engagement and cultivation. And you can actually map goals to that for each of the buckets. Now for your organization, you may have a huge following already. And so you want to prioritize engagement. So you can actually put a weighting to these priorities. So that you can you don't have to do everything, right. But or you're a smaller org that has a smaller audience. So you might say, hey, we really need to work on acquisition in q1 of next year. And so we're going to double down on those strategies, then you can basically use the channels like Dana mentioned, to determine what you're actually prioritizing on those. So this framework, combined with the brilliance that Dana already shared, I think can help you set good goals as you head into next year.
Okay, we're geeking out, I this is the reason we brought you to on to have this conversation, because this is what we all need. And there's no sense in just testing one thing and floundering around, it's about getting organized and having a very intentional digital plan. And I really think what you have both shared with the tech stack report card, and this framework is so helpful across the board for PBS, not just your social content. I heard donor relations in there, in terms of how you're diversifying how you're connecting, so that we're talking and engaging and not always asking, I heard just diversifying your messages, which is so helpful. And I think this could be applied as a strategy across the board annual giving, how are we warming people into mid level? How are we bringing them into plan giving because they're so loyal? There is a continuum here. And I think that if you even take this framework and look at it from a content planning standpoint, for maybe January to March, next year, you could literally take this axis, I feel like I'm backwards, from what Noah's actually put together. And really think about what is our acquisition strategy? You know, what is our warming lens? Are we trying to warm up to our spring appeal? Are there great stories that we want to share in there? Have we had an event that could play into how we rent because and I would love for you guys just this is a question. I'd love for you to respond to it. I really look at these three types, Noah, which is so brilliant. And we think about like the rabid fan, being in that earned category. Like they'll do anything for you. Once you just simply ask they're the ones doing that crowdfunding or that peer to peer fundraising. They're the ones sharing the story, but we've got to use those first. Two buckets to get them in to the rabid fans. So we'd love to have any feedback from you guys about how to use that tool, those three buckets as a funnel to get more people into the earth. And while still understanding that we're going to have to put some investment in the first to to keep the churn going all the time.
I have a really cool if I want to take the kind of like the acquisition piece, and oh, no, no, if you want to, like do cultivation, I just got this email from somebody. So it's super relevant. And it's I love how she stated that she's like, You don't know me when I'm on your email list. I love it. And he's like, I wanted to share this data results story. So she took a training that I have on lead generation. So this would fall under rented, this would be social ads. And she particularly wanted to beef up their email list for GivingTuesday and end of year. So they decided to run lead generation ads. And she does something really creative. Now. They're an organization that is like a kid's a children's cause. And they created two digital downloads. They did one digital download that was a Halloween pumpkin stencil download around Halloween, really smart. They had she said I was honestly hoping for 20 to 30 names within two weeks. And $250. It generated over 430 names and emails spent less than 60 cents. Then she said, when that ended, I wanted to run another one. This time girl, we did a digital coloring book. It ran for a week and it generated another 200 names at 40 cents per email. Now, this was even cooler, and I'm so glad she like broke this down for me the email. So that 629 new records. She cross tested it on her existing email list and it was 551 new emails a day me. And so now they're working on their nurture plan after she
doubled her list to this strategy over the course of a couple of weeks basically, did you say to her starting list? Oh my god. Yes. holy crud. stenciling
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All right now, like you want to take cultivation.
One thing that I tried to use Sorry, I'm a frameworks person, framework, thank you in any of these categories, you first have to start by identifying who you're reaching out to, and then understand what the context is they have with you and the context that they may be in. And then the intent, if any, they've shown in their actions already or their previous actions. So I'm break this a little bit down. So in Dana's case, our Dana's story example is that they were trying to reach net new people that had children, because so they were using a children's activity to cultivate and then activate them to download and then measuring the success of that through the email signups that they've generated. And so in this, they identified that there was a type of person they wanted to reach, which was, you know, families with children that may care about the work that they were doing. They understood the context that they may be looking for activities, or think a look alike.
