Online Marketing Can Help NGOs Achieve Success

By Kenneth E. Harvey, Ph.DXiamen University MalaysiaBakhytnur Otarbayeva, Ph.D

Almaty Management University, Kazakhstan

REFERENCE:Harvey, K.E. and Otarbayeva, B. (2018). Online Marketing Can Help NGOs Achieve Success. In

Innovations in Civil Society: Insights into Development 2018, K.E. Harvey co-editor. Almaty, Kazakhstan: USAID/ARGO publishers.

Non-government organizations (NGOs) need effective marketing as much as do

businesses. They need it to promote their projects and to build their brand. Publicity is

essential to the success of many projects. The more successful projects an NGO achieves,

the more funding they will attract to undertake more projects. And a strong reputation (aka

brand) will attract more overall support over an extended period, even in a time of crisis.

An example of the importance of marketing was seen in our recent study of NGO-business

partnerships in Kazakhstan. This is a relatively new phenomenon in Central Asia. Even those

projects that some NGOs call “partnerships” really do not rise to that level. A study by James

Austin (2000) concluded that there is a “collaboration continuum” in the interactions between

NGOs and business organizations. The Philanthropic stage amounts to just limited financial

support by a business for some specific charitable project. The Transactional stage suggests that

both the NGO and the business have something to gain – the NGO gets support for its project

while the business typically seeks positive publicity to build its brand. The third stage of the

collaborative continuum is the Integrative stage, in which all parties work in tandem to achieve

some public good. This suggests that businesses in the Integrative stage give much more than

just money. Executives become involved in planning; employees participate in the project as

volunteers or while being paid by the company; and financial support reaches beyond just

donated money and goods to include the business’ other resources. This does not mean that even

in this most complete form of cross-sector partnering that businesses do not want something in

return, whether it be publicity, improved brand, enhanced employee relations, effective team-

building, or whatever. They usually expect some kind of return of investment (ROI).

In our survey of Kazakhstani NGOs, 79 responded to an in-depth survey, including open-

ended e-interview questions to which they could spontaneous express their own views. Follow-

up interviews of these and other NGOs also provided greater understanding of why so few NGOs

have achieved successful, higher-level partnerships with businesses.

Survey respondents represented broad geographic breadth of the country, including the

two most important cities (Almaty and Astana) and 12 of the 14 administrative regions (absent

the North Kazakhstan and Atyrau regions). The respondents also represented a broad range of

interests, including 26% focused on socially vulnerable segments of society, 14% on education,

11% on gender issues, 9% on environmental issues, 9% on health care, 7% on human rights, and

the remainder on a wide variety of other concerns.

Over 60% of the NGOS reported interacting with businesses, and 43% said they had

“partnered” with businesses in the past. But once they described their partnerships, it was evident

that few of the projects rose to the top of the collaborative continuum. According to the survey,

the nature of support provided by their “partnering” businesses was in 27% of the cases just

charitable financial support and in 23% of the cases just providing goods and services free or at a

discounted cost. About 9% of the support was by having employees donate their own money,

and another 9% having employees donate their own time. Less than 22% of the responses

seemed to suggest even the possibility that the efforts might have approached the higher end of

the collaborative continuum.

Only 50% of the NGO respondents felt that companies, in general, have an interest in

partnering with NGOs. Of those NGOs that reported problems in their business collaborations,

20% blamed it on insufficient funds from their business partner, 11% on lack of understanding of

NGO work, 10% on the lack of commitment by business partners, and 10% on the dissatisfaction

of business partners with the amount of news coverage achieved. Business executives expecting

a transactional collaboration wanted to see positive ROI, and that may have been the reality with

most of the negative outcomes. If the businesses refused to give more money and if they lacked

commitment, that could all relate to what they perceived as negative ROI.

