Marketing Resources
Be sure to browse these helpful marketing resources!
Set up a Google Places listing for your business
A Google Places listing is a great way to get free exposure through Google. Your information will feature prominently when someone searches for your business or when they utilize Google Maps in your area. Use the tutorial below to set up your free listing and ensure your business’s online presence is solid.
Facebook Marketing
The Nonprofit Facebook Guy
This website is dedicated to making Facebook easier to understand for nonprofits, so they can get more results for the causes they fight for.
Facebook for Business
Learn how to grow your business with Facebook’s powerful marketing tools. This official resource page walks you through everything you need to know.
Marketing & Advertising
There are several online services which make email marketing fast, easy, and effective. I recommend the uniquely-named MailChimp (www.MailChimp.com). This service has several professional templates to customize for your business, or you can create one from scratch. The site is loaded with great videos and articles on how to use email marketing to help grow your business, and it allows you to create sign up forms and manage your email lists online.
Best of all, MailChimp is completely free for those with under 1,000 subscribers and send less than 6 emails per month (once a month is plenty). All of these features make this email marketing service definitely worth looking into.
Get the most out of your email marketing campaigns
Build a ‘Resource Relationship’ Don’t just send ads to their inbox, give out high-value content they would be interested in. This can be in the form of newsletters, articles, or links to interesting and helpful websites.
Use a recognizable ‘From’ name on the email This can be customized in email marketing services such as Mail Chimp, and is an important aspect of your campaigns. 60% of users say that this alone is a reason to open or not open an email. Be consistent with this, and stick to your branding. As a general rule, use the name of your business or organization.
Put thought into the subject line You only have about 3 seconds to convince someone to open up your email. Be sure that the subject line explicitly
states the benefit of reading the email in 5-8 words, with the most important information in the first 2 words. In doing so you should answer the question “Why does this matter today?” That being said, be sure not to over-emphasize the subject line. Using excessive exclamation points and words such as ‘free’ and ‘guarantee’ can get your email snagged by spam filters. It’s best to avoid them altogether. The same is true of dollar signs and the words ‘click here’ within the body of an email. These can both be used, but try to keep it to three times or less to avoid the chance of getting filtered out as junk mail.
When to Send Statistics show that Tuesday and Wednesday from 10 – 3 is the best time, but that is a generic rule. In MailChimp you can actually test to see what works best with your subscribers. Using what they call an A/B Split Campaign, you can experiment by sending to different segments of your email database at different times. Whichever time has the highest number of open rates lets you know the best time to reach your audience.