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What’s HOT in Nonprofit Communication Trends?

How to Communicate with your Non-Profit Organization (The New Trends) 

Nonprofits have seen a significant change in their marketing strategies, communication, and fundraising since the pandemic impacted their organizations. They have been creative in planning their communication with others and what that will look like post-pandemic. Look to see What’s Hot in Nonprofit Communication Trends.

communicating with your team members effectively
University students talking to their teacher while learning the lecture over the Internet at the campus.

The Importance of Time Management for your Nonprofit 

The pandemic took a toll on many companies in regard to planning the future of their business. Most goals were put on hold for a year or even longer. Companies are still apprehensive about planning due to the uncertainty of post-pandemic life. The company needs to manage its time efficiently so it can work towards completing the goals it did not get to finish before the pandemic. Employees and volunteers are also returning to the office after many months of working from home, which may come with distractions.

Virtual is the New Normal for Communication in your Nonprofit 

What’s Hot in Nonprofit Communication Trends? A significant change in communication between organizations has been the use of virtual meetings. If it weren’t for zoom or FaceTime, most sessions would not have been as informative without face-to-face contact with people. Nonprofits have focused on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok to market to people. Social media has become a place for all ages to stay up-to-date on the news and find entertainment for hours on end. Nonprofits are still strategizing on better ways to communicate with others since COVID restrictions are easing up around the world. However, they may still try to utilize some of the marketing and communication strategies they learned from the pandemic into the future of their organizations. This will allow them to reach a broad audience that supports their organization and mission.

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Effectively listening to your audience is essential

In marketing, it’s our job to communicate to our audience, inform them, and engage them, right? Yes, but there is more to it. As marketers, a large part of our job is listening.

Effectively listening to an audience is essential to the growth of any organization or business. It helps to cultivate relationships, build rapport, increase loyalty, and better direct development, leading to a stronger, more sustainable business. But, how do you listen effectively?

Continue reading to learn how to be an effective listener and why it will benefit your business.

Why you should effectively listen to your audience:

Build meaningful relationships-

Your audience and customers want to feel truly understood and heard. According to NewVoiceMedia, feeling unappreciated is the #1 reason customers switch away from products and services. By genuinely listening to your audience, you are shifting the communication from one-way to two-way, which promotes meaningful relationships.

Increase customer loyalty and retention-

Listening to your audience can help you create meaningful relationships, which can benefit your business in many ways. First, it helps your business increase customer loyalty and retention. When making a purchase or investment, 64% of people find the customer experience more important than price, according to Gartner. Your audience is more likely to remain loyal to your business if you listen to their feedback, and provide them with a relationship and experience that they value.

Build rapport that leads to referrals-

Another benefit of listening to your audience is building a rapport that leads to positive referrals. Customers are not afraid to share their business experiences with friends, family, and even strangers. With the unlimited reach granted by social media and the internet, a customer’s experience never goes unnoticed. According to Extole, 83% of customers are willing to refer after a positive experience with a business. The more you listen to your customers, the more they value the relationship with your business, which will make them more likely to refer others to your services or products.

Better direct your marketing efforts-

Many of us remember being told to listen with “ears open and mouths shut” so that we could learn in grade school. Although it may seem like a child’s lesson, it’s applicable to many aspects of life, including marketing. When you take the time to listen to your audience, you are able to learn more about them: their likes, dislikes, behaviors, and attitudes. This information can be used to better your marketing efforts, customizing them to your audience to get the best reaction and engagement. You can also implement direct suggestions or feedback from customers. This will help improve your business, cultivate meaningful relationships with your audience, and show that you care about their feedback.

How to effectively listen to your audience:

Take part in active listening-

First and foremost, it is important to understand the difference between listening and active listening. When someone chooses to actively listen, they focus on what the other person is saying and try to fully understand the other person’s point of view.

Active listening is essential when communicating with your audience because it helps to show that you are genuine and that you care about what your audience has to say. Actively listen by focusing on what your audience is communicating to you. If given the opportunity, repeat their communications back to them to ensure that you fully understand what they are saying. This will show your audience and customers that you are trustworthy and are invested in their ideas.

Participate in social listening-

Social media is a very important resource when it comes to effectively listening to your audience. Your audience will take to social media for a variety of reasons: to compliment, criticize, complain, or to ask for help. Because of this, social listening a very important thing for your organization or business to partake in.

According to Hootsuite, social listening is the process of monitoring social media platforms and channels for when anyone, especially your audience, mentions your brand, competitors, products, and more. By social listening, a business is able to gain insights into what their audience is thinking and understand what is being said about their brand.

Rely on analytics-

When businesses and organizations consult data, they are using trends in their audiences’ behavior to infer their audience wants, likes, dislikes, and needs. Analytics like website traffic, social media engagement rates, email open and click rates, CTA response, and many others are pieces of data that allow you to listen to what your audience wants.

Understanding the importance of analytics and using the data to listen to your audience will help your organization identify big-picture ideas that can influence other, more specific areas of your marketing strategy.

 

As shown, listening to your audience is vital to the success of your business or organization. But, listening takes time. PivotPath offers a wide range of services that work to effectively listen to audiences. Contact us today for a free consultation, so we can assist you in your listening efforts. PivotPath understands that listening leads to meaningful relationships, and meaningful relationships lead to growing success.

 

Why Consumer Behavior Is Essential to Marketing Research

Did you know that in most cases, customer loyalty is worth more than the price of a single purchase? That is because marketers are fervent to meet the needs of their customers at a high degree. How do marketers make that happen? Well, one thing to consider is that marketers continuously do research on consumer behavior. Yes, you want to sell a product, but adding value to your customers’ lives hits one out of the park.

Consumer behavior is all around us and it is important to know what drives us to purchase a product.