It appears that the NGOs themselves at least subconsciously understand this. We asked

them to rank the top reasons (in order) as to why businesses should want to participate:

1. To attract media attention.

2. Improvement of the brand and image of the company.

3. Charity – just to help their community.

4. Company principles -- internal company motivation.

5. To achieve a long-term partnership.

The top two reasons, and three of the top five, related to ROI in the form of publicity,

brand enhancement, and improved employee relations. Thus, the very reasons that NGOs give

to businesses for participating in such a partnership is to achieve positive ROI. If they cannot

deliver ROI, of course the partners are dissatisfied.

How better NGO marketing can solve such a dilemma

It appears from this research that in order for NGOs to succeed with cross-sector

partnerships and in many other projects, they need to learn how to market themselves and

their projects better. The good news is that modern marketing has never made it easier or less

expensive than it is today. Online and mobile marketing in developed countries is the most

cost-effective marketing ever created because a lot of it is free except for manpower. And the

skills to implement it are not very difficult to learn. Indeed, the average teenager in

Kazakhstan may already have most of those skills (even if their parents don’t). These

marketing opportunities grow as developing societies increase the use of digital media for

information, for retail purchases, and for social interaction. And Kazakhstan is on the verge of

full entry into the digital society. Back in 2004 about 65% of the citizens of developed nations

already had internet access, but in Kazakhstan it was about 4% (World Bank, 2016). By 2008,

internet access in Kazakhstan reached 11% and then began to soar as smart phones and smart

pads entered the market and broadband became increasingly accessible. Access reached 32%

in 2010, 53% in 2012, 66% in 2014, and 77% in 2016 – about the same as in the USA.

However, first comes access, then daily use and ultimately dependence on the technology. To

the east of Kazakhstan, that has already been achieved in most of China, where use of mobile

technology for information and retail purchases exceeds what is happening in America.

As Central Asians become increasingly dependent on digital communications, the use

of online and mobile marketing will become more and more effective for both NGOs and for-

profit companies in achieving success in civil development, in commerce, and in cross-sector

partnerships. Here are the most important marketing trends for civil society.

INBOUND MARKETING: Inbound marketing (aka content marketing) is

free marketing. It uses social media, blogs, videos, webinars, newsletters, e-books, and

other free tactics to gain people’s attention, attract people to your website, and entice

them to voluntarily provide you their contact information with which to initiate a

personalized online relationship. You may require a registration process for people to

attend a free webinar or to receive a free e-book. With the contact information you can

invite them to other traditional or online events or to receive other free information.

You can use software to merge your database information into targeted emails in

developing that relationship. According to 6,000 online marketing executives

participating in a recent survey, inbound marketing has become much more cost-

effective, even including labor costs, than more invasive forms of paid advertising.

The cost per “lead” (defined somewhat differently by the two sectors, obviously) for

inbound marketing is about 62% less than for outbound marketing (HubSpot, 2014).

FIGURE 1. Inbound Marketing Return of Investment by Organization Type

FIGURE 2. Primary Lead Source by Organization Type

The return on investment (ROI) of inbound marketing for NGOs is even more

positive than for businesses – although it is increasingly favoured by both

sectors. As seen in Figure 1, 48% of the NGO executives reported increased

ROI in 2014, while only 2% reported lower ROI. Both business and NGO

executives said inbound marketing had become their No. 1 source of leads. As

illustrated in Figure 2, NGO executives said that 60% of their leads came from

inbound marketing, the rest from self-sourced leads, outbound marketing, and

paid online advertising. As organizations increase interesting content on their

websites and increase the number of landing pages to match their various

special offers, their website traffic and their search engine optimization (SEO)

improve dramatically. According to HubSpot’s 2015 survey of over 7,000

executives, those websites with over 1,000 pages of content achieve up to

3,500% more traffic (illustrated in Figure 3) and 1,500% more leads than those

websites with 50 or fewer pages. And if they have more than 40 landing pages

(suggesting that they have developed more than 40 special offers – e-books,

webinars, etc.), they achieve 500% more leads than websites with five or fewer

landing pages (HubSpot, 2015). IEI-TV Network (http://IEI-TV.net) will

provide 1,000 pages of interesting content free and provide training in how to

develop your own content.

