A few months ago, I received a direct message on Twitter from Richmond-based non-profit Virginia Blood Services.  They were looking for “influential” social media participants to get the message out about their VBS Blood Lifeline campaign.  Having participated in their campaign, I thought it would be interesting to study how this non-profit is using social media to get the word out.  I reached out for an interview, and here was our conversation.

In a few sentences, tell me about the social media campaign that you’re currently running.

Donor Dialogue (DD) and Virginia Blood Services (VBS) are starting a revolutionary movement with the help of social media to make sure local hospital patients in Virginia have the blood they need.

To do this, we are tapping into social networks to build relationships with individuals in the Richmond area who possess a large local following online, as well as with our current blood donors.

We’re asking these influencers and donors to become brand ambassadors for us; reaching out to their networks anytime a critical blood emergency arises, essentially creating a blood lifeline.

We gave these social media influencers two call-to-action tools to help. One is an online community called the VBS Blood Lifeline (www.BloodLifeline.com) where their networks can go to schedule a blood donation, check the current blood inventory needs, or sign up to become someone’s lifeline. Once registered, the Lifeline registrants can receive alerts via SMS, e-mail, or phone anytime their blood type or product is needed by a local hospital patient.

The second tool is a Facebook application called Ydonate. This tool lets our existing donor base schedule their appointment on Facebook and then share it with their friends inviting them to make an appointment too.

What is/are the goal(s) of the campaign?

DD and VBS’s objectives of this campaign are:

• Get “the right donors with the right type in the right chair” donating blood.
• Expand the donor pool by reaching out to potential donors that have not been engaged in the donation process in the past.
• Educate current donors and potential donors in regards to the need for blood, and the best donation type based on the donor’s blood type.

DD and VBS’s goals of this campaign include:

• In 6 months get 250 people to sign up to become someone’s lifeline.
• In 6 months get 250 current donors to schedule and share their blood donation appointment using Ydonate.
• In 6 months get 250 new donors to schedule and share their blood donation appointment using the scheduler on BloodLifeline.

Why use social media to get the word out?

Today, everyone has large personal networks that are easily reachable and readily available thanks to social network sites including Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in etc.

Non-profits are increasingly using social media because of the huge potential reach of their message due to social sharing. photo credit

In the blood industry, many studies have been done that shows one of the main reason people don’t donate is because “no one asked them”.  When that personal ask comes from someone they know and trust the message becomes more compelling and will end up motivating that individual to give blood.

We have decided to leverage these social networks and change our recruitment efforts to focus on forming relationships with our existing donors and local influencers. Our goal is to turn them into brand ambassadors by giving them the tools and the message to recruit their networks to give blood more effectively on behalf of VBS.

What social media vehicles are you targeting and why?

For this campaign, we have chosen to focus on the two biggest social networks, Facebook and Twitter. We predicted that we would see better results, since most of our donors’ personal networks reside on these two sites.

We are using Twitter to form relationships with local influencers as well as to broadcast local hospital patient needs via www.BloodLifeline.com. We are using Facebook to target VBS’s existing donor base, asking them to schedule and share their next blood donation appointment using Ydonate.

Is Virginia Blood Services managing this campaign in-house, and how much time is spent monitoring conversations?

Virginia Blood Services and Donor Dialogue are working closely together throughout this entire social media campaign. VBS is focusing on managing its Facebook page and the promotion of Ydonate to its existing donor base.

Our Partner, Donor Dialogue, is managing our new Twitter account called @valifeline to broadcast local hospital patient needs and the www.BloodLifeline.com promotional efforts.  We estimate that together between the two social networking sites we spend about an hour a day initiating and monitoring conversations.

What are your expectations for this campaign?

Our expectations for this campaign have been to initiate as much buzz as possible in the social media blogosphere regarding the local need for blood and the importance of donating. Our main objectives are to attract new donors to come and donate, and to get our existing donors to donate at least one more time throughout the year, at a time when it’s needed most.

How are you measuring the success of the campaign?

We are tracking and measuring the success of this campaign by using the following metrics.

