Ep 69: Do This Before Your Next Campaign

EPISODE 69

The Secret Sauce for Exceeding Fundraising Goals

 
 
 

What if there was a proven method to prime your audience for a successful campaign or launch?

In this episode, I share the difference (and simple change) to do before your next online campaign.

You'll also hear what to do when things don't go as planned (pivot!) and how to find ways to improve and adapt. As I navigate the challenging world of fundraising, I cover everything from handling setbacks to tapping into creativity to attain your goals.

The importance of a two-way dialogue with your audience is highlighted, along with tips on dealing with disappointment and finding support during tough times.

Think you’ve reached out to “everyone” in your network? Out of ideas to get noticed and get funded?  Generate leads for your nonprofit or social impact business: https://www.splendidcourses.com/prospect

Steal my Prospect List! Lead Gen just got a lot easier!

Resources mentioned:

 
 
 

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TRANSCRIPT:

00:02

Welcome to the Purpose and Profit Club podcast for nonprofit leaders, mission-driven creatives and social entrepreneurs. Get ready to stop dreaming and start doing. Here. Ideas become action. We prioritize purpose and profit. You ready, let's go.

00:20

I was recently on another podcast and when we got through the interview, after we were through taping, the host asked me a question and she said so, are you shifting to work with primarily consultants? And I was like er on the question, because so much of what I do works with nonprofits. But I understood what was underneath the question, which is you can speak so clearly to the business owner, the consultant, and to the nonprofit leader fundraiser, marketer so I constantly am weaving through those two different client profiles, those two different problems right in the interview that I think she was thinking, oh, are you kind of moving this way? And when I tell her it was absolutely not, I've always worked with both, that is I think that's why I understand this social impact world so so well is because I'm in both. I can see it through both lenses, and everything that I teach fundraisers applies to my own business, applies to my for-profits, my B Corpse, my mission-driven entrepreneurs. It is the same and it has never been more clear or more evident as I record this, it is the day after Giving Tuesday and it is such a mix of emotions in the nonprofit sector on like the end the tail end of many of y'all's Giving Tuesday campaigns. So your online fundraisers online fundraisers are so similar In fact, they're basically the same as an online campaign launch that even I would have in my own business or that other business consultants and creators may have. Right, and that's what I want to get into today.

02:19

I want to get into this idea of priming your audience, whoever they are, in advance of your launch, your campaign, your thing, your promotion, your announcement. What happens when somebody is primed, what happens when somebody is not primed, and then a lot of the common things that I see many of my clients, followers, subscribers, kind of accidentally fall into when it doesn't go exactly how they hope it would go. I want to give you the caveat that everything that I'm going to talk about today and share with you today our feelings are actual things that I've experienced myself. I am not exempt from these common pitfalls, right, they're things that I'm now aware of and have kind of expected and know how to navigate around and teach my clients to navigate around.

03:15

So one of the things that I got really curious about and really wanted to kind of stay really in touch with my students my core students and Ample Advice, social Impact and easy emails for impact, this kind of year end season in general is just how's it going? Hey, I see that you've got this fundraiser. I see you've got this campaign going. How is it going? So I've been doing a lot of DMing. I've been connecting with a lot of our students in the Facebook group. Some of you have been sending me emails, sharing updates, and that's really, really helpful.

03:46

So a few in particular of my students have blown past their goal. They have blown past their fundraising goal. So what I said to them was what do you think was the big driver here? Like what moved the needle? What do you think worked really well? What do you think was the catalyst for it? And there has been a commonality in it. It made me smile at your ear because I was like yes, yes, yes, the idea that their audience was primed. So primed means they are ready, they already have your organization top of mind. They haven't forgotten what you do because you have been staying in touch and nurturing them.

04:29

Do you ever think about like I'm going to go way, way back. I'm going to think about my high school class, like my graduating class. And have you ever gotten a friend request on Facebook? Or maybe you're catching up with an old friend and they mention somebody you went to high school with, will this day last, because no one said anything to you at college. Well, jimmy, jimmy, jimmy, who, and they're like you know, jimmy, you know, and they start describing me as on the football team and I'm like I don't remember, right, I don't remember because I have lost touch with Jimmy until that friend request comes in or till that person shares that story. Oh right, he was, you know, x, y, z happened, right, you don't want that to be how your subscriber, your supporter, your client or customer views you, your brand, your organization, and many times it's unintentional, but that's what's happening. Okay, it's happening because you're under emailing, it's happening because you are under nurturing throughout the year.

