How can you maximise your digital marketing campaign to gain new, warm leads? Lauren Gotlieb shares the learnings from Ronald McDonald House Charities’ successful lead generation campaign
Digital marketing is a great way to reach new potential supporters, but to maximise your success you need to have the right offering, the right data capture processes and the right stewardship plan in place. Here are my 6 top tips:
Create a dedicated landing page
Linking your call to action to a dedicated landing page is essential. You’ve worked hard to get people to your site, so you need to make sure that you convert them into actual leads. A page that is specifically set up to do that will be much more effective than simply directing people to your homepage. There are a number of tools available that will allow you to collect valuable data via your landing page, such as which marketing channels are resulting in the most conversions.
Have something to offer
It’s important to really think deeply about why someone would freely give you their email address. Rewards and incentives have long been used by the private sector to entice people into visiting their site and handing over their email address – and it works very well for third sector organisations too. It’s important to ensure, however, that whatever reward or incentive you offer is going to be attractive to your target audience.
Collaborate with your supporters
People love to share opinions and to feel part of the story. If you can get your supporters to be part of a creative process, then they will be much more likely to want to keep in touch and receive updates about how it’s going. But keep it simple for them – anything that seems overly complicated will put people off. At Ronald McDonald House, we invited people to suggest names for characters in our Night Light story books.
Get everyone in the organisation involved
Generating leads is not just the responsibility of the marketing team, it’s something that all parts of the organisation can get involved in, especially the fundraising team and senior leadership. Sometimes it’s possible to tie it in with your staff going out into local communities, running events and giving speeches. Explain to your colleagues why lead generation is so important – their buy-in can mean you deliver a much more impactful campaign.
Test things digitally
One of the great things about digital is that it allows you to test messages, tactics and channels quickly and cheaply. In real time, you’ll know whether a particular message is resonating with your target audience, or if an image you have chosen is capturing people’s attention. Testing in the digital space allows you to see whether there’s an appetite for something before you invest and you can get feedback from supporters quickly. However, it’s important not to test wildly – use your insight and experience before jumping straight in.
Have a stewardship plan
Building up a list of people who are genuinely interested in the charity and the cause is just one step. They have opted in to communications – and so you need to think about what you are going to communicate to them. Ensure you follow up with them quickly and with information they are interested in, otherwise they will lose interest. Having a stewardship plan in place before you even start your campaign will make things much less stressful, even if you have to adapt it a bit along the way.
Lauren Gotlieb is marketing and communications manager at Ronald McDonald House Charities
