How to grow your association on the web

Marketing Best Practices for your association's website

1. Attract visitors to your website

• Have a clear strategy and message, then convey it to people.
• Support what your donors or other allies are doing online and offline. Contribute links to other organizations' Web sites and blogs on your Web site.
• Generate regular and relevant content for your site. Publicize your Web initiatives in any traditional media and direct market campaigns. Avoid the temptation, once again, to send a lot of news via e-mail unless it is targeted and you have permission.
• If you generate a lot of content through a blog or even through regular news updates to your own Web site, you may want to consider offering RSS feeds. This helps you market to busy, niche audiences who lack the time to constantly come to your Web site for updates.
• Give it away. If your organization issues any print material for distribution, it needs to be up on your Web site as some sort of download. Don't treat information as a 'Member's Only' perk, particularly anything that shows you doing good work.
• Last but not least - make good use of a Web Analytics software e.g. Google Analytics - it is free and provides great insight into where people are coming from, how do they find you and so on.

2. Turn these visitors into friends

Turning visitors into friends ultimately requires your group to get people involved with your Web site. (This is talked about in more detail in our earlier post - "How to engage people through your non-profit organization website")

3. Turn friends into first-time donors

Once you have an online community coming back, your next step is to identify ways in which regular visitors can contribute time and money towards your non-profit. Use your Web presence to show them what you can do for them. This is where branding comes into play.

However, you want to be careful about being too direct in your 'sales pitch' for donations. Don't make every message to your visitors all about money. Strive to be authentic with regards to telling others about your needs, and show your visitors specifically what their money will go towards through photos, testimonials, success stories and so on.

4. Turn first-time donors into loyal/regular donors

Showing just how valuable a donor's time and money to your organization on a repeated basis is crucial to the fourth and final piece of the puzzle: building loyalty.

• Identify the programs your organization uses to help people. Tailor your Web messaging to these programs, and show donors through text and action pictures how their money is going to work for them.
• Determine how much money your group needs to raise through your Web site. Have a target in mind, a goal to shoot for.
• Setup and test your online donations mechanism. Make sure it works properly, is easy-to-use and generally doesn't have bugs that cause donors to give up before completing a transaction. Make sure your site is also completely secure, and your information gathering of addresses and credit card numbers respects your donors' privacy.
• Confirm and affirm donations via acknowledgment screens and e-mails. Personalize them based on the amount of money they are donating, and to which program they are donating to.

5. Build meaningful relationships

A blog(short for the term "Web log") is a great place to tell stories about what your non-profit is doing, if it is personable enough and genuine in approach. You can use a blog to share with potential donors/volunteers:

• what your group or organization did recently to save or change lives.
• what testimonials, awards or other sources of praise your non-profit has been singled out for.
• what upcoming events that your organization will be hosting or participating in.
• what strategies or tips that have helped your organization achieve its goals.

You can also use your blog to ask for help from your community. For instance, you can ask for help obtaining in-kind gifts or other items that your group requires: food, clothing, supplies, etc. Ask visitors questions and invite them to leave comments on your Web site or blog. Show people you genuinely care about their opinions.

6. Be personal and approachable

Strive to put a human face on your Web site. Put up bios of the key members of your organization, and allow site visitors to easily reach them. Be sure to place contact information up on your site linked to the individual's name, not their position. Reply as soon as possible whenever anyone reaches you.

Similarly, if your organization is using a blog to add participation to its Web site, consider having the Executive Director or someone doing proactive work for your non-profit create the content. This helps to put a more human and authentic face on your organization, and "personalizes" your non-profit's story.

Share photos, wherever relevant, of projects your organization is undertaking on your blog or via photo-sharing Web sites like Flickr.com. Introduce your staff by showing them in action in your pictures. Show your visitors and donors exactly where their hard-earned money is going.

7. Reward participation (and, sometimes, patience)

Once you have people actively becoming involved through your Web channel, you can start to reward people who make significant donations through your site with gifts or premium items. For instance, you might consider using a Web site like cafepress.comto make customized mugs and T-shirts that you could give away to further encourage positive word of mouth and further donor loyalty. Incentives are also great for saying "I'm sorry" when things go wrong, too. Canadian social marketing guru Tara Hunt recounts a great story on her blogabout what happened when the Flickr Web site went down for a period of time in July 2006: the photo-sharing site posted two circles on what would have normally been their home page. Visitors were then invited to colour them to win free premium membership account access to the site.

One blog noted that as many as 1,000 people participated in the contest, which meant Flickr was able to turn a potentially negative event into free, positive publicity. You might not be able to do precisely the same thing Flickr did, depending on the tone you wish to strike with users, but think about ways in which you can creatively reward your visitors. The bottom line is that you want to make your donors know that you care about them. Get visitors contributing information and feedback, and they might soon start contributing more tangible items such as money to your organization.