05:26

So priming doesn't have to be this long, exhaustive process. That is not what I'm saying. It's not like this long, you know, laborious process of phone calls and texts and handwritten notes and welcome packages and things like that. Priming is simply oh yeah, I like you, I remember you? Oh cool, I'm so glad you shared that thing right. So priming can be a weekly email. That's priming. That is successful priming. And for many of my easy emails clients, this is what they said. They said that their audience had been primed throughout the year. Even in just you guys, the last six months, the last three months, you can prime pretty short, okay. So you can prime people and prepare them in a way, even if it's not a year long of priming. However, anything you do in this will compound. So, the same way that I teach the concept of the social street team, compounding the priming process compounds. So if you give yourself a year of weekly emails not boring emails, but weekly emails that are interesting, that tell a good story, that sound like they were written by you and not just by an ominous brand, boom, your audience is primed. Now could you do that in six weeks instead, because you haven't done it up until right now? Yes, you could do a minimum viable version of priming your audience.

06:40

Okay, my very first online launch, years and years ago, was a total fail. It was a total fail. I had not primed my audience. My audience was a hodgepodge group of email subscribers, facebook and Instagram followers. I don't remember if I was active on LinkedIn then, so we'll just say Instagram, facebook and email. That was the main kind of mechanism that I was able to get in front of my ideal customer, right, and it was a total fail. I had a goal of gosh, I can't even remember I'm sure I had a goal of selling at least a couple of spots into one of my course at the time. That I had was kind of beta testing and I sold one. I sold one and it was like ugh.

07:32

And as I look back on what went wrong with that launch, there's a couple of kind of big ones. But the first one is my audience was not ready. They did not see me as somebody who was an expert or even actively talking about what I was selling. Okay, and not often enough, I think. Probably I was emailing once a month at that time. I'm sure I had done a couple of pivots in that time and so they weren't thinking, oh, christina, she can help me get noticed and funded online. She knows how to scale social impact businesses and nonprofits. Oh, my gosh, yes, I'm listening. They were thinking like one, who is this? Or, oh, I think I know her or I'm not sure right, so they weren't primed. That was a big part of why that first launch didn't go well.

08:24

Another big part of why it wasn't well didn't go well is I was uncertain in what it was that I was selling. So I had an idea for a course that I ended up not building which I'm really, really glad, by the way, that this whole thing didn't go how I wanted. But I had an idea for a course that I was like, liked but didn't love. I had an idea for a course that I knew I could teach, but it was almost like eh, it was good, not great. It was like it was missing some magic. I hadn't refined my voice yet. I hadn't figured out like a lot of what I figured out today in the courses that have sold so, so successfully and have gotten so many of my clients' results right. It was just like it was, like it was good.

09:09

You know it was B, you know, and that makes it really hard to get in front of your ideal audience, get them excited, get them to take action, when you yourself are feeling like a little bit wobbly about it. Okay, so many of my coaching clients will come to me and they're feeling wobbly about a major donor? Ask, right. But sometimes y'all are feeling wobbly about your online fundraiser, where you're like I mean, I'll say to you what's your goal for GivingTuesday, what's your goal for your end, and the amount of times that I hear I don't know right, that's a big like red flag. That's a warning sign of okay, well, we need to figure out what that numerical goal is. That's really important, that you say it out loud, that you say it to yourself and certainly let your donors know what it is right. So we have some sort of mechanism that we're going towards. Right?

09:58

Imagine you walk out your front door right now and you're like you just start walking and I run into you and I say where are you going? You go, I don't know. I don't know Somewhere. Good, I hope. Like, what's the plan? That is not a plan. Right, you want a destination. That destination needs to be a fundraising goal, and if you are a for-profit entrepreneur, then it may be, you know, still a revenue goal. And maybe you know I want to sell $5,000 worth of this service or this product. Right, it would. Maybe if you have a membership, right, could be. We need to. We want to get 30 new members this month.

10:35

Okay, so really making sure that I don't know is not an acceptable answer for going into any sort of launch campaign. Okay, I want to make sure that you pick a goal. I like to pick a goal that feels like stretch and spacious but doesn't feel impossible. So if I am sitting down with you and you say I don't know, and then I say how about we make your goal $5 million between now and your end, and if you give me just like, if you start laughing, right, then I'm not even in the ballpark. Right, I want to pick a goal that feels a stretch above last year, feels expansive, pushes you, but doesn't feel completely just impossible. Cause if it feels impossible, I see most times people go into freeze mode and they don't take action.

