One year and over 40K downloads! 🥳 To celebrate the one-year birthday of Nonprofit Nation, I created a brand new free resource for you: The Nonprofit Social Media Content Planner. Get your copy here.
Marketing effectiveness can be hard to measure, but we all face increased pressure to understand it and report on it. Where is your marketing working? What opportunities are you missing?
Ultimately, marketing effectiveness equates to marketing maturity. Regardless of your organization’s size, your marketing ecosystem lives on a maturity spectrum—and where you stand today tells a story of where you’ll end up tomorrow.
In this episode, I talk with one of my favorite marketers, Rachel Clemens. She breaks down exactly how to measure your marketing maturity, and how to move from one stage of marketing maturity to the next. She will also walk us through The Mighty GPSâ„¢, a new self-assessment to measure your marketing maturity, from Mighty Citizen.
As Chief Marketing Officer, Rachel spends her days promoting Mighty Citizen's services and thought leadership. She’s been a contributor for SGEngage, NTEN, and the Association of Fundraising Professionals. With a background in messaging, branding, and design, Rachel has been a national speaker for conferences across the country.
Connect with Rachel
About Julia Campbell, the host of the Nonprofit Nation podcast:
Named as a top thought leader by Forbes and BizTech Magazine, Julia Campbell (she/hers) is an author, coach, and speaker on a mission to make the digital world a better place.
She wrote her book, Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Guide for Nonprofits, as a roadmap for social change agents who want to build movements using engaging digital storytelling techniques. Her second book, How to Build and Mobilize a Social Media Community for Your Nonprofit, was published in 2020 as a call-to-arms for mission-driven organizations to use the power of social media to build movements.
Take Julia’s free nonprofit masterclass, ​3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media That Converts
Take my free masterclass: 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media Content that Converts
One year and over 40K downloads! 🥳 To celebrate the one-year birthday of Nonprofit Nation, I created a brand new free resource for you: The Nonprofit Social Media Content Planner. Get your copy here.
Marketing effectiveness can be hard to measure, but we all face increased pressure to understand it and report on it. Where is your marketing working? What opportunities are you missing?
Ultimately, marketing effectiveness equates to marketing maturity. Regardless of your organization’s size, your marketing ecosystem lives on a maturity spectrum—and where you stand today tells a story of where you’ll end up tomorrow.
In this episode, I talk with one of my favorite marketers, Rachel Clemens. She breaks down exactly how to measure your marketing maturity, and how to move from one stage of marketing maturity to the next. She will also walk us through The Mighty GPSâ„¢, a new self-assessment to measure your marketing maturity, from Mighty Citizen.
As Chief Marketing Officer, Rachel spends her days promoting Mighty Citizen's services and thought leadership. She’s been a contributor for SGEngage, NTEN, and the Association of Fundraising Professionals. With a background in messaging, branding, and design, Rachel has been a national speaker for conferences across the country.
Connect with Rachel
About Julia Campbell, the host of the Nonprofit Nation podcast:
Named as a top thought leader by Forbes and BizTech Magazine, Julia Campbell (she/hers) is an author, coach, and speaker on a mission to make the digital world a better place.
She wrote her book, Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Guide for Nonprofits, as a roadmap for social change agents who want to build movements using engaging digital storytelling techniques. Her second book, How to Build and Mobilize a Social Media Community for Your Nonprofit, was published in 2020 as a call-to-arms for mission-driven organizations to use the power of social media to build movements.