Audience.
Yeah, lookalike audience. There you go.
Okay. We'll have to have you guys to find that in a second. But keep going. So that
Dana, do you want to do that? Because it's probably helpful.
Oh, sure. So they were primarily focusing on their Facebook audience. So they were doing a look alike of their current Facebook audience. Yeah. So basically, similar. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. So you took your a similar audience and said, Hey, we want to use our current profile of supporters to look look for people that look like this that may want to support us, but we don't know who they are. And that they would likely have children they would be looking for activities. And so they cultivated that using ADS, and they activated them to download this worksheet, which allowed them to say okay, now we understand that these people looked like our current supporters. They came in and download the worksheet. Now we're going to understand In that context and intent, and we're going to cultivate them again, through a nurturing series, or additional ads to talk about the children's programs that the organization supports and how that works and how it starts with play and works backwards towards transformation, whatever it is, and then we're going to activate them to give a one time gift, then we're going to understand that context and go back through this. And so I think this is again, another
thing to be a monthly donor. Exactly. Understand that.
One, we're going to cultivate them again, and we're going to drive them to be a monthly giver. And then we're going to understand that context, and we're going to cultivate them through that new context we have. But again, all of this starts with identifying the audiences that you're going to work with. And these could be known audiences or unknown, but they're within your community, both are within your community, and you're trying to drive those purposeful connections with them to generate more good in in your thing, so feel free to take this, we'll share it out on LinkedIn, and you're welcome to use it.
Holy heck, okay. I mean, you're gonna, there's some stuff we got to freak out on collectively here. But using the digital download piece alone, is like, such a small percentage of nonprofits are doing this. And it's so smart, because like leading with value, and I think it's also changing the way that we think and we're wired, that we need to be offering out that value to you've got people that are experts, I think if like we were in healthcare, philanthropy for all these years, we're connected to the smartest people in town that understand the health conditions that the community is facing. It's like, how do we not offer that up as a resource to people and realize that you're a resource, which is going to connect you to people that care that connects you to people that are raising their hand taking action. So that's like a brilliant strategy. And everybody's gonna have to like, brainstorm how to translate that at your own organization. But just what you're painting a picture that full cycle, Noah, to me is like, the whole thing, because if you only do step one, like you're not doing it, like you're getting people in the door, but it's like what's next. And I think that's why we wanted to have this conversation is because a good plan like you've got, you know, where you're going, you know, and because of that you can have so much more purposeful intention, you feel good about the ad spend, because you've got this kind of longer game that you're playing and cultivating people. So I want to give you all space to talk about that. Dan, I love that you're resolving it even at monthly giving program. That's brilliant. Where do you drive people next? You know, if you get people in the door, what is what does that warming sequence look like?
So I'm a big fan of setting up like automated email sequences, especially for downloads, I want to give one other download idea is, I am a constant searcher for new videos on Netflix and Hulu and all the things. So there's so many great documentaries out there. There's so many great books like a great easy digital download. And they do not have to be fancy, y'all they can be super simple. It can be a Google doc download is less like 10 books, documentary shows to watch about like your subject area. And like, every time around the holidays, people have time off, they could go grab this book on Amazon, they could go to Barnes Noble, whatever, and you are educating them about your cause. Therefore, they are now watching, they're like, I remember the reason that I am so passionate and I'm a monthly donor of an organization December looking to end human trafficking is because I watched a movie about how horrific the issue is. And that caused me to become a donor. So again, that's just like one example of something that you could easily put together. When I would say when you share that download, and they get it via email, have that email as an opportunity of like, put a video underneath about like, here's a little bit about our mission. And then maybe seven like four, seven days later, there's another email that goes out, make it conversational, but then continue to inform about the mission and then continue to like lead them to the next step of what the engagement could be whether that's you want them to be a volunteer, you want them to give you want them to sign up for an event, like whatever that might be.