11:20

Okay, so that's the next piece of this is priming your audience, picking a goal, making sure that you're cognizant of that nurture piece and making sure that you're cognizant that you don't always have to be selling when you're priming. Okay, so going back to my first failed launch right, I had my goal, I didn't hit it. I wasn't priming my audience. I felt a little bit of disbelief or just wobbly on what it was. I was selling, right. So that would have been my first kind of warning sign red flag to like. Let me go back there.

11:58

The next thing that I see sometimes is that our audience isn't really they're getting those regular updates right. So they may be getting emails from you, they may. You may be posting on social, but there is a bridge missing. Okay, they're on one side of the street, you're on the other side of the street and you're like Christina, I am posting, christina, I am sending emails, but I cannot get them to cross over to this side of the street. Okay, and you haven't given them like a method, you haven't given them a compelling reason.

12:29

My neighbor has this gorgeous front yard. They spend a lot of time on it, they spend a lot of time gardening, and I'm picturing them standing on the other side of the street and I'm going, hey, come on over. And they're probably like listen, we got a fire pit here, we got these beautiful flowers, we're good. Give me a reason to come on over, give me a reason to walk over to the other side. Give me come across the street and walk me over, start a conversation, let's walk arm in arm, like. Give me a metaphorical reason to walk over. So a lot of times you're thinking you're priming them, but what you're really doing is talking at them, okay, and not with them, okay. So think about some ways and this would be a good place to press pause and say how could I get my subscriber, my follower, my ideal member or donor or client or customer whatever you wanna call them to walk across the street? What would be interesting to them?

13:26

One of the things that I saw a lot this campaign season was a lot of content with a lot of words that were very complex. So many of you have missions that are big and serious and bold and scientific and really hard for me In an instant to go off. That's important, that we need. We need that. We need that problem solve. That needs to be funded.

13:58

I was recently emailing with somebody who had some questions about one of my courses and she was watching my free masterclass and I was checking out some of the work that her organization does and y'all I read her about page and her our story page three times. I was like I kind of get it, but I don't totally get it. Okay, that's, that's not. That's not a good sign, right, there were so many words and the words that they were using were just for lack of a better word scholarly, they were high brow, they were clunky, there were too much words and it's almost like you leaning on that, that idea of like.

14:40

How would you explain it to a third grader? How would you explain what you do to somebody who's in third grade in a way that they could get excited about right, in a way that they don't feel like they need to get out their textbook and they need to get a highlighter and they need to Google some other things and they need to read a report? Right, how do I, how do I drill this down? How do I distill this down in an interesting way? Because what I've been seeing is a lot of wordy words, wordy stories that are not distilled down in a bite size way Many times. We can do that with statistics. Okay, we can do that with such statistics where we talk about, you talk about and you say our organization serves this sector, who commonly experience this problem, insert stat okay, right, got it. That's interesting to me.

15:27

Another way that you I'm thinking right now I could get my neighbor to walk across the street with me is boy if I said to them hey, come look at these plants. I just come look at the side ratio. It does not look so good. Tell me what you think. Talk to me about it. Would you have placed it here? What is it need? Right, there's the gardening experts. They'll know, they'll know, and if they don't know, they'll be able to at least what we would. They would be able to refer me to somebody who would, who would know. Right, that is a conversation starter. That's not me saying, hey, can you help me play this right hydrangea? Hey, open your wallet. It's just priming. It's just a conversation starter. It's a wave, it's a week, it's a high, it's a hello. How many times you walk across the street or you walk on the street and no one says hello?

16:09

Like we want to make sure that your email is prompting people and it's it is literally prompting people to reply, respond. Same thing with with your social media Social media. So, regardless of if your audience is primed, if your last or current campaign went amazing which, by the way, celebrating so many of you that I've said we did it right, it's, we blew past our goal. And I see you one of the big things I see in you, as you have partnered, I see that you have created aligned partnerships with influencers and ambassadors, the social street team concept that I teach and amplify social impact. I see that. I see that as why it's working. Right. I see the buzz.

16:51

If you're like, that's not us, christina, that audience wasn't primed, my lunch didn't go how I wanted. We feel like we've kind of just sputtered in. The biggest thing that I want you to go inward and take a look at is when you first realized shit, it's not going how I want it to crap, right. And you have that tinge of frustration, hopelessness, maybe, like what's the word is? Give up, right? I don't know what the feeling is with that right frustration, hopelessness, just like hands in the air, right, it's not working. Just Sad, right. Whatever that feeling is, I want you to think about what.