Take Julia’s free nonprofit masterclass, ​3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media That Converts
Take my free masterclass: 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media Content that Converts
today's podcast is sponsored by community boost a digital marketing agency, empowering social ventures changing the world. Community boost invites you to join the nonprofit marketing Summit. fundraise to the future for free on August 16 through 18th. It's the biggest virtual conference for nonprofit marketers. You'll be joined by 20,000 Like minded professionals as we step into the future of digital strategy, and you'll be learning from leaders like Mallory Erickson, Amy sample Ward, Adrian Sargeant, Mehta, Tiktok, myself and many more, get your free ticket to the future at WWW dot nonprofit marketing summit.org. See you there. Hello, and welcome to nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell. And I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the nonprofit nation podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently Find Your Voice. Definitively grow your audience and effectively build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie, or an experienced professional, who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people and create even more impact, then you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello, everyone, so excited, to be back in your earbuds to be back in your car to be back with you on your walk or while you walk your dog while you work out whatever you're doing right now. Thanks so much for listening. This is your nonprofit nation host Julia Campbell. And today I am here with one of my favorite people, Rachel Clemens. And Hi Rachel and I want to read your bio because I love the way that you've written your bio. I think it's actually really interesting. And it's a lot more interesting than a lot of the bio sometimes I read, but Rachel Clemens builds things. First, she built a career as a designer. Then she built her own strategic communications firm, helping organizations like United Way, the Texas Restaurant Association and countless others increase revenue and awareness. And in 2016, Rachel's firm was acquired by trademark media, and together they became mighty citizen. As Chief Marketing Officer, Rachel spends her days promoting mighty Citizens Services and thought leadership. She's been a contributor for SG engage and 10 and the Association of Fundraising Professionals. And with a background in messaging, branding and design. Rachel has been a national speaker for conferences across the country. So welcome, Rachel.
Rachel Clemens:Thanks. I think I should have you read my bio every time you do it. So well.
Julia Campbell:I love it. I love it starts with Rachel builds things. I think that was really cool. And what was your topic at iKON? We both spoke at the Association of Fundraising Professionals international conference in Vegas. And I didn't get to catch your session. But what was your session topic?
Rachel Clemens:Yeah. So I spoke with our friend Rachel Muir, the other Rachel on the topic of winning fundraising campaigns that hit the jackpot. So it was actually a showcase of amazing fundraising campaigns and like, why they were successful and what their success was like,
Julia Campbell:and I will tell you, Rachel viewer, what about the titles? She wins the jackpot with her titles?
Rachel Clemens:Well, you know, she wrote that title.
Julia Campbell:Yes. And Didn't she have the title? What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? Yes, fundraising fails, and fundraising lessons learned. I love that title. This is so cool. So today, we're going to talk about marketing, maturity, and how to know if your marketing is actually effective. But I want to start with how you got into this work. How did you start in marketing? How did you start working with nonprofits?
Rachel Clemens:Sure. So I was a graphic designer for many years, started my own agency as a graphic designer. And you know, if you're really good at your job, or like to think if you're really good at your job, then you know, there's people who are even better than you are. And so, I started hiring other designers that I thought were better designers and I focused more on the running of the agency and really the marketing side. And I think it often happens that after about 10 or 15 years in your career, maybe you stall out and you go you know, I'm actually find myself more interested in this other thing. And for me, the other thing was the communication side, you know, Not just how things look visually, but how they sound and what the written word is like, and branding and all that. And that goes hand in hand with design anyway. So moving more into that in terms of my interest, and our agency up until about, I don't know, eight years of its existence, you know, if you met certain criteria, then you could be our client, it really didn't matter what industry you were in. But it so happened that I hit the age of 40. And my kid hit five quickly became apparent that like, time was just moving along. And I just saw it. Yeah. And I just thought, you know, how much longer hopefully I don't have that much longer to work, you know, another 1020 years, and I want to make it mean something. And so we had a lot of clients that that happened to be nonprofits, and I just found much more fulfillment in that work than in the other work I was doing. And so I just said, you know, we're gonna make a shift, and we're gonna focus solely on mission driven organizations. And I'm so glad I did, it was very fulfilling, and it made my life easier. I had a smaller target audience, but also, you know, when I go to conferences like AFP, I would be like, these are my people, I just felt like I belonged in a way that maybe, you know, I had felt fleetingly over the past many years,
Julia Campbell:yes. And it's very lonely, starting a business and working for yourself, and maybe, you know, working out of your house or working out of a small office, I felt that exact same way. When I went to my first nonprofit conference, I thought, oh, there are other people that are doing this, in the same realm, and the same for the same goals to accomplish, you know, impact and change the world. I really felt that same way. I think it's created like a family. So
Rachel Clemens:yeah, they're geeky, in the same way, your GI you know, what matters?