FIGURE 3. Web Traffic Generated by Interesting Content

NATIVE ADVERTISING: Native advertising is very similar to inbound

marketing except it requires payment. In many cases it is exactly the same content as

inbound marketing. Native ads, if done well, look like the regular unpaid content

around them. In Facebook, for example, most posts on the timeline are free –

including yours. However, once you get a good response to a free post, you may wish

that more people could see that post than just your friends and followers. Native

advertising allows you to do that. You can pay Facebook to run your post on other

people’s timelines. As either free inbound marketing or as paid native advertising, you

should have readers who click on your content taken to their organization’s website to

a specific “landing page” created for that post. There you provide any promised free

content, but you should collect visitors’ contact information if they want any

additional free content in the future. In one year, ending in the first quarter of 2017,

the use of native advertising grew by 74% in America (Fulgoni, Pettit & Lipsman,

2017), which led BI Intelligence to predict that by 2021 it will represent 74% of all

U.S. digital display advertising (Boland, 2016).

VIDEO: Video is an important part of inbound marketing, native advertising,

and SEO. Another major survey of marketing executives confirmed what most of us

know intuitively, that video is the most powerful form of marketing. More than 90%

of the surveyed agreed (Aberdeen, 2014). However, most marketers do not use it as

much as they would like. A survey with 5,700 respondents (Stelzner, 2017) showed

that even though most of them favoured video marketing, only 57% were actually

using it in 2017. Seventy-five percent wanted to use more video advertising, but 74%

of them felt that they needed more training. There is a misconception that videos used

for marketing must be similar to TV commercials, but that is not true for many types

of marketing videos – including most NGO marketing. Skills needed to achieve

positive results are not that challenging. For example, a recent KIMEP university

graduate now has 500,000 followers on YouTube, and her videos that were created in

her family’s apartment with amateur equipment have been viewed by more than 20

million people. Online entrepreneur Jon Penberthy (2015) sold simple commissionable

products he found on https://www.clickbank.com/ by making 1-minute videos in his

home with cheap video equipment. The videos urged viewers to go to his website to

learn more. Within three years, he had made about $800,000. In both of these cases,

the videos used were not highly professional. There are strategies that make such

success possible, but they are not hard to learn or to implement (Harvey, 2018; Harvey

& Pazos Sanchez, 2018).

One simple kind of effective video, for example, is a testimonial. Get people to

tell others what you have done for them. You may need someone who can do

some editing, but YouTube even provides a free easy-to-use editing system on

their website. There is also an inexpensive $15-per-year software from

Screencast-O-Matic.com that is even easier to use, has free training on their

website, comes with excellent built-in editing tools, and can be done simply by

having someone sit in front of your laptop computer to share their story. Even

major advertisers have discovered that using influential local people is more

cost-effective than using celebrities in testimonial videos. The more influential

the people are who offer their testimonials and the more social media followers

they have, the better it will be for you, of course, but these are some of the

easiest videos you can begin with. Experts have even found that you don’t

need to script testimonials. If testimonials are given in the influencers’ own

words, they are more natural, more believable and, thus, more effective.

Nowadays people are looking for ways to contribute to society and to feel

some purpose in life. Wikipedia became the world’s largest encyclopedia

through the efforts of an organization with no employees. There are many

other examples of people achieving great things on the internet without

seeking payment. This gives NGOs an opportunity to achieve donated support

by celebrities and by ordinary people with a story to tell. People are much

more likely to help make a video for an NGO than for a commercial enterprise.

You can then upload the videos to social media. You can embed them on your

website. You can send them out in emails. There are lots of uses for such

videos.

