Many nonprofits fall into the trap of believing that their audience is the general public, when the truth is that your supporters are much more nuanced than that.

A great way to narrow in on your organization’s audience is to develop audience personas. Audience personas are fictional people that you create who represent your audience, based on real aggregate audience data. Each persona has demographic information that helps make them real for the viewer, including things like age, race, gender and even a name. Additionally, since these personas are created based on information about your real constituents, you already know things about them – like what they read, where they work, what they like to learn about from your organization and what kinds of communications work best for them.

By putting together a comprehensive profile of your audience, your nonprofit is better able to create personalized content that speaks to your audience and drives them to action.

How Make-A-Wish is Using Audience Personas 

Recently, See3 partnered with Make-A-Wish Foundation of America to help the organization better understand its audiences and develop an organization-wide content strategy.

With this project came the task of establishing personas that the organization could use in telling stories that attract and retain a strong base of volunteers, donors and wish referrers. These personas were developed into print materials — including a deck of cards, posters and a flip book — which all help put Make-A-Wish’s audience top of mind for their communications staff.

We spoke to Jono Smith, the Director of Brand Marketing and Digital Strategy for Make-A-Wish America, to understand why the organization decided to invest in content strategy. Though our conversation, we learned three pivotal things that a nonprofit should consider when developing their own content strategies. 

1. Push your organization to start telling new stories.

When you think of Make-A-Wish, what’s the image that comes to mind? Most likely, it’s the idea of a sick kid experiencing hope and joy in the form of a wish experience, most likely through an amazing experience like a trip to Disney World or Hawaii.

This story framework is powerful, and it’s one Make-A-Wish has been using for the past 35 years successfully. However, Make-A-Wish experiences impact more than just wish kids; they have significant effects on the families, doctors, social workers and volunteers who are involved. But those impact stories weren’t getting back to Make-A-Wish’s supporters, and they weren’t helping the organization convert new supporters who weren’t as affected by the organization’s traditional messaging.

“We discovered a significant lack of personalization and segmentation in our brand messaging and storytelling, and personas were our response to that,” Smith said.

To help Make-A-Wish diversify its storytelling, See3 created nine audience personas to represent current and potential volunteers, donors and wish referrers. All of these supporters play a critical role in Make-A-Wish’s mission to grant wishes to children living with life-altering illnesses, and they all experience the impact of Make-A-Wish differently. By considering these personas before developing stories, Make-A-Wish is more likely to tell stories that speak to these audience’s needs, challenges and goals.

2. Put your audience first.

“Most modern marketing organizations in the for-profit and non-profit sector today utilize some form of audience personas,” Smith remarked. “They’re a fairly proven technique, and I think if you’re going to compete for donors in today’s environment, they’re a necessary competitive advantage.”

With so many for-profits and nonprofits investing in audience personas, Make-A-Wish knew it was time for them to do the same. Taking an audience-centric approach is nothing new to the for-profit world, but it can be hard for nonprofits to make this switch.

As do-gooders, we often think that talking about our organization’s accomplishments and the important work that we’re doing should be enough to engage our supporters. But stories that focus on the nonprofit often fail to drive constituents to action. It’s important to think about how the content you are creating provides value for the people who support your organization. Make them the hero of your story and show them how their contributions are essential to the work you’re doing.

3. Get your team on board.

In order to make sure these personas are effectively implemented across all 60 Make-A-Wish chapters and other affiliates, the organization provided training for their chapters on why personas were important and how to use them in their daily work.

“The initial response has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Smith. “This is a long time in coming, and people are excited to start implementing them and learning more about how to utilize them in their communications.”

This is just the beginning of Make-A-Wish’s audience persona journey, and chapters will play an important role in the next step by participating in a content strategy training program organized by See3. We know that their insights will provide valuable nuance to these target audiences and help to make them more accurate on a chapter level.

We’re looking forward to partnering with many Make-A-Wish chapters to help them take their content strategies to the next level, and we’re excited to share what we learn with all of the nonprofits following See3’s work.

Do you want to take your nonprofit’s storytelling to the next level? We’d love to help you with that.

Email David Frankel, See3’s Account Manager, to talk more.

At See3 we’ve made hundreds of videos, many of them for gala fundraising events. In this time, we’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t.