• Followers of @valifeline – We are keeping track of the number of followers daily to see when spikes were encountered and analyze what caused them.
• Number of Influencers Promoting – We are keeping track of the number of relationships formed with our influencers, and the number of times they post, tweet, blog or write about us.
• The Amount of buzz – We are keeping track of the number of re-tweets we get from our influencers’ followers. Also, we track any local PR we receive.
• Traffic to our site – We try to make sure every tweet we post has a link to www.BloodLifeline.com, so we can measure the amount of traffic and clicks to the site daily.
• The Number of Lifelines – We track when and how many people sign up to become someone’s lifeline on our site.
• Blood Lifeline Appointments – We track when and how many people (new donors) scheduled their blood donation appointment on www.BloodLifeline.com.
• Ydonate appointments - We track when and how many people (current donors) schedule a blood donation appointment on Ydonate.
• Ydonate registrants – We track when and how many people registered (but not yet scheduled an appointment) on Ydonate. These people have the intent to donate.

What other benefits (besides the obvious ones) do you think this will have for Virginia Blood Services? Have there been any unintended benefits of the campaign?

Yes most definitely! We didn’t realize the amount of positive PR this campaign would receive from our traditional media outlets including our local TV stations and newspapers. We are pleased to see our community come together to promote such an important cause.

As stewards of our community’s blood supply and the sole provider of blood to 22 hospitals throughout Central Virginia, VBS’ goal is to aspire that each local hospital patient has the right blood component of the right blood type, at the right time.

We are now striving to educate donors to give specific blood products based on their blood type and patient needs. This campaign is the first step in that direction.

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Clearly, social media can be a great way for non-profit organizations to engage with people that care about the causes they support.  So how can you use social media in your organization?  Ask the following questions:

1. What are concrete goals we can achieve by using social media?
2. Who in the organization understands social media sites and conversations well enough to manage a campaign or ongoing effort?
3. How will we monitor and respond what’s being said about our organization?
4. How will we measure the success of social media efforts?

When I talk to marketing prospects, the conversation eventually turns to landing pages.  “Landing pages” are often confused with pages that anyone can see on your company web site, like the homepage.

This blog post focuses on what a landing page is and how it’s almost always better to use them in your online marketing efforts.

Using landing pages in your marketing campaigns is almost always more effective than sending people to your homepage from an ad, so it’s important to make the differentiation.

So what is a landing page?

Landing pages are actually pages with a single focus that are hidden from the normal browsing paths on your web site.  Unless you visit a landing page from a marketing campaign, you’d never know it was there.

A landing page also speaks to a specific target audience.   In service-based businesses, perhaps a landing page would speak to the benefits of a specific service with the purpose of getting a decision-maker to download a whitepaper.  For an online retailer, a landing page would speak to someone who’s interested in a certain product with the goal of having the customer buy the item.

Why create landing pages for marketing campaigns?

So why would companies invest in creating pages specifically for an ad campaign rather than link to existing pages on their web sites?

1. Landing pages are persuasive.
   Not that your web site isn’t persuasive, but when someone comes to your company web site, you really don’t know why.  Since specific advertisements send people to your landing page, you know what copy enticed them to click.

   Your market research (B2C) may indicate that you need to address different concerns with men and women, or you may want to speak differently to younger and more mature customers.  In business-to-business selling, you may want to highlight different advantages of your product or service based on the size and budget of the prospects you’re advertising to.

2. Landing pages have a single focus.
   While your web site is trying to reach multiple decision makers with different products or services, a landing page focuses on a single product or service.  Since the focus is singular, you can describe the benefits of the product or service, some testimonials about the specific product or service and reassure potential customers.

   The single focus helps your company address the specific needs of your target audience, increasing the likelihood that you’ll entice them to take action.

3. Landing pages minimize distractions.
   Your landing pages should look different than your company web site.  They should not have standard site links that allow people to jump around to other areas of your web site.  Also, landing pages should be perfectly clear what action you want customers to take.

   The problem with “deep linking” to existing web site pages from your ad campaigns is that there are distractions all over your web site.  For instance, online retailers might link an online ad campaign to a specific product category that shows many products.  Customers can be distracted by navigation to other sections, a wish list, related items, accessories, unrelated offers, etc.

   Landing pages contain just the information that is needed to persuade the customer to take action.