Another easy video to make and to use for marketing is a seminar or online

webinar that shares something that people feel is of value. For example, an

NGO could offer a free seminar to local entrepreneurs on this very topic --

How to Create Promotional Videos to Achieve Success. The self-selected

participants would provide their contact information to register for the seminar.

The NGO would use the last 10 minutes of the seminar to solicit participants’

support for some project. The NGO would video-record the event to post on

their website for people who did not attend the event in person. It could

essentially make the seminar into an online webinar and promote it in the

future through social media. Webinar participants would also be required to

register before being provided the web link to the recorded seminar. The

resulting database created by the NGO would include people who look

favorably on the organization, and will feel even better about your NGO as you

offer them additional free services, important information, etc. Then the next

time you need support for an important project, you have a valuable list of

people to contact.

Videos embedded on your website also raise your ranking on Google searches. A

former Google employee compared the ranking of web pages with videos to those

without videos and found that those with videos are 5,300% more likely to reach Page

1 of a Google search (Elliott, 2009).

You can learn more about “Strategic Marketing in the Digital Age” at http://iei-

tv.net/webinar/ .

Cross-sector partnerships are relatively new to Central Asia, and like any innovation,

it will take a while to spread. One of the early researchers in the spread of innovations was

Everett Rogers. He found that innovations typically spread slowly, beginning with the

“innovators” -- about 2.5% of the population who respond first to new innovations. If

successful for that first group, the innovation can spread to a larger segment of about 13.5%

of the population -- the “early adopters,” then to the “early majority” (34%), the “late

majority” (34%), and, ultimately, to the “laggards” (16%). A marketing campaign can

expedite this process, however. Even civil development leaders need to understand that

marketing will not be successful unless they implement a “campaign.” One piece of publicity

is hardly ever successful.

After years of buying only an occasional ad in his local newspaper, the owner of an

American insurance agency accidentally discovered the importance of campaigning. He had

decided to try selling insurance to a target market outside of his local city, so he ordered a

mailing list from a national company. He then went to the local newspaper to have them print

a flier he intended to send to those on the mailing list. However, he had not yet received the

mailing list when the fliers were done being printed, and the publisher was insisting that he

pick up the fliers. The insurance man had no place to put the fliers, so he finally proposed that

the newspaper insert half the fliers into the local newspaper, even though he had never

achieved much response in his previous advertising efforts. As he expected, he received only

a few inquiries. A few days later he had yet to receive his mailing list, and the newspaper

publisher was back on the phone demanding that he do something with the other half of the

fliers. Exasperated, he told the publisher to put the remaining fliers into the same newspaper

to be circulated to the very same subscribers, and that he would print more fliers once he

received his mailing list. Of course, he expected even less response from the fliers this time.

But, to the contrary, he suddenly received a flood of inquiries – far more than he had ever

achieved before. He discovered the power of campaigning.

A single marketing message can be ignored or forgotten, but when people see the

same message multiple times, it grows in both recall and credibility, and the recipients have

time to consider the product or service. It may be the second, third or fourth time they see a

message before they finally take action. No good politician would think he could win an

election with a single ad, and yet many commercial and non-profit organizations think they

can achieve success with such little effort, only to be sadly disappointed. But modern

marketing is much less expensive than traditional advertising and can be much more targeted,

providing users with new opportunities to achieve success. With effective marketing a critical

mass of supporters can be achieved earlier in the adoption process described by Rogers, and

can create a herd effect in which a relatively small number of people can cause a stampede of

support.

Yuping Liu-Thompkins (2012) studied a seeding strategy of selecting specific

innovators and early adopters to launch a viral message. Liu-Thompkins tracked more than

100 social media videos and confirmed that innovation dissemination can be expedited by

initially targeting the right set of people. The people who respond to an NGO’s inbound

marketing efforts (seminars, e-books, etc.) and voluntarily give their contact information are

the kind of people who can provide that seeding opportunity for NGOs.

