by Marketing | Dec 2, 2016 | Non-Profit Strategy, Press, Websites
Winston Churchill once said, “We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.” It is the giving time of year. A time when giving doesn’t mean presents, but giving of yourself to help others. Volunteer if you can this year and reap the rewards of helping others.
“People who volunteer and help others tend to have higher self-esteem, psychological well-being, and happiness.”
Mark Snyder, Head of the Center for the Study of the Individual and Society at the University of Minnesota
In Colorado, we make it easy for you. Every December we have Colorado Gives Day on the first Tuesday of December – a day of giving for the State’s non-profits. We work with many organizations and I want to extend my recommendations for you this holiday season. Click on each logo below to be delivered to their giving page. You can schedule a donation or wait until December 6th.
Happy Holidays!
Tom Smidt
President
iCita llc
by Marketing | Oct 10, 2016 | Non-Profit Strategy, Press
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 10, 2016 – Longmont, Colorado. Today, iCita and Ability Connection Colorado of Denver announced the release of their newly restructured and upgraded website. The planning and strategy for this re-launch started over a year ago with Ability Connection Colorado (ACCO) needing to pull their statewide programs away from their individual website locations and re-organize them into one cohesive location at www.AbilityConnectionColorado.org. The strategy was to adhere to responsive and best practices guidelines while keeping SEO rankings and Google Adwords consistent.
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by Marketing | Aug 24, 2016 | Digital Marketing, Non-Profit Strategy, Strategy
Recently Jeff Cherry wrote a great article in the magazine Conscious Company about how the Shark Tank investors are missing the big point of “WHY” people are creating a business or providing a service. He says “We’re leaving the world where you can generate ‘greedy’ proftis first, give back later, and still expect customers, employees, communities, and suppliers to be genuinely engaged in your success.” We are entering the world of being conscious in your business goals.
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by Marketing | Jul 28, 2016 | Digital Marketing, Non-Profit Strategy, Strategy
The way buyers purchase products and services has fundamentally and rapidly changed over the last five years. The most important shift is that they now want to learn about products and services from authentic, trusted sources – such as a company’s customers – before they buy. They aggressively seek these sources well before engaging with salespeople:
- Word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20% to 50% of all purchasing decisions. (McKinsey)
- 63% of consumers search for help from other customers online. (Lithium)
- Brand advocates are 70% more likely to be seen as a good source of information by people around them. (BzzAgent)
The rise of social media and online communities has accelerated this change. Just as they visit Yelp before dining out, your prospects will find a current customer and learn about their experiences with your products in just a few clicks on LinkedIn, Quora or any of the hundreds of product review sites. Who are they going to connect with and what experiences are they going to hear first? As a B2B marketer, you may be wrestling with how to best influence these prospects through positive word of mouth marketing.
What you need is an army of advocates. Advocates are not just satisfied customers.
They are enthusiasts who embrace your company’s vision and willingly advance your interests through their interactions with others. Whether by sharing experiences online, referring new business or recommending your products, these supporters have an enormous – but sometimes unseen – influence on your brand, demand generation and pipeline efforts. In a world like this, one of the most powerful things you can do as a marketer is to find, organize and mobilize these advocates. With a marketing asset this valuable, you can’t just cross your fingers and hope it happens organically. As the importance of peer-to-peer recommendation grows, marketers will need to actively convert customers into advocates and build advocate marketing programs that mobilize their advocates to support sales and marketing initiatives.
Part 1 in a series on Advocate Marketing – from the eBook Advocate Marketing Playbook
by Marketing | Jul 10, 2016 | Content, Digital Marketing, Non-Profit Strategy, Social Media, Strategy
Your nonprofit uses social media marketing to reach its various audiences, right? So, how’s it going? Wish you could acquire and engage more supporters?
No matter how big or small, your nonprofit can improve its social media results by doing the following three things.
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by Marketing | Jul 5, 2016 | Content, Digital Marketing, Non-Profit Strategy
One of the keys to having a successful nonprofit is to ask pointed questions about your organization and to respond with truthful answers. In so doing, your nonprofit can identify what is working and what isn’t, and what tactics to use to improve and move forward.
Revealing flaws is the only way to tackle them, and the only way to reveal them in the first place is to look for them by asking the right questions. There may not necessarily be a flaw in a nonprofit’s workings, but there is likely to be a better, more efficient way to use resources—or a problem in need of an inventive solution.
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