Online Marketing 101

1

• Online Marketing 101
• How to
• Connect Prospects to EWGs Mission
• Turn Prospects into donors using online tools

2
Lets talk about online activities that influence
a prospect
3
From Curious Prospect to Donor

• Make sure they can find you online (natural
  acquisition)
• Purchase names of like-minded people (paid
  acquisition)
• Make it easy for them to sign up (conversion to
  list)
• Convince them to Give (conversion to donor)
• Strategically communicate with them
• Engage them in your story (social media)
• Make it easy for them to spread the word

4
Which Tools to Use at What Stage
Natural Acquisition - Optimized Website - Social Media Profiles - Universal Search Paid Acquisition - Paid media buys - Paid search ads - Email List relationships
Conversion to List - Email testing - Landing Page testing - Web usability studies Conversion to Donor - Personalized welcome email series - Calendar of email messages - Social Media offline engagement
5
Natural Acquisition

• Being Found OnlineSearch Engine Ranking 101

6
Overview of Search Engines

• Why do we care about Search?
• 91 of internet users use a search engine1
• 87 of people click on the natural results (vs.
  paid)
• The Big Players
• Google, Yahoo!, and Live.com
• Google has 70 of the search marketing share,
  accounting for 70.77 of all US searches.2
• Each has computer algorithm to rank your pages in
  the search results.

7
How Search Engines Work

• Google, Yahoo!, and Live create their listings
  automatically. They use spiders or bots to
  "crawl" links to web pages1 and add those web
  pages to their index.
• When a human visitor to the engine puts in a
  keyword phrase, the search engine is focused on
  serving relevant, fresh content that the engines
  think is matched to the searchers intent.

Keyword Phrases
8

• Its not about the keywords You want to be found
  on.
• Its about the keywords the searcher uses to find
  you.

9
How people search

• 87 of people click on natural search results
• Only 48 even see paid ads
• Most people search for information, smaller for
  commerce
• People click on the word in results that matches
  their query word1
• 58 of all queries are three or more words

10
How People Search

• The Long Tail of Search
• 3 of Excites search traffic was 3 keywords
  97 of the rest was in the long tail
• Amazon.com makes 57 of sales from keywords
  outside of the popular terms.

11
How Does a Search Engine Read A Page?

• Rememberits a computer algorithm

12
Its a Translation Problem
A search engine tries figure out what your web
page is about through its pieces.
The spider reads just text, not images or flash.
It also evaluates inbound links to determine
relevancy.
13
Search Engines are Computers

• A Lost in Translation example
• My Apple is a lemon
• It could mean your page is about fruit
• If the words computer also appears nearby, the
  spider determines that the phrase is about
  computers.

14
Writing Spider Friendly Online Copy

• Writing tips for online copy
• Use contextual words in proximity to the keyword
  phrase
• Repeat the keyword phrase variations
• Use Headers like a table of contents
• Strategically link to the copy, and use the
  keyword phrase in the link text.1
• Use alt tags for images, so that spiders can
  read the image

15
Every page matters

• Search engines dont see home pages
• Every page is an entry page for searcher
• Every page needs its own inbound link strategy
• Conversions from landing pages for targeted
  keywords can be improved through testing

16
More Details about Googles Algorithm
17
How Googles Search Results Work

• Algorithm has 200 factors, some weighted more
  than others. We know about 40 parts of the 200.
• In 2007, the Google algorithm changed 9 times per
  week.
• Only 2 web pages are listed for one company, so
  one company could rank for the first 152 slots,
  but will only show up in the 1 and 2 spot

18
Rankings Dont Matter

• Influenced by
• Geo Location (IP)1
• Previous searching history
• Personal search (login to Google account)1
• Universal search3
• Behavioral search (shopping vs. researching)4
• Google Wiki
• So instead
• Focus on of visitors and conversions
• Watch your web analytics

19
Questions about Natural Acquisition?

• Search Engine Overview
• Elements of SEO

20
Paid Acquisition

• Paid online advertising
• Email List buys

21
Paid Acquisition

• Two Online Methods
• 1. Pay per impression ads
• 2. Pay Per Click (PPC) though search engines and
  Google network
• Three Types of Email Buys
• Purchase of email addresses (JohnKerry.com)
• Sponsored email
• Care2.com petitions

22
Questions _at_ Paid Acquisition?

• Traditional media buying
• Pay Per Click advertising
• Email buying

23
Conversion to List

• Landing Page Testing
• Usability Testing
• Web Analytics

24
Conversion to List

• Goal
• Make sure that no one who interacts with your
  landing pages, or website gets confused or
  distracted during the sign up process.
• Fix this through
• Landing Page Testing
• Web Usability Testing