More recent research by Jonah Berger (2013) about “contagious” online messages

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN4eDk1pq6U) suggests that word-of-mouth (or

person-to-person social media) messages are 10 times as powerful as paid advertising. He has

identified six important principles that he summarized with the acronym STEPPS, as in

STEPPS to success. We think Berger left one letter out, however, so our version is STEPPSS.

Social currency: Individuals and organizations build social currency by doing things that make them look good in the public’s eye. For an individual this might be purchasing an expensive car, but for that same individual or for a commercial organization it might also be by supporting a project organized by an NGO.

Triggers: Link your product or service to a “top of mind” or “tip of tongue” idea. Some of the successful examples are very subtle, such as Kit Kat advertisements showing the candy bar being eaten as the consumer is also drinking a cup of coffee. People who drink coffee almost always make it a daily habit, so after seeing the ad a few times, they begin thinking of Kit Kat when they drink their coffee. This advertising raised the Kit Kat sales dramatically. One of Steve Jobs’ company officials at Apple was Guy Kawasaki (2014). Among the most important things he learned from Jobs was NOT to worry about a full mission statement, rather to make a “mantra” of only 3-5 words to capture the essence of the organization or of a product. He suggested that rather than a long mission statement, Wendy’s restaurants should adopt a mantra like “Healthy Fast Food.” FedEx had a slogan of “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight,” but has since changed its slogan to: “The World – On Time.” Kawasaki says the mantra should be something that pops to the top of the mind or the tip of the tongue at the moment of need.

Emotion: “When we care, we share,” says Berger. To get the audience aroused by positive or negative emotions can be very valuable in marketing (Berger & Milkman, 2012). He studied content from the New York Times over a three-month period to determine what went viral on social media and what did not. He summarized their findings: “The results indicate that positive content is more viral than negative content, but the relationship between emotion and social transmission is more complex than valence alone. Virality is partially driven by physiological arousal. Content that evokes high-arousal positive (awe) or negative (anger or anxiety) emotions is more viral.” Dave Carroll’s “United Breaks Guitars” video (https://youtu.be/5YGc4zOqozo) triggered outrage on the way to many millions of YouTube views. Such positive emotions as awe, amusement or excitement draw even greater viral action. In less than two weeks Susan Boyle’s audition on Britain’s Got Talent (https://youtu.be/aRiJNS8Oz6E) was viewed over 100 million times. The BGT audition by Charlotte Jaconelli and Jonathan Antoine (https://youtu.be/ZsNlcr4frs4) drew similar results. These both generated very positive emotions in viewers.

Public: “Built to show, built to grow,” says Berger. One of the best examples is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge (https://abcnews.go.com/Health/als-ice-bucket-challenge-funding-leads-genetic-findings/story?id=40919590 ). Millions of people

participated in the public demonstration to support research to cure ALS (aka, Lou Gehrig’s Disease). Indeed, $220 million was raised by this marketing tactic for different ALS-related charities. But while this achieved very powerful results, more subtle demonstrations of public support enhance success every day. Even a panhandler understands that when he puts out a cup for donations, he should put some money in the cup to suggest to passers-by that other people have already shown their charity by donating. Similarly, when any social media post begins to pick up viral action, other visitors want to know what’s going on. There is some “follow the leader” response.

Practical value: If something has practical value, people like to pass it on to friends – even when the social post is clearly for marketing purposes. Here are some recent marketing posts that are gathering a lot viral support: a way to relax out of doors without lying on the ground with a bunch of insects https://www.facebook.com/Insiderinventions/videos/1305724822896392/ and fitting a good-size table in a very tiny space when not in use https://www.facebook.com/InTheKnowInnovationAOL/videos/1858449181114403/ . These are obviously paid ads, but people will share them anyway if they think the products could be helpful to their friend and relatives.