Julia Campbell:I know. And then don't you feel like you talk to people especially? Well, we're gonna get into the nuts and bolts of this. But talking to people about things like data and measuring effectiveness and marketing. People just their their eyes go blank. My husband, I would say he, I adore him. He loves me any wants to always hear about what I'm doing. But I don't think he always understands it. Yeah, there's a limit. Exactly. So where's your current focus today? How do you help your clients?
Rachel Clemens:Yeah, so you know, I'm at mighty citizen, we're based in Austin, Texas, but most of our clients are national, we're generally helping them with their strategies. So you know, coming up with how they're going to meet their goals. And typically, that's around increasing revenue, or sometimes and brand awareness. So most of my work now is around comms for mission driven organizations, marketing strategies, things like that. And then lately, I've been focused on this question of marketing effectiveness, or marketing, maturity, spent a lot, probably the last year really focused in that area.
Julia Campbell:I love that. And I see in one of your presentations, you say effectiveness can be hard to measure. And I see that it's important to understand how effective your marketing is. And I struggle with this as well, with my core students, with my clients, understanding what makes effective marketing and understanding how to measure it. So what do you feel are some of the biggest challenges faced by nonprofit marketers? In terms of measurement?
Rachel Clemens:Yeah, so I always joke that, like, marketing effectiveness is the Sasquatch.
Julia Campbell:Right? It's like you see it? You know it when? Yeah,
Rachel Clemens:like, I'm pretty sure it exists. But I'm not quite sure I've seen it. Um, so I think what makes it challenging is that, I mean, it's actually gotten easier to measure your effectiveness, right, with the with the advent of digital marketing. So I can actually measure, you know, if I run an ad, I have metrics which tell me whether the ad what that ad did. And then I have to, I have to take those metrics and say, well, was that my goal, right, and I can, I can cross reference those and know if that ad was effective. But the problem that the quantitative data that we now are swimming in is one that we're swimming in it. So for a lot of us, you know, it's just more work. So we know we can measure it, but maybe we're not doing a great job of it, or there's too much of it, or the things we actually want to measure we don't have at our fingertips, you know, so if you're a smaller organization, you really do need some sort of marketing automation platform, some analytics, like there's a lot of tech that you need to really measure effectiveness. And so I think that's challenge. And then on the qualitative side, you know, a lot of us rely on that. So it's like, Oh, I saw this. I loved your campaign for so and so we're always like, yes. And then you're like, well, everybody must love it. That sample of one person means that everybody loved it, right. So it's just difficult because even though we have the data is not the whole picture. And again, a lot of our marketing still happens, not online.
Julia Campbell:Exactly. And I think that organizations get so focused on either you like us that that one positive comment or that one negative comment. Oh, yeah, the negative negative comment from our Facebook post. Okay, well, you have 20,000 Facebook followers, you got one negative comment,
Rachel Clemens:probably 5%, solid. And then the one person that commented, yeah, it's easy to fall in those traps.
Julia Campbell:I know, we get so hung up on that. So you created a tool, which I love. So we've talked a little bit about the problem. But I'd love for you to talk more about sort of why understanding your marketing effectiveness matters. And then the tool that you created to solve this quandary that nonprofits tend to fall into. Yeah, so
Rachel Clemens:the reason to understand marketing effectiveness is is maybe kind of obvious in some ways, and also obvious and others. On one hand, when you know what's working, you can capitalize on that right? Not only capitalize it, but if you can prove it's working, then you can go ask your leadership for more money. I think a lot of times, you know, nonprofits struggle with getting validation for their work, and getting investment and true, true investment. And so understanding what's working helps to get more of that understanding what's not working helps you to either reduce your workload, because maybe you don't need to be doing it anymore. Or it gives you direction to say, This isn't working. But I think it's not working, because we're not actually doing it. Maybe we should try that and see if it works. So it tells you what's next, perhaps, but I also think it can tell you who's next. So if you're on a small or maybe even larger communications team, it can be hard to know like, you're like we're overwhelmed. I know we need help. I'm not sure where that helps it like what the qualities of our next hire should be. The marketing effectiveness and understanding where your gaps are, can help you understand who you might need on your team. Next.