25
Questions _at_ Conversion to List?

• Landing Page testing
• Usability Testing
• Improving web site conversions

26
Conversion to Donor

• Email welcome series
• Calendar of email communications
• Social Media offline integration

27
Starting a Conversation that Makes Prospects Want
to Donatevia Email
28
Conversion to Donor - Email

• Converting new names to supporters requires
  welcome series email
• Best Practice for Welcome Series
• Action email first, not generic welcome message
  or ask
• Match action email to the prospects sign on
  issue
• Ask for donation within the first week
• Segment these names for at least 2 weeks before
  adding to generic messaging
• Test message elements to increase conversions
  (from line, subject, copy, headers, link text,
  signer, P.S.)
• Test landing pages to increase conversions

29
Conversion to Donor - Email

• Personalize the Message
• Segment list
• Ask for preferences in issue, frequency of
  message
• Send them messaging based on preference
• Personalize based on donors info/web activity

30
Calendar of Email Communications

• Create messaging so that its a building
  conversation
• Test individual messages
• From line, subject line, body content, links,
  headers, call to action, signer, P.S.

31
Email Mobile challenges

• Unique Challenges with Mobile users
• Emails and web pages need to be designed for
  mobile use, otherwise renders weird.
• Mobile traffic is not caught through traditional
  web analytic programs because JavaScript is not
  executed
• Additional mobile analytic programs or add-ons
  are required

32
Conversion to Donor

• Via Social Media

33
Social Media

• Definition a community that creates a website
  together by posting content (no webmaster)
• Types
• Social networking sites
• Event Promotion sites
• Social bookmarking sites
• Content voting sites
• Online news aggregators
• Collaborative directories
• Video Sharing sites
• Photo sharing sites
• Local Search Sites
• Q A Sites
• Niche sites based on interest Complete directory
  here.

34
Social MediaBest Practices

• Its a conversation, not a push medium
• Engage in communities that have your demographic
• Needs regular engagement
• Great for branding, not for direct fundraising
• Putting social widgets on web properties makes
  sharing easy

35
Conversion to Donor Social Media

• Engage Them in Your Story
• Social media/web 2.0 Web pages created by all
  users without central control
• Good for
• Listening to better understand supporters (focus
  group)
• Spreading the message about mission
• Building attachment to mission
• Building closer grassroots relationship among
  supporters
• Having donors help define national issue focus

36
Conversion to Donor Social Media

• Enable them to Spread the Word
• Ask them to forward email
• Post online content that is easily shareable
• To the prospects blog, Facebook profile, etc.
• Ask them to invite others (to social profile, to
  petition, etc)

37
Conversion to Donor

• Via Social Media
• Blogging

38
Social MediaBlogging

• Blog - A Website that makes being social easy
• All SEO tips apply, blog without promotion is not
  found
• Naturally more searchable
• Every blog post is a web page
• More frequently updated
• Written to encourage communication

39
BloggingKeep the Conversation Alive

• Create an editorial calendar for your posts
• Start a dialogue with bloggers in your niche
• Ask someone to guest-post on your blog
• Thank your readers
• Participate in the comments on your blog posts
• Stumped for Ideas? Brainstorm list here.

40
Questions _at_ Conversion to Donor?

• Email welcome series
• Calendar of email communications
• Social Media offline integration

41
Measuring Overall Success

• Monitor how prospects navigate your site to
  improve conversions
• Traffic source (email, natural, paid, links from
  other content?)1
• What do they do when they arrive?
• How many are converting?2
• Is there a drop off in traffic through funnel?3
• Keep in mind that web analytics is a trending
  process, part science/part art

42
Measuring Email Success

• Measure success based on
• Rates for delivers, opens, CTR, and landing page
  conversions
• Cost per acquisition/email.
• Donation average per acquisition/email.
• Overall number and type of touch point per
  donor/activist

43
Measuring Social Media Success

• Testing Improving Social Medias role in
  conversion
• Track keyword activity cross social media
  platform (online reputation monitoring)
• Track visitors/subscribers, stickiness, of
  comments, and conversion based on platform,
  increased traffic to your website.
• Calls to action (eye tracking), frequency of use
  of platform tools (posts, sent emails, etc) cross
  campaign

44
Measuring Blog Success

• New vs. returning visitors, length of stay
• RSS Subscribers
• Conversation Rate - the Number of Visitor
  Comments / Number of Posts
• Citations of people who link to your blog

45
Summary

• Natural or Paid Acquisition
• Focus on words, links, analytics and testing
• Test Your Sign up
• Use best practices, consistent messaging, and
  test for usability
• Getting them to Give
• Personalize messaging based on prospects
  interests
• Coordinated multichannel works best
• Email, social media, DM, TM and face-to-face for
  donor conversion and evangelism

