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Internet Business Moves, Fundraising Ideas Stay

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

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I decided that while I may be a bit schizophrenic, that does not mean that you are. Some of my readers enjoy reading about my business philosophy or about interent business, and others prefer to  read about  fundraising and fundraising ideas.  Just because I have combined them into a single business, does not mean that the two markets are synergistic.

So, this will become my fundraising ideas blog and you can find my ruminations, ideas, tips, recommendations, and software that apply to Internet business at http://internetbusiness.aliyamarketing.com.

I started it a few months ago, with the intention of making this move into two separate markets, so you will find a number of posts regarding Internet business already there.

Filed in Internet Marketing, General Fundraising, Marketing | Comments (1)

Reason Why Sales & Marketing - The Power of “Because”

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

I just read an interesting post on Aaron Brandon’s blog about Internet business regarding the psychological difficulty of asking. It was interesting, but when I started to read it, I assumed it would teach me something about how to better do business on the internet. In that, it was dissappointing, but it is an interesting article and useful for those who want to understand the power of their own, or their salespeople’s or fundraiser’s, call reluctance or fear of asking for the sale or the gift.

It did make me think of another famous, and I think more useful, psychological study performed by Ellen J. Langer of Harvard. I first heard about it in the a very important book for all marketers, business people, and fundraisers: Infuence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Ciladini. You can read a more complete article about Langer’s career and all her work in the NY Times Article that I excerpted this from:

In the 1970’s and 1980’s she carried out a series of landmark studies to make the point scientifically, the most famous of them referred to as ”The Copy Machine.”

In that study, she stationed someone at a copy machine in a busy graduate school office. When someone stepped up and began copying, Dr. Langer’s plant would come up to the person and interrupt, asking to butt in and make copies. The interruption was allowed fairly often, about 60 percent of the time. But the permission was granted almost 95 percent of the time if the person stepping up to interrupt not only asked, ”May I use the copy machine?” but added a reason, ”because I’m in a rush.”

That seems to make sense. People heard the reason and decided they were willing to step aside for a moment. What was odd, Dr. Langer found, was that if the interrupter asked, ”Can I use the machine?” and added a meaningless phrase, ”because I have to make copies,” the people at the machine also stepped aside nearly 95 percent of the time.

The idea, she said, is that the listener at the copy machine heard a two-part statement: a request and something like a reason. That was all their mental script for such a situation required. They never did reflect on the fact that the interrupter’s ”reason” was not meaningful.

If you need a clearer reason to include a reason when you ask your customers, clients’ or prospects to do something, I don’t think it exists. A scientific study that proves that providing a reason when you ask for something improves the positive response rate by 50% and it doesn’t even matter what that reason is or whether it makes sense or not, only that a reason is given.

So right now you need to fill in your name and email address in the upper right corner, under my photo, because when you do, you will get an email when I post more wisdom like this to this blog. I’ll be posting more about Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion as well as other important information for fundraisers and Internet business people. Can you afford to miss it?

Filed in Internet Marketing, General Fundraising, Major Gifts Fundraising, Business Values, Marketing | Comments (3)

The Single Most Important Thing Your Business (or Charity) Needs

Monday, January 7, 2008

Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is not a vision, a mission statement, or a tagline, but it incorporates the critical information contained in each. Your USP is the single most important marketing tool you have, and few businesses create one well.

Your Uniqe Selling Proposition is a concise statement of the single most important reason why someone should do business with you (not-for-profits read: donate to you) and not your competitors. It needs to be brief, specific, compelling, and unique.

“When it absolutely, positively, has to be there overnight.” Wow. It doesn’t get much better than that. And that’s the reason you know it was Fed Ex that introduced it even though they haven’t used it in years. It is instructive to note that once the industry matured, there were many competitors that could offer the same level of service and back it up with gurantees. Thus the original USP, though powerful, was no longer unique and thus did not differntiate the comapny from the competition.

Business people often struggle with creating a USP. Thye come up with platitudes such as, “quality service at an affordable price.”  That’s certainly not a bad business model, but it is not specific enough to compell someone to do business with you. If that is your model, then you might want to start there and build. Perhaps “we answer the phone in 3 rings or less and we’ll have a repairman at your door within 4 hours, guranteed.” Heck, I don’t have anything I need repaired but I’d be tempted to break something just to test that gurantee.

Of course you need to careful that you can keep your promise. Integrity and credibility are key. Don’t promise to answer the phone within 3 rings if you are not willing to hire more people to answer the phone as your business grows. Be specific, but be credible.

Ideally your USP will become your tagline, but don’t make the mistake of creating a tagline or thinking that the one you have is your USP. Taglines are often cute and there purpose is to be memorable. But unless you have Coke’s money, you’re not going to teach the world sing, and even if you do, it won’t sell more soda for you.

Better to be boring and compelling than funny and memorable. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told a friend about a great commercial but couldn’t remember what they were selling.