Okay, that's so brilliant, I got to jump in there. And just one tell you how smart that was. Because I think a pro tip that I've seen is a common misstep for nonprofits. And I would throw John and I under the best that we did this as well, because when you have a direct marketing strategy, it's not singular. It's not a tactic. There is such a long runway for what needs to be done. Because once that ad hits, once that if it's a lead gen, there's got to be a really long runway and a strategy in place for what are we going to do if they come? And how do we keep them there? And how do we engage them and I think you're making that case so well. I gotta give her Simba just a shout out because I know how passionate you are about them. And Dana has a great podcast episode talking about how they flex their social and it's so legit. Please go check that out on Dana's podcast. But you know, I want to dive into tools more because I think that this is a really helpful thing. We've talked about strategy. And please friends if you're if you're listening to this and you have questions about any of this or if you have questions about things that are working or not working in your organization drop them in the chat, we will troubleshoot them right this very moment. But I want you guys to talk about tools, talk about what are those basic digital marketing tools? What are those social tools that we should be looking at, define them and tell us where we can get the best bang for our buck.
Look at something like what I just talked about the digital download, I'm talking about automated email sequence. If you're like, we don't have the ability to an automated email sequence with our email tool, ding, ding, ding, like that could be a light bulb for a problem. And I one of my tools that I use is flow desk. And what was really interesting, so I do a mastermind program, creating monthly giving programs. And we were talking about this like automated email sequence. And I didn't even think of mentioning flow desk as a platform for nonprofits. And I just opened up my flow desk account and I showed I showed my organization's they're like white, and they're like, We love your email. So we can create things like this. And I was like, yeah, and they're like, Okay, friend,
this is because we're in these places where you feel scarcity. I remember thinking the same thing like, Oh, that's not corporate enough, or it's not, you know, like, this is this is reality
of them switched over from their tool to MailChimp, and they've created their sequences and they're like, this is amazing that it's like
we use MailChimp and do the sequences to that is the only way to save your life. It is a working smarter, not harder. Kind of a tactic.
Yeah. So that's one I know, that's not like a social media technically, but it like connects everything together that we're talking about. So that's one. No, did you have something you wanted to add to?
Well, selfishly, are our tool here at feather? Yeah, honestly, it's so great. Talk about it. Yeah, absolutely. So if I can do selfish plug, so I'm the VP of Marketing at feather. So I'm promoting my own product. So I just want to be clear. Get all that
out? I do believe it though. We've seen
something, you know, it's like, like, disclaimer, it's like, you know, we own stock and like,
find out from Julian,
just to make someone feel better, I guess. But yeah. So I think what's interesting is we work with about 1000 nonprofits here at feather, and we help them orchestrate their digital ad campaigns, whether it's on social media, like Facebook, or Instagram, or through search, or through display advertising. And so I'll just talk about that aspect. Because I know Dana, you're so you can talk more to the social media advertising. But I think there's a great opportunity and almost like a an issue where people are like, Oh, I know people do ads. But that's not for nonprofits. But the thing that I go back to is that I get tracked down by like that clothing brands on the internet for the like shirt, I left in my cart. Why would a nonprofit that not want to say hey, you visited our donation page, you got distracted, because your life is crazy. And you showed intent that you wanted to give. Let's give you an opportunity while you're like reading that recipe in the future, to like, come back and finish your donation. Or not even just through ads, but through intent based emails. So hey, you visit our website to look at our How are your campaign, like you can set up triggered emails to say, hey, we're going to email them again at that point in time because they're showing intent. And we're gonna give them the opportunity to give back give to our cars, when they have time and they're sitting down. They're reading you're there. You get it all
the time. Those cart abandonment emails, exactly. That's a great one forgot to purchase these like three things.