46
Appendix

• More info
• Additional Learning Resources

47
How do you Tackle the SEO Challenge?

• Keyword research
• for each page
• Competitive Analysis
• of site and current online marketing efforts
• Analyze your site
• how each page ranks for each keyword
• Repair/Enhance site
• Submit non-indexed pages
• Monitor rankings/Analyze reports
• Fix/develop links Universal Content
• Repeat

48
Some of the SEO factors we know about
Freshness1 Page Load time2 Complexity of Page Code3
Title Tag4 Meta Description tag5 Meta Keyword tags6
Heading Tags7 Alt attributes8 Links9
Body Text10 Keywords used11 Keywords in file name12
Number of outbound links13 Number of inbound links Internal linking structure14
Keyword proximity to determine meaning keyword density on page
49
Social MediaSocial Networking Sites

• Facebook - 130M active users
• MySpace - 110M active users
• Care2 - 1.3M visitors/month
• Gather - 874K visitors/month
• Parents.com - 1.7M visitors/month
• Babycenter.com - 4.1M visitors/month
• Livescience.com - 1.9M visitors/month
• RightHealth.com - 7.4M visitors/month

50
Social MediaEvent Promotion Sites

• Meetup.com -1.9M visitors/month
• Eventful.com 535K visitors/month
• Citysearch.com 8.6M visitors/month

51
Social MediaSocial Bookmarking

• StumbleUpon 1M visitors/month
• Del.ico.us 362K visitors/month
• Mixx 2.2M visitors/month

52
Social MediaOnline News Aggregators

• Digg.com - 11.4M visors/month
• Reddit.com 1.3M visitors/month
• Technorati 2.5M visitors/month
• Propeller - 1.5M visitors/month
• Newsvine - 1.2M visitors/month
• Fark - 1.9M visitors/month

53
Social MediaCollaborative Directories

• Wikipedia 75M visitors/month
• Dmoz.org 2M visitors/month
• Zimbio.com1 - 2.1M visitors/month
• Squidoo pages2 - 3.8M visitors/month
• Ning.com3 5.9M visitors/month
• Craigslist 21M visitors/month

54
Social MediaVideo Photo Sharing Sites

• Video
• YouTube 71.4M visitors/month
• Yahoo Video 1.8M visitors/month
• Google Video 6.9M visitors/month
• Facebook2
• Photos
• Flickr3 23.9M visitors/month
• PhotoBucket 36M visitors/month

55
Web Analytics Terms 101

• Unique visitors, not hits
• Hits Measures every element that loads when a
  visitor request a page (images, javascript, the
  html itself).
• A visitor requesting a page with 30 elements
  would register as 30 hits! This is an inflated
  you shouldnt measure.
• Bounce rate Measured in two ways
• of visitors who see just one page on your site,
  or
• visitors who stay on the site for a small
  amount of time (usually five seconds or less).
• Your homepage bounce rate should be 30 or less
• Conversions the of visitors that did what you
  wanted them to do when they were on your website
• For example donate, download a .pdf, sign up for
  a newsletter
• Industry standard conversion rate is 8-10

56
Additional Tools

• Analyzing your competition
• SEO for Firefox
• SeoMozs Tools
• Compete.com
• Picking keywords
• SEO Books Keyword Tool
• Understanding how the Engines see yrou site
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Yahoo Site Explorer
• Live Search Webmaster Central

57
Learn More Search Marketing

• My blog Search Marketing for Nonprofits Blog
• http//Searchmarketingfornonprofits.wordpress.com
• How Search Engines work
• http//searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page21
  68031
• The expert on linking strategies
• http//www.ericward.com/
• SEOMoz
• http//www.seomoz.com
• Bruce Clays blog
• http//www.bruceclay.com
• Search Engine Optimization An Hour a Day (book)
• http//www.yourseoplan.com/

58
Learn More Web Analytics

• How web analytics is like using Evite for a
  holiday party
• Occams Razor by Avinash Kaushik
• Web Analytics Demystified (book)
• http//www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/
• Google Analytics 2.0 (book)
• Web Analytics An Hour A Day (book)

59
Learn More Social Media

• Social Media Today
• http//www.socialmediatoday.com
• The Original Signal Web 2.0 blog
• http//www.originalsignal.com/
• Social Media 101
• http//www.slideshare.net/joannapena/social-media-
  101-creating-conversations-in-social-circles/
• Groundswell (book)
• http//www.forrester.com/Groundswell

60

• Questions?
• Katherine Watier
• Watier Creative
• Nonprofit Search Marketing Consultant
• 301-793-6121
• katherine_at_watier.org