Acquire Like-mind People Through Web Campaigns

Step 72.

Web campaigns consist of all forms of online advertising, banner ads, seeding text links, premission-based email lists, Flash features ads, etc. with a specific call-to-action message. For example, inside the ad itself is text asking for a response, such as "Click here to help now" in order to drive traffic to a corresponding landing page.

In many cases, charities use "premiums" as an incentive to a prospective donor. The best Premiums offer value of some kind, which may be a whitepaper, clothing, writst ban, ribbon, newsletter, CD, book, etc.

The more closely tied a premium is to the charity's purpose or call-to-action, the better the campaign will do. In other words, premiums need to serve a purpose and that purpose is finding like-minded individuals to your cause.

Best Practices for Landing pages

The objective of a landing page is to provide a user friendly experience so people can provide the required information as conveniently as possible.

An effective landing page represents, from the ad, the “offer” or the campaign call-to-action through imagery and text, no more than a couple paragraphs. Many charities either provide too little information or too much, you want to be right in the middle with consistent messaging so the prospect never gets lost.

The form should only ask for the necessary information needed to process the request. Therefore, just because someone clicked on your banner ad to receive a free whitepaper download, don’t take that as an opportunity develop a user demographic and psychographic profile by asking high trust questions, such as age, annual income, home ownership, number of kids, type of magazines they read, type of outdoor activities, where they vacation, etc.. Building user profiles is a good marketing but do it over time.

The actual design and layout of the landing page should have lots of white space, which is more inviting to read. Optimize images on the page to ensure the landing page loads quickly. Eliminate additional offers so the prospect doesn’t get distracted or confused on what to do.

Phraseology used in marketing always fascinates me. For example, I learned a long time ago that using the term “paperwork” instead of “contract” actually emits a different response; it serves to put people at ease rather than creating tension with formalities of the word “contract.” In the case of a landing page, we’ve discovered a ‘submit’ button at the end of a form is more likely to be clicked than a button reading ‘order’ or ‘register’ or ‘send’.

Finally, two or three ‘qualifying questions’ are often a part of a lead generation strategy, such as in the case of getting people to sign up for a download of some kind or receive a free premium. These questions should be designed to help provide intelligence for future marketing efforts to this individual. Let’s say your charity is the American Cancer Society, one idea for a question may then be “Do you know someone who has Cancer?”

In your next communication you will be able to reference the fact that this individual has personally experienced the effects of Cancer through a friend or loved one. Furthermore, through additional questions, you may even be able to qualify the type of Cancer of interest. This is powerful intelligence in your quest to create relevant messaging to your constituents.




Step 73. Send Progress Reports

Acquire Like-mind People Through Web Campaigns