17:32

What happened Before that that moment? Right? Is it that you looked at your fundraising page? Is it that you logged into QuickBooks? Is it that you were scrolling on social media and saw another Air quotes competitor have a huge revenue announcement? You felt really jealous, right, totally normal, like what? What prompted that downward spiral of emotion? I want you to figure that out. And then I want you to take a minute Ask yourself what did I do next?

18:05

Okay, so I felt that way. I felt like crap, it's not working, no one's coming, only the 10 people have donated my mom, my sister, my friend, right, and that's it. Right. Our volunteer or board, our board, is barely doing anything like whatever. That was right. You thought that you felt that way. What did you do after that? What did you do the next few hours after that, the next day after that? Okay, what I see time and time again?

18:31

And this is a fork in the road. The fork in the road here is the leaders, the founders, the fundraisers who are successful in their campaign. They still experience this exact moment of crap. Right, it's not going how I thought it would. There's a fork in the road. And they take one fork, the other fork, with those of you who Also experience this, and then do not hit your revenue goal, do not meet that goal right, close out your end, feeling like a failure, feeling like things plateaued or depth significantly. Is this other fork? That other fork is that you give up. That other fork is that you may say, no, no, I'm emailing, I'm doing, I'm busy, but you are Busy on work that is not money making work. Okay, you are busy on work, that is Filling your schedule right, but is not taking inspired and productive action towards that funding goal.

19:33

So an example would be you know, I wrote a blog, I created a social post right, those are not high income producing pieces of work. Okay, what is a high income producing piece of work is I asked somebody to become a client. I made a call and asked a potential donor to give a gift of $10,000 and they said no. I asked somebody to go to lunch and I am going to pitch them to become a founding member, right, whatever the thing is. Right. Those are direct, bold outreach pieces, not the Well I I DM some people and I sent them the link. Now I'm hiding. Right, it feels like you did work and I know it does. I know, I know, I know it does and it is work technically. Right, it's like I checked my email, I did some things, but that is not the work that moves you into the other fork in the road, the other fork in the road, and I think of somebody like a Sarah Blakely.

20:31

I think of somebody like the founder of charity water. I think of somebody who, in the, in the climate of Crap, that didn't go how I thought it would, in the climate of a door shutting, a no, a campaign really being Much underfunded than they thought it would be. At a certain point, I see that person literally hit the gas. I see that person go double down who do I need to call? Who do I need to get with me so I'm not doing this alone? I see that person asking for help. I see that person engaging their board. I see that person calling their friends, their family, their alumni, their co-workers and saying you guys, it's go time, I need you. Right, like literally, it's go time, let's go. Think about that person in your life.

21:20

Or think about this is a great one to revisit the main character energy episode on of like what would somebody who is a mentor to use, or a thought leader, or somebody who you just feel like, oh, they got it figured out. Okay, I Wish I could be my word like them. Whoever that person is that you admire, think about when they hit that fork in the road. They have a campaign and that campaign kind of clunks out. What do they do? Do they do busy work, right, busy work that feels like work but actually isn't really a lot of work. Or do they dub double down and go all in on that piece right, all in on making it happen?

21:59

Okay, one of the prompts that I sometimes give myself because, as I said, everything in here, I've experienced, I still experience, as somebody who regularly launches courses, launches Different programs. I know what it's like like, I promise, I know what it's like. I know what it's like to go into something and have it just completely rock. And I know what it's like to go into something and have it finish out and feel like this butter right where it's like, oh, forget it, right. So I totally, totally get it.

22:28

One of the questions or prompts that I'll sometimes give myself in these scenarios where I'm like you know what, I am not where I thought I would be right. We're on day two of this and I would like to see our revenue goal higher would be Okay, fast forward. If I know that this fundraising campaign ends on, you know um the 15th and, and today we're, you know, 25% of where I thought we'd be, I thought we'd be well, will pass the 50% mark, I'll say, okay, all right, self, we hit our goal, I'm going to the future. I hit the goal, it happens, it's done. How'd I do it, how'd I do it? How'd we do it? And the first thing that will come up when you ask yourself that question is I don't know, I have no idea. I have no idea how I did it. And if you don't let yourself Just end the conversation with yourself with I don't know, I promise you the creativity will start to come right. And it's hard to do this if you're feeling like you're just Feeling really tight, so you may want to go for a walk and ask yourself this question, or a drive or something like that, and say, alright, if we are raising $20,000 between now and the 15th of the month, and I'm really feeling like whoo, that's far away. But I know I've got a line on a fortune teller and she told me we hit it, we did, we get the 20k, we hit our goal. How did I do it? And then I would get out of pen and paper and it would just start listing ideas.