Yeah. And I think it goes back to this idea of intent. And I know intent is like this random word that's like a, like in like, like, I don't know if some something. But there's people in your community showing intent all the time, there's people that visit your website, and then they leave you don't know, I think you know, 90% of the people that visit your website, they leave. ads in smart emails are a great opportunity for you to able to re engage those people based on that intent in real time. So instead of focusing just on using paid or email as a, you know, mass blast spray type environment, you can actually do smart campaigns through email, or through advertising, using a platform like feather and others. So we're happy to help you with that. I think it's something that's underutilized. And we see organizations that implement something as simple as retargeting donation page abandonments increase their giving by 80% on their campaign spent, and so you're spending all this money to get people to your donation page. And then you evaluate your score on whether they took action on the first try or not. But there's such a longer tail like there's a bigger story there. And you have an opportunity to reengage those through ads and emails and feathers happy to help you do that. Why is
that is my biggest pet peeve is that we're like we're gonna especially this time of the year in organizations like we just need donation. So the first thing I am going to do is do a donation ad to all these people who don't know who we are, and they're like, why is it not working? Well, let's think about it like the first time that you ever see some thing, are you likely to buy it on the first time? And the first go around? Like no, like,
there's probably gonna be a really a lot lower to if you did, right?
Yes, yeah, your cost per acquisition? Yeah, yeah.
I also think to people evaluate channels. They're like we ran ads one time and they didn't work, right.
even know how to evaluate though and adds efficacy or I think even setting goals on that is really interesting. Talk to us about ads. There are people on here who have never used an ad to promote their nonprofit like, talk to us about the benefits talk about why this is important, because I think we worked so hard on these digital campaigns. And then we're screaming into the wind, you know, of what NOAA is calling, you know, this attention economy. And I mean, we just had a great conversation with Jeff Rosenbloom at Qwest says, Who says there's 5000 brands hitting us a day and it's like every 8.7 seconds or something. And so how do you stand out and I think ads is a really powerful tool. I don't know who wants to take that. But I'm going to kick that down to you guys.
I want to say one thing, and I will probably kick it over to Dana to comment even on more of the details, is I think when we hear the words, ads, it feels a little icky. Or, like we don't like thanks for watching ads getting our way ads tried to distract us. And we're trying to like do something. But that's ads that we don't expect or didn't want, right. And there's an opportunity for you to use ads as part of your mission here at feather. We believe that marketing is good with a capital G similar to the We Are For Good team. Appreciate that marketing is an opportunity to extend your mission. You know, if you genuinely believe that the people in your community that have given to you in the last 12 months actually care about your mission, it's imperative for you to can build purposeful connections with them. And ads is just one way to do that as an opportunity to remind them of the impact that they can have in helping release children from child slavery like we do with our partners over at IJM. Or help a child in need during the holiday season, like here in Arizona, that we help an organization do like that's part the marketing is part of the mission, the marketing is the good that you're trying to have. And ads is just a vehicle for you to do that. So I just want to talk about that. Because I know everyone's like, Oh, ads are gross.
Your mindset around how you go into it is to Dana's point is going to be felt on the other end. So make it human, make it cheeky, make it something joyful that somebody wants to be a part of it doesn't have to be stodgy and buttoned up. And I'll tell you, it probably won't work if it's that way. So Dana, want to hand the mic to you on that.