 

And as the people behind the DoGooder Awards, we review thousands of nonprofit videos each year looking for innovation, patterns and what works.

One thing we’ve learned is that lots of people make videos. And a lot of these videos are pretty and well-produced. But as strategists, advocates and fundraisers, we bring a different lens to our video making. We want to create videos that get results. We bring to this work more than a decade of consulting with organizations on strategies for advocacy, fundraising, and education. And while we all want the recognition for making a beautiful video, we would much rather know that the video is effective in raising money and helping move the organizational mission forward.

Avoiding the Traps

We’ve learned that the process of making a gala event video is fraught with traps. The biggest of these traps is treating the one video as if it were a kind of organizational home page where every program, activity and interesting factoid needs representation. How many times have you sat in a gala fundraising event and watched a video drone on about all the wonderful things the organization does? Look at this great program! How about that great program!

When we are hired by an organization to make a gala event video we start with a discussion about goals and how to avoid the traps so that we can produce a video most likely to achieve those goals. We review organizational culture and establish for our clients what the video’s role in the event needs to be and how to achieve that. Through these discussions, our clients come to understand how to say no to internal constituencies and prioritize what goes into the event video to make it most effective.

The 3 Rules

There are consistently three rules which will make your event video the most effective it can be. And while they may seem simple, they require discipline to execute.

1. The hero of your story is the donor.

It’s not the beneficiary or the brand. It’s the donor that’s making everything happen, and that fact must be there — explicitly or implicitly — in your story in order to empower donors to action.

2. The people attending your event will not remember the details of your programs one minute after you talk about them.

The only thing they will remember is how you made them feel. Start with what emotional outcomes you want, and build your story around that primary goal.

3. Show the story, don’t just tell it.

It’s best to limit the talking heads on the screen. Instead of having stakeholders talk to the camera about the great work you do, show it in action.

That’s it. Follow these three rules and you’ll make a powerful video that looks a lot different than the usual mediocre fare. Solve the “here’s what we do” question another way at the event and use the video to tell an emotionally powerful story. Educate your internal constituencies about the video’s role and push back on those wanting to make sure the video covers, x y and z program.

And, hire a production partner that understands fundraising and donor behavior, in addition to being a skilled video producer.

Over the course of the year, your organization develops hundreds of opportunities to connect with your supporters. These opportunities may include your website, e-newsletters, social media channels, live events, direct mail, and mentions your organization through media, family and friends.

 

The sum of all these parts and how your audience interacts with your organization at each stage creates the Customer Journey. A Customer Journey is a full lifecycle view that details all of the interactions a person has with your organization as well as the internal or external influences affecting the person’s behaviors.

The Customer Journey is a tool that can help your organization move your audiences to action by helping you:

• Increase consistency in messaging
• Identify opportunities to help your audience take the next step in the journey
• Identifying pain points or road blocks so you can remove them
• Build empathy for your audiences and consensus internally to support those audiences

Historically, customer journeys have mapped someone’s purchase behavior for a product in the marketplace. For example, a customer journey for a local coffee shop may include how people in the neighborhood learn about coffee shops, what motivates them to try the coffee shop, how the experience inside the store affects their behavior, and how some people are motivated to make it their daily coffee shop location.

The idea of the customer journey can easily be adapted to nonprofits and social causes. Occasionally called supporter journeys or donor journeys, they help look at critical points in your constituent lifecycle.

Creating Your First Customer Journey

It’s likely that your organization is already focused on the donor or advocacy funnels or lifecycles. These can be viewed as the internal goals to move a constituent from a casual contact to a regular donor or advocate.

Here are a few questions that will help you translate those internal goals into a customer journey:

• What do you already know about your audiences?
• Do you have the ability to perform any additional research on your audience?
• What are all of the touchpoints and communications these constituents receive?
• How do constituents learn about your organization?
• How do they become aware of more opportunities to donate or become an advocate?
• Who do they talk to if they call your organization?
• What are the factors, internal and external, that affect this constituent’s behavior related to your goals? Are there any roadblocks inhibiting the constituent from moving through the lifecycle? These can be technical roadblocks such as online tools that are not working properly. Or they may be informational roadblocks; people may not understand the need represented by your calls to action.

By asking some basic questions about how your audience is interacting with your organization, you can begin to build a map of contact points. Over time, you can analyze which contact points are most effective at leading people to become new donors or advocates, and which need improvement.