Julia Campbell:I have a question for you. Because it's something I think about a lot and I struggle with and my clients struggle with. How do you feel about marketers that are also fundraisers? Do you think marketing and fundraising? Do you think those are different skill sets? And they should be looked at differently? Okay, so
Rachel Clemens:I love this question. Oh, my gosh, Julio, we're going to talk about this question in depth. I would distinguish, I think there's a lot of overlap between marketing, communications and fundraising. Absolutely. And I would say where they tend to differ is in major gifts versus individual giving, when you think about individual giving, or like, low to mid level giving. I think there's a lot of overlap with communications right there. Because it's mass marketing. Like for MIT citizen, for example, we do fundraising campaigns, we do not do major gift fundraising, that's out of our wheelhouse. And I think it's because that's so much more of a relationship, building effort. And we're more on the mass campaign side of things.
Julia Campbell:I know, I feel very strongly about this. But I think that you've developed a tool for the small nonprofit out there to really help them sort of figure out where they are and how they can measure it. Because a lot of the questions I get are benchmarking questions, how do I know what's working? How do I know it's not working? How do I know where I am in terms of other nonprofits? So you and mighty citizen, you've created the mighty GPS, which I absolutely love that term. I love that name. And it's a self assessment to measure your marketing maturity in 10 minutes or less. Tell me about it. Yeah. So
Rachel Clemens:it's basically a self assessment. It's about 40 questions. It covers six different categories of marketing. So research and analytics, branding and strategy, marketing, and SEO, design and content technology and your team. Team dynamics, Queen dynamics. That's a big one, right? We always want to leave that one out. Yeah. So there's 40 questions across the six categories, we always say 10 Minutes or Less is on average is taking people about six or seven minutes. And then at the end of it, so you're going to take that questionnaire at the end of it, you get a score on a scale of zero to 100. And that's your marketing maturity scale. And then, based on your score, we're going to put you into one of four maturity stages. And those stages are crawling, walking, running, or storing. And you take this with your team. Okay, I absolutely recommend if you have if you're a marketing team have more than one that you have your full team take it you might even have your whoever you report to take it as well, because there's value in seeing how different people score the organization. And it's going to show you whether you have alignment within your team on where your strengths and weaknesses are. And if you don't have alignment, well then that's telling to you No, that is
Julia Campbell:hugely telling. I think that's one of the most important things and what I love about this is that Many of these kinds of assessments, they don't take into account team dynamics. And they don't take into account culture at the organization. does it measure things like culture?
Rachel Clemens:Yeah, it measures the buy in of your leadership team. And their understanding and appreciation of marketing. It asks about, you know, the skill sets of your team, things like that, whether you have an adequate budget, because those things are barriers, quite often, you know, you can be doing a lot of things right. But if you're not adequately funded, then there's a gap there. Right, in terms of your potential effectiveness.
Julia Campbell:I love that. And I love that you say it requires vulnerability. Yeah. Are you Brene? Brown fan?
Rachel Clemens:Oh, I love Brene. Brown. Yes,
Julia Campbell:we talked about her a lot on this podcast. Hopefully, she's listening. One of my absolute favorites. What does that mean? It requires vulnerability.
Rachel Clemens:It can be scary to measure yourself and your marketing, right? I mean, this is for your organization. It's not for you as a person. But like, if you're one person, calm, steamed, and you're measuring your effectiveness, and the effectiveness of your team. So I just I want to be clear that like, it can be scary to get the answer. But I also want to be clear that you will have to share it with anybody else. You know, like, if you're nervous about it, and you take it and you don't like the results, I do recommend you share it with your internal team, because you're all in this together. But like you don't have to share it with your boss, you get to choose who sees it.
Julia Campbell:So let's talk about the six categories. Use. And I love these because these are sort of the pillars of marketing, research and analytics, branding and strategy, marketing and SEO, user experience design and content technology and team dynamics. Which if you could pick two to talk about which two, do you want to focus on today? In terms of like maybe for a small nonprofit, which to trip them up the most?