Yeah, I just wanted to piggyback on Noah's note, and I don't know this might be too long of a quote to share Julie on there. But I interviewed Brittany Driscoll, and she's the founder of squeeze. And she was the VP of Marketing at dry bar. So anybody on here has ever visited a dry bar, we met in a workout class together in Los Angeles, oh my gosh, and I fangirled hard. So I asked her to go out for coffee afterwards to like pick her brain. But she said this. And I think it's so true, like good marketing. And end of the day, just two things, it makes you feel something hopefully positive, and it helps you add value. So I really loved what she said about this. And something that from like a tactical perspective, this is all very timely, I just got off a consulting call with a nonprofit organization going through, they're doing like an ADS audit for them. And they were having trouble with donation ads. And so we talked about, okay, are you running on Facebook donation ads, which has changed a lot, you can now the opt in process has tremendously changed. Now with your action, I can probably pull it up quickly, is people are now automatically opted in to give you their contact information versus before it was a teeny, teeny tiny little check off to like get give your email. So there's on Facebook donation ads, and there's on site, which is taking them off Facebook. And they are running on site. So taking people from Facebook to their website. And I said, Well, let's look at the click through rate is, which is abbreviated as CT are. And let's see, are you actually getting people to take the effort of leaving Facebook, which means your ad was working? Your ad is working if your click through rate is usually like anything really above 2%? Pretty good. Like three four is amazing. Okay. And so she was seeing that 234 percent and I was like, You're you are doing your job. Your ads are working. The problem is on your website. The problem is your donation form. And sure enough, we go there and it's really, really, really, really, really long. And you have to enter in all the information for it to go through addresses and phone numbers and all the things and she said it's gonna be super hard for me to convince my team to switch and I said, give them this data. If they're having The problem and why we jumped on the phone call was because their Ed was frustrated that they weren't seeing conversions from their donation ads. And I was like, the fault isn't on your ads, you can, this is literally a metric to show him that they're working. And what you're doing is right, the problem sits over here. And so you have to fix this first. So that was just like a really, like real life case study of how to troubleshoot if something's working or not for you, specifically within ADS.
Can I do one more waxing philosophically because notice, you know, poke the bear on this, that marketing is mission like thinking about this. And I even saw a great post from Mike Dirksen today on LinkedIn, there is a shift happening as we're trying to cultivate people at scale that there is more at stake than the wallet, there's more at stake than getting the donation. So aligning purposeful marketing, equipping people by getting them excited by watching documentaries, that's going to fuel their fire about what matters is creating this impact that we actually want to create. So if you really zoom out, this is about Awakening people to whatever the issue is, and getting them excited and understanding that you your organization is on the front lines of that fight. And I feel like all of this, how can we package that and start to shape people's ideas from in turn, go handle social media, to like, Let's go start an uprising. You know, like over here,
I just want to thank you guys so much for blowing our minds. This is more than we thought you would come to the table with which is how you guys always show up to be so generous. So to our audience. Thank you for coming. One. I'm so proud of you giving you a mama bear hug for coming and investing in yourself and professional development. Because this stuff is important and we want your missions to thrive. And if you're looking for one good thing, please come to the we're for good community. It's weird for good community.com It's a free platform where we share stuff like this all the time we get unstuck. And if you need a little help with your digital marketing if you're feeling totally pumped right now for getting Tuesday urine, go check out our friends at feather positive equation. They
have such good tools you can tell they are awesome humans. We've looked at their products and they're fantastic. So friends, you've got this in year end. We are rooting for you. And thanks for pouring into yourself today. DANA No, appreciate you more than you. Yeah, have a good week, everybody. Bye.
Hey, friends. Thanks so much for being here. Did you know we create a landing page for each podcast episode with helpful links, freebies and even shareable graphics. Be sure to check it out at the link in this episode's description. You probably hear it in our voices but we love connecting you with the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission than ever before. We'd love for you to join our good community. It's free. And you can think of it as the after party to each podcast episode. You can sign up today at we are for good.com backslash Hello. One more thing If you loved what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating and review? It means the world to us and your support helps more people find our community. Thanks friends. I'm our producer Julie confer and our theme song is Sunray by Remy Borsboom
Hey friends, we're so excited to announce the launch of fundraising is funny. A new podcast launching and the weird for good podcast network with our good friends Glenn Westar and T clay buck. Every week, you can join them to share laughs and cringe worthy case studies. As we unpack the most ridiculous and positively shocking situations that happen within our sector. We believe in the power of generosity to change the world. And something tells us you do too. At the root of each of these stories is a serious ethical question, a system or structure or person that allowed it to happen, or an outdated practice just ripe for disruption. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, or come find them at fundraising as funny.com We can't wait to see you there.