24:01

Okay, and what I could promise you is that list at the end is full of ideas of things that I hadn't thought of yet. It's full of ideas of things that will require me to be courageous. They will feel uncomfortable, potentially right. That is full of things that are worth it. Right, the courageous moment is worth it because it gets my mission out into the world. Right, it's not even about me, right? So it is full of different actions that I could possibly take.

24:32

And then I want to make sure that I like what it is that I'm selling, promoting. You know, campaigning for right in the first place. So, for example, I may say okay with this online fundraiser. Yeah, I don't really love the name of it, or I don't really love our goal. Just, you know, I'm not sure. Or there's, there's a component of it I do feel like I want to switch out, so it might go. Let me switch that out. Okay, my more is this feel more in line with our cause? Does this feel more in line with our community? Okay, yeah, the next thing that's on that list for sure is partnerships. Right, and and partnerships look like. Who are the people in Our world who have an alignment with our mission and cause? Right, where can I ask them to get vocal? And one of those mistakes that I'm seeing People misinterpret the street team concept, which, if you haven't Taken my class on this, you need to take the digital ambassador blueprint class.

25:24

Okay, it's linked in the show notes. Sign up for that, it's free. But one of the misconceptions on this, this concept, this method that I teach of the social street team, is simply just, I'll just have some, some folks, some influencers, just share our Content to their stories and that'll be it, right, and then the money will come. And, yes, that does help step up the visibility, but it presupposes a few things. It presupposes that your content is bite-sized and interesting and Easy to digest. You remember the long form content thing I said earlier? Right, that's required. So if somebody is just sharing an influencer is just, let's use an influencer as an example. So, if the rock is sharing your, your Instagram post to his story Boy, whatever your mission does better align with his audience. Okay, I would much rather you get an influencer that has a smaller audience, that is much more plugged into what it is you do. But for this example, we're going to use the rock, because that's he's popped in my head. So we better make sure that the content that he's posting is really compelling and interesting.

26:34

Is there a stat? Is there a great story? Is there a testimonial? Is it a great image? What is it that's interesting? Right? The next thing is like, is it just a one off? Has he even endorsed it? Or is he just popped it into stories and said, meh, it's there.

26:48

Is there a link, like you want to make sure there that it's more than just this arbitrary? Because I'm staring out my window right now as I'm speaking to you, I'm also thinking of, like, if you've ever seen the difference between somebody who sells their house by owner and somebody who sells their house to the realtor. No, there's not one right way. But oftentimes the person just sticks this for sale by owner sign in the yard and in in a not great market it's really hard to sell because that was it, right, that's all they did. And then there's the person with who has the real estate agent and they do all of these things, all of these activations. They're working their network, they're reaching out to the community. Right, there's other ways to get people who are looking for houses in front of your house Right To say, hey, there's an alignment here, so you want to make sure that that is happening.

27:35

So it's more than just oh well, I asked somebody to share it to stories. Right, when a land, the plane, like, did they prime their audience in a story in front of it or after it? Did they include a link? What was the graphic you gave them to share? Oh, did they just share a random post of yours, right? There's more to it, that nuance matters. That nuance matters in your conversion rate. Conversion rate is just simply the amount of people that take the action you want them to take Sign up by, donate, et cetera. Okay, that's what I've got today.

28:03

So think about this. Think about how you, how you want to prime your audience moving forward, how you want to bridge that gap of getting your audience to walk across the street Right and having a two way conversation. Think about some ways that you can handle the moments in a campaign when you're feeling disappointed, when you're feeling like, ah, I wasn't expecting it. How do you want to handle the fork in the road? Who do you want to lean on as your main character energy to get you through? I'm cheering you on and, as usual, I want to invite you to do two.

28:38

Two things, actually, not as usual. Two things. One my goal is to get five new podcast reviews. If you haven't left a review on whatever app you're listening to, would you please leave a review and a rating today? Help me get there. Two if you have questions about programs or private coaching, now is the time to reach out to me. You can send me a message on Instagram at Splendid Consulting. I'll see you next time. Like what you're hearing and want to take this to the next level, I want to invite you to go to purpose and profit dot club to watch my free class In there. I will tell you the number one thing, that's keeping your nonprofit or social impact business stock, and what to do instead. Again, go to purpose and profit dot club.

You Get To Have Purpose And Profit. I’ll Show You How.

 
 
PodcastChristina Edwardspurpose and profit, marketing, entrepreneurship, purpose driven, nonprofit, social impact, mindset, productivityComment