Rachel Clemens:Oh, my gosh, hands down research and analytics is the one that trips them up the most. Yeah. So we've had about this has been lot it we've had the mighty GPS since February. And one of the things we found in the 300 or so submissions we've gotten on it so far is that by far research and analytics is the lowest scoring category. People are just not putting enough effort into understanding their audiences. And if you think about it, that's the most important thing, right? Like, if you can do all these tactics, yeah, you can do all these tactics. But if you don't really understand your audience, then there's a high chance that they're not actually that effective. So actually, most of our organizations that have taken taken the GPS find themselves in the crawling stage specifically for research and analytics, they do much better than the other ones. That's the good news.
Julia Campbell:Is there another particular stage that trips a lot of organizations up, I would say the
Rachel Clemens:next one is marketing and SEO. And that primarily is probably because it's around like digital. And, you know, search engine optimization, there's just there's not a lot of orgs that are able to devote a lot of time and resources to that they may be doing it, you know, fully understanding that having an inadequate budget might be getting in their way there.
Julia Campbell:So the marketing, maturity stages, crawling, walking, running and soaring. Now, what happens in each stage like what can you tell me about the different stages?
Rachel Clemens:Sure. So when you're in the crawling stage, there's many reasons somebody may be in crawling. And it's not always based on skills, right? You could have a limited budget or a small budget, you could be a brand new organization and just get off the ground. You can be an accidental marketer, you could be someone that is actually a fundraiser on themselves in marketing, or a webmaster or someone that's more techy. There's lots of reasons people end up here. And they're generally more reactive than proactive. So there's, you know, the good news is and crawling is you can't go anywhere, but lots of opportunity. And so it's really about learning the fundamentals or focusing on the fundamentals. So things like understanding your audiences better. Establishing consistent brand guidelines, like these are all things that that come with the crawling stage where it's about, let's get back to the basics and build a really strong foundation.
Julia Campbell:And then there's walking, what is involved with the walking stage?
Rachel Clemens:Well, I'll tell you, most orcs actually find themselves in the walking stage so far. Yeah. And they're tending to score high walking, meaning they're, they're reaching for running, but just coming up short, typically, the walking stage, you know, they're doing things pretty well. I mean, they're up and firing. They've got their fundamentals down. A lot of times the problem with walking is inertia. You know, there's a lack of urgency there. I mean, would you do this kind of work and, you know, they have they often have like older funky technologies that are getting in their way. They can also be reactive. Actually, a lot of one person shops find themselves and walking as well, which by the way, if that is you, you are one person who's doing a lot of things. Their next steps are really around establishing full competence. So like they're doing a lot of things well, but just optimizing is really important like optimizing your Google Analytics to make sure that what you're doing is actually working from a digital perspective or honing your messaging, a lot of times those in the walking, they've had the same, they've been doing the same thing for a while. And it's just a matter of like switching something up that might just propel them forward.
Julia Campbell:And then we've got running and soaring, which I absolutely love.
Rachel Clemens:Well, I love the running stage, because I actually think this is the most fun stage to be in. Because you know, you get some kudos, you run and you're doing some things really well. But there's still certainly room for improvement. So the running stage can also have a little bit of inertia, a lot of times, and I see this too within our team is we have a small bit scrappy and mighty team, but our internal knowledge can hit its limits, there's just too much to know. Right. And so sometimes, like some professional development is a great thing to be doing in the running stage technologies, you may have them but maybe you're not using them to their full effect, or you have strategies. But again, they're two or three years old. So things in the or organizations in the running stage are more about like optimizing their infrastructure, so they can take things further. So getting your marketing automation platform in place, and really well functioning, testing, testing, more testing, it's all about optimizing around auditing your content. So for a lot of us, I know we fall guilty of this our websites a few years old, we've definitely made some additions to it over the years. It's been a while since we went back and said, okay, is this content still serving us? So like a content audit?
Julia Campbell:And with soaring, this is where there are still challenges, but they're just a different set of challenges.