Map-Making 101

When you’re ready to turn your customer journey into a full-fledged map, there are plenty of additional resources online to help you get started.

• Check out Megan Grocki and UX Mastery’s great video and post detailing How to Create a Customer Journey
• BigDoor also has their own Quick Guide to Customer Journey Mapping
• Designing CX has compiled a full CX Journey Mapping Toolkit which includes templates and guides to facilitating internal sessions
• I also recommend searching Pinterest for Customer Journey Maps to see all types of examples and get your creative ideas going

Taking a step back and walking in your constituents’ shoes is critical to gain perspective about and empathy for their journey. We can talk all day about the funnel we want them in and the actions we hope they take, but it takes thoughtful research and planning to really improve their journey.

If the goal of your video is to rack up YouTube views, you have some tough competition. As we often tell our video clients, nonprofits are ultimately competing against cat videos for their audience’s attention.

 

This means that nonprofit videos need to be entertaining – not just informative. If you can hook your audience with a compelling video, there’s a much greater likelihood that they will visit your website to learn more about your cause or campaign. But you have to pull people in emotionally first – make them laugh, make them cry, or make them think about something in a new and interesting way.

What’s the first step to pulling people in? Your video has to be seen! As the world’s second largest search engine (right after Google), YouTube is a great way to be found. By keeping your audience and their search interests in mind when uploading your video, you can increase the chances people will find it and watch.

Here are 9 ways to increase the views of your organization’s video on YouTube without spending extra money on digital advertising:

 

1. Feature it on your YouTube page.

Right after you’ve added your video to YouTube, make sure your video the featured video on the front page. People looking at your organization’s YouTube page should be seeing your most current video. It makes your organization look up to date, current and relevant, and puts the video at the center of the YouTube user’s attention.

2. Choose a good thumbnail.

If you allow YouTube to automatically choose your thumbnail, it probably won’t be very interesting. Use your computer’s screenshot feature to capture an image from your video that is emotionally compelling, and upload it in your video settings.

3. Make your title short and interesting.

Your video title should not necessarily describe your video in a way that makes sense to your administration. Make your title viewer-centric, and think about what would make you want to click on a video. (Upworthy headlines are a good source of inspiration.) And try to keep it brief – a shorter title that doesn’t get cut off is better for click-throughs. Here are a few good title examples from YouTube star PewDiePie for Charity Water and the Sierra Club.

4. Pick tags that will be good for SEO.

Your constituents are using YouTube as a search engine – so you should be too! Think about what your supporters are searching, and make sure those keywords are included in your video tags. Keep in mind that what people are searching isn’t always an accurate description of the video.

5. Write a good video description.

In your video description, consider telling people a story instead of describing what’s happening in the video. Be entertaining, and remember that the description area is not the place to hit messaging points. PETA does a good job of video description storytelling in their video “Circuses in 60 Seconds Flat.”

6. Take advantage of the nonprofit annotations on YouTube.

It’s amazing how many people don’t know about video annotations – we were telling nonprofits how to use them all the way back in 2009! Annotations should come up at least 30 seconds into your video and right before the end of the video and should provide a link where people can take action. And don’t forget to check your links to make sure they’re going to the right place!

7. Upload a transcript of your video in English and Spanish.

About 38 million people in the United States speak Spanish. By uploading transcripts of your video in both languages, your video will start appearing in English and Spanish YouTube searches. Transcripts alert YouTube of what keywords are featured in your video and greatly increase the likelihood that your audience will find you via YouTube search.

8. Post early and often.

People don’t click on every link that’s posted by on an organization’s social media platforms. Make sure you’re continuing to post your video regularly for at least a month, and keep your posts fresh by changing the headlines and images you feature. This will include your viewership dramatically by increasing exposure to new audiences.

9. Add a lightbox or pop-up on your website.

A video is a great opportunity to let people know more about your organization, regardless of why or how people are coming to your website. If you don’t have a lightbox, make sure your video is featured somewhere on the homepage of your site. Negotiate website placement ahead of time, since it can be a space that is coveted by other departments. Your video deserves to be highlighted. It’s new content and your biggest fans would love to see it.

The goal of a video is to be seen. By taking a few small steps, you can dramatically increase the number of people who watch your video and want to engage with your organization, without spending extra money on digital advertising.