First, every organization should understand the power behind their research on consumer behavior before launching any product. Knowing your audience is important to tailor your buyer persona. Before making any final decisions on how you would market your products or services, your understanding of your target market should be secure.

In that case, keeping consumer behavior as your main focus on marketing research is essential to understand customers’ buying decisions and how they look at products.

Additionally, conducting research on consumer behavior will provide better ideas on your marketing strategies to move ahead of your competitors. Keeping consumer behavior in mind when studying your marketing analytics reports is vital to meet the expectations of your customers.

Three main factors that influence consumer behavior are cultural, psychological, and personal factors. Incorporating these three points into your consumer behavior research will help you gain valuable information, and understand who your potential customers will be. Here’s how conducting research on consumer behavior helps you with your overall marketing strategy.

1. Helps Refine Marketing Strategy Analytics

When it comes to marketing decisions, analytics is an influential factor when determining if your strategies are helping to push your company forward. Doing research on the performance of your display ads, website content, and search ads can tell you a lot about what your customers are engaged in.

Also, the analytics of your website shows how consumer behavior affects search engine optimization. Research on consumer behavior is crucial to acknowledge if your consumers are responding positively to what you wish to market.

2. Expands Your Awareness on Globalization

The study of consumer behavior is vital if you decide to expand your product or services to non-domestic markets. In addition, conducting marketing research on those who have different cultural backgrounds is essential for your business. This shows if your product or services best serve the cultural norms and values of a particular country. Applying this type of research to your marketing strategy will make you stand out from your competitors.

Learning about consumer behavior in foreign markets will expand your awareness of helping reach non-domestic needs.

3. Gives You a Better Outlook on Customer Preferences to Design Your Marketing Mix

Understanding your consumers’ preferences on a particular product provides a narrower scope to design your marketing mix (the four P’s).

When conducting research, a consumer may be interested in the design of the product yet may shy away from purchasing it due to the product’s high-end price. Or, selling a beach-like product in Southern California may reach more sales than selling the product in Eastern Texas. Acknowledging this type of behavior provides a better outlook on how to better your pricing strategy. Here are some questions to consider when correlating your marketing mix to consumer behavior.

  • Does the price of your product match the income of your target market?
  • Does the design of your product attract the audience whom you wish to target?
  • Is the product marketed in locations where people would wish to buy the product?
  • Is the product useful and/or is it in demand to solve a problem in the market?

When customers decide to buy your product, it is essential to grasp their thought processes when they make their final purchasing decisions. By doing so, you will know the types of strategies that will work to boost sales.

Where should you begin to collect research on consumer behavior?

Create an appropriate survey design that will best gather your consumer insight data. Are you gathering data based on your participants’ responses towards your product and/or service? Use a rating scale question from 1 to 100.

Are you gathering data based on your participants’ feelings or opinions on your product and/or service? Use a Likert scale question such as “strongly agree to strongly disagree”.

Be sure to include demographic questions (age, income, race/ethnicity, gender, occupation, location, etc). This will help you better understand the demographics of your participants, and it gives you sharper information on how it correlates with consumer behavior. Also, you can determine how a product’s usefulness correlates with the needs of a particular demographic.

Conduct an online survey through your website or conduct a face-to-face survey of a focus group.

If you decide to resort to an inexpensive and quicker route to gather more information on customer experience, you can conduct online surveys through your website. In most cases, conducting online surveys will only provide you with anonymous participants which hinders you from gathering specific demographic data. With that said, utilize online surveys for your current customers to uncover what they think about your products and/or services so far.

To gain a thorough analysis of your product/service research, conducting a focus group on your customers or tailored buyer personas is the best way to analyze and gather consumer insights. Focus group research allows you to gather more information from your participants because it takes more time to gather data from their in-depth interviews.

76% of consumers expect businesses to understand their expectations and needs.

Conducting surveys of your current customers or groups that show interest in your product is vital to understand when wanting to meet the needs of your consumers. At the end of the day, your mission is to add value to your customers’ lives. This can only happen by taking time to learn more about your customers. Taking the extra mile to know more about your customers will reap good benefits to maintain your overall business health and gain loyal customers.

Thalia Rodriguez is a Communications major with a double minor in marketing and professional writing at Grand Canyon University. When she’s not practicing writing, she can be spending time with family and friends, going on hikes, or cooking delicious plant-based dishes. Check out her LinkedIn profile here to connect.

[Infographic] Google Analytics: Increase Your Reach by 50%

5 Key Tracking Metrics to Boost Your Business’ Online Presence

Google analytics is a necessary evil for many small businesses. Many companies have the bootstrap code affixed to their site, but barely leverage it due to its perceived high level technicalities. Although this might be true for some, neglecting the data it houses is not recommended.  In fact, this data can be essential in growing and strengthening your business and increase your leads and sales.

Here are 5 key metrics to boost your business

  1. Demographics: This metric identifies who visits your site and provides a better understanding of who your users are. Importantly, it can help you craft your online content and communication style with new and existing customers.
  2. Location: Knowing where your visitors are can play a key part in more targeted marketing and advertising and understanding who you are reaching.
  3. Site traffic: It is extremely critical to understand which online channel generates the most traffic to your site. This is essential when determining which strategies effectively bring the most visitors to your website and provides a solid direction on where to focus or improve.
  4. Referral Sources: This metric helps you understand the strength of user engagement. It can serve as a guide on the engagement on your social outlets.
  5. Behavior: Tailoring your site to maximize User Experience is vital for retention and growth. “Behavior” helps you understand where to refine features and content, and how to create a brand and product that is useful to your targeted audience.

Google Analytics is an important tool to help you make strategic decisions for your business. At PivotPath, metrics from this tool provide directional data and allow us to aid in increasing your reach. Contact us today to learn how we can help you.

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