Rachel Clemens:Yeah, I mean, sorting, I think one of the challenges for sorting as if you're, if you're in an organization that's doing really well, from a marketing perspective, quite often, it's hard to scale that across an entire organization. And so you can end up in a siloed situation. So a lot of times for sourcing, it's about taking their knowledge and their success, and sharing that across their organization. And then also, from an outside perspective, you know, you and I speak at AFP, pretty much every year, like a lot of soaring organizations, I'm hoping that they will share what's working for them with their peers. Yeah, so that's sort of a next step like experimenting, influencing, when you're doing things really well, you can try new things, you know, might have a little bit more freedom there. So just coming up with some big ideas and seeing what works.
Julia Campbell:So you, you found that most organizations are in the walking and running stages. So if you're marketing maturity tends to be on the low end of the scale, what is the first step toward improvement.
Rachel Clemens:So when you take the mighty GPS, like, the minute you take it, you're gonna get your score, and then you're gonna get an email from us that has a four port, and it's customized to your scores. So in that report, it's gonna say, Hey, these are your scores for each category. So you're going to be able to see, oh, I did really well, in brand new strategy, I didn't do so well in research. And so you're going to put those scores in mind determine where to start. So you might say, Oh, we scored low and research, let's go see what they recommend. So in that report is not just your scores, but next step recommendations based on your scores, and then you'll identify which of those you want to do. And then we have
Julia Campbell:resources, exactly, I see that you send the next steps where it could be, you know, undergo audience research, or use surveys to improve your communication. Understand audience personas, create user journeys for your audiences, and you send people case studies, which I think is really helpful. So how can organization decide what to kind of tackle first out of all of these fantastic suggestions?
Rachel Clemens:Well, hopefully, most of us are used to making plans, you know, marketing plans or marketing strategies if we're in the marketing space. So what I always recommend is, you know, you're gonna get your report back, there's gonna be five or six next steps, potential next steps. You know, there's just no way to do five or six things all at the same time. So I always make a recommendation that people choose one to three, you know, you know, you can get one thing done, you might be able to get three things done, depending on your size of your org and, and all that your resources. And so I would identify one of the next steps to tackle first and then create a plan around that next step. So we found in our testing that like, people got the report back and they were like, Oh, this is great. Wow, there's a lot here and then they there's probably a little feeling of overwhelm All right. So we developed something called the mighty GPS get started planner, it's a download, we link to it in the email with the report. And we invite people to use it. It's basically a template that helps you answer questions in order form your strategy for the next steps you've identified.
Julia Campbell:I absolutely love this, just what I'm seeing the slide deck that you send to me, and then also the reports that you've sent to me, where it's goal activity, a measurable metric for this activity, and then tactic to achieve the goal of the activity and timeline, how you'll put the activity into action and budget, like speaking my language, because what I find is when I do my audits and assessments and work with my clients, it's very similar. Its goal, learn from audience research to inform future program launch. That's not something you put on your to do list like that's a goal. I do ask, that requires several different activities, several different measurable metrics, tactics and timelines. So I think this is really helpful because it does break it down into those steps. And for the smaller nonprofits listening for the one person shops, what I would say is, this is probably going to help you go to maybe your supervisor or your board of directors or your higher ups and say, Look, we have 20 goals, but they all require five activities. And each activity requires 10 tasks. And there's just not a way that we can accomplish this effectively. So how do you encourage your clients to advocate for a marketing budget for marketing resources, or even just for more time?
Rachel Clemens:I mean, this is always a challenge, right? I wish I had like, succinct nugget of gold for
Julia Campbell:this. But yeah, the silver bullet answer.