Stories: Berger says stories are like Trojan horses that carry something hidden but powerful inside. Jared in the successful Subway restaurant commercials was an example. He started out as the guy who lost a lot of weight by exercising and “eating fresh” at Subway. Before long he became a celebrity himself, and Subway became famous along with him (https://youtu.be/LGQqntQC-KU ). This principle of digital marketing can be marketing content that the public can use in talking about your organization, or it can be a marketing story that humanizes a product for you. Stories work either way. As discussed already, one of the fastest-growing trends in online marketing is “native advertising,” which blends in with the organic content around it. If it is on Facebook, it is posted on the timeline as “sponsored” content. But the more it looks like regular posts, the more effective it will be. Native advertising lends itself to storytelling. Berger points out that in marketing the “story” has to be relevant to the product in order to be effective. The Evian roller baby commercial was viewed by over 50 million people, then copied and used by other fans with other music, but it was never connected adequately with the Evian product. In fact, if you don’t already know, you may not even notice what the Evian product is (https://youtu.be/38Bw8MSumh8 ). The marketing failed miserably even though their videos were very popular.

Shock: Berger excludes “shock” as one of his key elements of viral messages, even though many professionals use exactly that word in explaining why certain online messages go viral. Indeed, that was the word that Dr. Ken Harvey used 40 years ago in some of the earliest research of what makes messages go viral (Haroldsen & Harvey, 1979). It was about a dozen years before the World Wide Web was invented when Dr. Harvey and his mentor studied the first published case of “shocking good news,” comparing it to such shocking bad news as the assassination of John F. Kennedy and contrasting it with such normal but important news as the launch of the first satellite, Sputnik. Regular important news would be spread primarily through the news media and reach about 25% of the population in one day, but shocking news would be spread to nearly 100% of the population in one day, and most of that would be by word of mouth. And that included the shocking good news studied by Harvey and Haroldsen. Berger folds that shock factor into “Emotion,” but that may be

squeezing a very important concept too much in order to fit it nicely into his acronym. “Shock” is an emotion, for sure, but it is a particularly strong emotion when it comes to viral messaging -- it makes the message worth sharing with someone else as a story. Remember the “shocking” video Jean-Claude Van Damme video for Volvo Trucks (https://youtu.be/M7FIvfx5J10). It was not relevant to a very large percentage of the population, but watching the trucks drive backwards with such precision while Van Damme was stretched between them, doing the splits, probably did make it very relevant to the target viewers. And if drivers and shippers were not regular YouTube viewers, one of their friends or relatives almost certainly showed it to them. If it was not relevant to the rest of us, it could not really be called a positive or negative message. But it was a shocking message that was viewed by tens of millions and mimicked by many other YouTubers. The “Will it blend?” videos made millions of dollars for Blendtec. To watch their blender grind up iPads, iPhones, baseball bats and golf clubs certainly convinced the average consumer that the blenders could handle ice cubes OK. But did viewers go away thinking, “That’s such good news”? The videos gave us something good to share with our friends, but that was mostly because they were shocking – not that we were excited about driving backwards in a Volvo truck or blending our son’s toys that he forgot to pick up. “Shock,” as discovered 40 years ago, can be negative or positive, and it should be considered separately from other emotions.

Cross-sector partnering is just an example of one NGO-related innovation that

requires marketing to spread across Central Asia. Without an NGO association or other entity

to implement a campaign on its behalf – perhaps with inbound, native, video and other

marketing tactics discussed here in this chapter -- this innovation will take a long time to

achieve widespread use. And it will take even longer if individual NGOs don’t learn how to

promote such projects with effective marketing techniques since many of their business

partners are not yet pleased with the results. Businesses want to do good, but they also want

ROI. To most of them that means lots of positive publicity and enhanced branding. They may

be satisfied if just a nice video interview of the company’s CEO is posted on social media and

on the NGO’s website. If a few friends and relatives mention to the CEO that they saw the

video, the CEO may extrapolate that many other people also saw it and came away with a

positive impression. It provides a visual story to share with customers, employees, and the

owners or stockholders.

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