I'm talking to you. I'm talking to anyone who cares about excelling as a fundraiser. Repeat after me, a hundred-thousand times:
Success in communications is built backwards from your target audience.
It's the only route I know of. And it's the same route whether you're selling appliances, veggie burgers ... or your cause. Seriously. Are you READY to be serious?
Je le répète. "You build success in communications backwards from..." is gospel for sales copywriters. Repeat this slogan. Repeat. Repeat. I'm serious. Don't blow this off.
- Know your audience, inside and out.
- Know their vanities.
- Know their "pain points."
- Know their attention span (offensively short).
- Know what's built into their head by evolution: irresistible emotions such as "fear." Hence: present them with an enemy to defeat.
The more you get to know your donors as creatures with feelings and aspirations and credos and beliefs, the more money you will raise. It's time-consuming but profitable.
Get over yourself ASAP
The best how-to copywriting books I have ever read are all basically about selling crap of dubious value to consumers, using all sorts of proven techniques and psychology.
And the profits those copywriters reap by successfully selling crap of dubious value to lots of people?
Flat-out obscene. Charities, please realize: that could be you making obscene amounts. But it isn't, is it?
Charities presume that their marketing (i.e., fundraising) circumstances differ from the circumstances faced by commercial marketers.
Nope.
Yes, there are minor differences. If I had an hour and I cared (don't), I'd elucidate what those minor differences are.
Essentially, though, fundraising is "just" a type of marketing: it's about persuasion, it's about making the sale, it's about connecting with what's already inside your consumer's (i.e., your donor's) head.
The only thing you have to get straight in your head is this: fundraising is the OPPOSITE of selling crap of dubious value to consumers.
Fundraising is about selling the real thing (making the world a better place) to dubious consumers (can I trust you?).
Big diff.