Rachel Clemens:What I have found is that numbers speak volumes, right? People want to see impact. And so as a comms team, if you can say, our work last year helped to increase our revenue through donations, increase our brand awareness by X percent, we could talk for another hour about how you measure brand awareness. You know, we saw X percent increase in traffic due to this new program, or we helped sign up this many people for this new program. Those things are the things that leadership wants to hear about and see, and then they're more likely to fund it. Because they see that impact. I think, you know, a lot of times, it's hard for marketers, and so we end up going with like vanity metrics, you know, and the leadership usually can see straight through that,
Julia Campbell:or we go with an idea that's not fully fleshed out. And I've told this story on this podcast before. But when I would try it, when I would go to a concert, or I would want to go out with my friends in high school, I would have to present like a five point plan. I mean, he's a lawyer. And I couldn't say, Hey, I'm going to the Pearl Jam concert on Saturday, he would need to know, who am I going with? How am I getting there? How am I getting home? How much does it cost? Do I need the car? Do I need this? And so I would get used to just presenting him with a plan. There was nothing like, Oh, I'm going to the Red Sox game. No, no, that doesn't work. It's you need what time? Am I going to be home on time am I leaving? So I actually took that into several of my jobs. And it really works. It's like you said, if you have an idea, let's start a social media ambassador program. Let's start a crowdfunding campaign. Those are great ideas. But I think especially if the higher ups or the board or your IDI, they don't know what that means. They're not as well versed in digital as you are having this goal activity. Measurable metric tactic framework is really helpful. And then you can even say, here's the budget, we wanted budget for Facebook ads, or we don't need a budget, but I do maybe need an intern or I need 10 hours a week from from this person on the team. So having it fleshed out like that, I think is incredibly, incredibly helpful. And it's a fantastic framework for marketers.
Rachel Clemens:That's a great point. It's like prep is everything. You know, I think the leadership wants to know that it's not just an idea that you have plans.
Julia Campbell:Exactly. You have ideas you have. You have ideas, but you also have a plan to execute on that idea. So while I have you the marketing brain trust here, what do you see as some of the trends in nonprofit marketing going into the second half of the year?
Rachel Clemens:Well, I mean, on the top of mind, I've got I've got several things on my mind. And I would say there have a little bit longer runway but one is getting rid of cookies.
Julia Campbell:Yes, that little thing that You have to say on every website, let's please not do that anymore.
Rachel Clemens:Yeah. And then the Google Analytics for so you know, they're shifting, in part because of the death of cookies, they are shifting, you know how you're going to measure your web success. And they're they're phasing the current system out next July. So we're sitting there thinking about that, and making that shift earlier to have data. So those two things are like huge kind of tech related marketing things that are on my mind. Otherwise, I mean, I guess what I think about is we've had a nice little bump in fundraising, you know, over the last couple of years, how are we going to continue that? Also think of, you know, always think about retention? And so I think over the next six months, I think, well, what would I be doing headed into the end of year fundraising extravaganza? To show my donors, a lot of love, so that they will consider us on the holidays.
Julia Campbell:Exactly. People don't really understand that. Marketing is not just getting brand new people in the fold. It's also talking to the people that you have, and continually communicating with them, not even necessarily donors, but people that are following you fans, email subscribers, I think that's where it gets like a little convoluted. And people get confused as they think, oh, marketing is just 100% brand new people, but
Rachel Clemens:right, and you'll spend so much more money in acquisition than in retention. If we could just hang on, we're just not, you know, we could do a better job hanging on to the people that are already under our roof.
Julia Campbell:Well, where can people find out about the mighty GPS, and it was the mighty gps.com. And we're going to find out more about you.
Rachel Clemens:They can go to mighty citizen.com. To learn more about mighty citizen and our services, we have lots of free tools and resources, we are all about giving knowledge. So there's a ton of free resources there. And then, if people want to take the mighty GPS, it is at the mighty gps.com. We will be iterating on it in the future. So you know, we're collecting submissions right now. But all that good data, we will eventually turn around and create some benchmarks for so you said people are always asking you for benchmarks, Julia, this, we're going to be able to say hey, nonprofits of a certain size tend to score in these areas.
Julia Campbell:I love that I always think that the more data we can collect, the better, especially for the sector. So I would really encourage everyone even if you don't feel like you need it. Just go to the mighty gps.com get, you know, include your data be included a rising tide lifts all ships, and I firmly believe that so thank you so much for being here, Rachel.
Rachel Clemens:Of course. Thanks for having me. This was really fun.
Julia Campbell:Well, hey there, I wanted to say thank you for tuning into my show, and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show and your favorite podcast app, and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to. And then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact. So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode. But until then, you can find me on Instagram at Julia Campbell seven seven. Keep changing the world. Nonprofit unicorn