The process of creating a good USP entails digging deep into your business to truly understand what differentiates you from the competion. What makes you unique? Write it down. Talk to your key employees. Talk to your customers. Find out what it is and start by jsut writing it out. Then cut it, edit it, and play with it until it is concise, compelling, and credible. And once you have it, you will have a foundation to truly build your business.

If you are looking for a marketing or fundraising consultant that makes your fundraising campaign or sales go up… guaranteed, we should talk. And if you don’t already have a compelling USP, it might be worth spending a few hours or investing a bit of money to create one. I’m pretty busy with my current business, but since I love creating them, I’ll offer to do a USP for the first 2 people to Paypal $500 to jkarlin@aliyamarketing.com. We’ll talk within 24 hours and you’ll have a compelling USP you can use to build your business within the week or you’ll have your money back.

And if you think you already have a compelling USP, I’m sure my readers would love to see it as much as I would. Just add it to the comments on this post.

Filed in Internet Marketing, General Fundraising, Business Values, Marketing, Management | Comments (4)

How Should We Give?

Monday, December 17, 2007

I have a dilemma. I bought 6 dozen socks to give to the homeless. I did it while shopping with my kids and we went home and we rolled them so they would be easier to give away. But a storm kept us from getting out to give them away.

Now I still need to give them away. But what is the best way? Do I drive to a shelter and hand them out as James Brausch suggests and as I had planned, or do I donate them to the shelter or Salvation Army and let them give them away? (And so you shouldn’t think that I am delaying this, I do know the best thing to do is to give them away quickly and will do so first thing in the morning.)

One of the greatest Jewish scholars of all time, Maimonides, wrote 800 years ago about how to best help those in need. He actually dileneated 8 levels of tzedakah, a Hebrew word we will loosely translate for now as charity. (As I wrote about in a previous post, there are important things to learn about a culture and its value system by looking at its language, but we will save the analysis of the difference between tzedakah and charity for another post.)

The highest form, he notes, is to help the needy get a job or to become partners in a business venture with them. In toher words, teach them to fish, help them get to the point where they don’t need charitable gifts.

Maimonides says that the next level is to give in a such a way where the donor and recipient don’t know who each other is, such that the gift is anonymous and the giver does not even know the people being helped. If I were to follow Maimonides advice on what to do with the socks, I should just go drop them at the shelter and let the agency distribute them. Donor and recipeient remain anonymous.

However, I lose something in that transaction. One of the reasons I wanted to involve my kids in this project was to teach them some lessons. Some of those lessons I hoped to learn from the people we gave the socks to. I wanted to hear their stories and I wanted my kids to hear their stories. I want to learn and I want my kids to learn from other’s mistakes. As I understand it, about 80% of homeless brought themselves there through abuse of alcohol or drugs. I want my kids to see and hear that.

But that is one of my challenges. Tzedakah literally means justice. I give because it is the right thing to do. And Maimonides is trying to teach me that the act of giving is not about me, but about the recipient. I need to be concerned about the dignity of the recipient more than how I feel about giving. That’s right, while Maimonides recognizes that the intent of the giver is important, it is not as important as the good the gift does for the recipient.

The Chabad website translates Maimonides eight levels of Charity like this:

Mishneh Torah, Laws of Charity, 10:7-14

There are eight levels of charity, each greater than the next.

[1] The greatest level, above which there is no greater, is to support a fellow Jew by endowing him with a gift or loan, or entering into a partnership with him, or finding employment for him, in order to strengthen his hand until he need no longer be dependent upon others…

[2] A lesser level of charity than this is to give to the poor without knowing to whom one gives, and without the recipient knowing from who he received. For this is performing a mitzvah solely for the sake of Heaven. This is like the “anonymous fund” that was in the Holy Temple [in Jerusalem]. There the righteous gave in secret, and the good poor profited in secret. Giving to a charity fund is similar to this mode of charity, though one should not contribute to a charity fund unless one knows that the person appointed over the fund is trustworthy and wise and a proper administrator, like Rabbi Hananya ben Teradyon.

[3] A lesser level of charity than this is when one knows to whom one gives, but the recipient does not know his benefactor. The greatest sages used to walk about in secret and put coins in the doors of the poor. It is worthy and truly good to do this if those who are responsible for distributing charity are not trustworthy.

[4] A lesser level of charity than this is when one does not know to whom one gives, but the poor person does know his benefactor. The greatest sages used to tie coins into their robes and throw them behind their backs, and the poor would come up and pick the coins out of their robes so that they would not be ashamed.

[5] A lesser level than this is when one gives to the poor person directly into his hand, but gives before being asked.

[6] A lesser level than this is when one gives to the poor person after being asked.

[7] A lesser level than this is when one gives inadequately, but gives gladly and with a smile.

[8] A lesser level than this is when one gives unwillingly.

I suspect not all of my readers will agree with that ranking of the levels of giving. But my question to you is whether you think I should give directly which would correspond to the fifth level or should I just drop off the socks at the shelter and go for the second highest level? Do the additional lessons I might learn and impart warrant the “lesser” level of giving?

Filed in General Fundraising, Personal | Comments (6)