In conclusion

Here are some questions for consideration within your company:

• If you link your online ad campaigns to pages in the normal flow of your web site, how can you test a landing page to see which performs better?
• Are you currently testing different landing pages to see what design and messaging produce more leads or sales?
• Can you affect bottom-line results by making your segmenting your target audience?
• How are you measuring the effectiveness of “destination pages” (either landing pages or pages on your web site)?
• Does the sales cycle of your product or service require more of a hard sales approach or a lead nurturing approach?

I’ve written quite a bit about conversion rates on this blog, but the fact is that most people that visit an e-commerce web site have no intention of buying.  They are window shopping.  Optimizing your web site to increase your conversion rate is very important, but you can’t forget about optimizing for the 70-80% of people or more that are “window shoppers.”

The mistake that a lot of online retailers make is to not engage the vast majority of their visitors — the ones that don’t intend to buy.

Yes, you can entice a small percentage of these window shoppers to buy with offers like “buy one, get one,” coupons and free shipping, but what about the remaining lot?

The answer is engagement.  If you can engage window shoppers, you can get them to continually interact with your company, and when they are ready to buy, your site will be top-of mind.

So how to you engage window shoppers?  Here’s how.

Make your e-mail newsletter signup more visible

If you don’t have an e-mail newsletter, you really need to start one.  Next, make sure your e-mail signup form is visible.

Many web sites have e-mail signup forms at the bottom of their sites.  While that’s an acceptable place for the form, why not duplicate the form and place it higher up on the page where people can see it right away?  By making the form more visible and writing a good call to action (like “Get sales and exclusive tips by signing up for our e-newsletter”), you’ll increase your subscriber rate.

This probably goes without saying, but you need to publish your e-mail newsletter regularly and pack it full of good content.  Remember, it’s about keeping prospective customers engaged.

Write a blog (regularly)

No matter what you’re selling, you should publish a blog with RSS feed.  Other than product inventory and pricing, the typical e-commerce site is rather static.  By adding a blog, you’ll freshen the site by regularly adding content that complements the products you’re selling.

The goal in blogging is twofold.  First, you want to generate some credibility for your company (see the next section on social media for some promotional tips).  Second, you’re giving prospective customers some good information and keeping your company top-of-mind.  Also, good search engine optimization is often a by-product of a well-written blog.

Engage in social media

Admittedly, social media isn’t for everyone.  But if you, your marketing manager or other staff in your company are already using Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, etc., then you need to get them involved.

I won’t go into all of the options that social media offers (I may go into that in a future post), but for starters, you can create a discussion group on a Facebook Fan page.  You can tweet latest blog posts, new products and sales on Twitter.  You can make how-to videos for a You Tube channel and embed them in your blog.  There are many more opportunities, so be creative.

In conclusion

Here are some questions for consideration within your company:

• How can my company test positioning of newsletter signup forms?
• Can I offer people in my company the opportunity to write blog posts to distribute the workload?
• Who in my organization can I tap to help brainstorm customer engagement ideas? (Don’t be afraid to ask entry-level employees for their advice!)
• How could I make a blog more visible?
• How can my company use social media in ways my competitors are not?

Lately, I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about marketing lead generation. For many companies, the economy has really caused slumping sales.  Some are responding by stepping up their sales efforts, and the most intelligent companies are improving their web sites to generate more leads.

There’s one simple yet often overlooked step your company can take to generate more leads from your web site: include a contact form on key pages. On our site, key pages are the pages that talk about the web consulting services we offer and, not surprisingly, the contact page.

Companies typically have a single contact link or button at the top or bottom of their web sites.  But why make your readers hunt for a place to contact you? By putting a short, simple lead generation form beside or at the bottom of your web pages, you’re giving people an easy way to make contact.

Many web designers will argue that you don’t need the form — that it “junks” up a design.  If that’s the case, ask them to create a second version of a key web page (perhaps a whitepaper download, a sales page, a product page, etc.) with a form included and use a testing tool like Google’s Website Optimizer to test the page with the form against the page without.  This head-to-head comparison will reveal which is more effective.

In nearly every case I’ve seen, the page with a form will generate more leads than a page without a form.  There are exceptions, such as requiring that someone fill out a form before downloading, viewing or listening to content.

By placing lead generation forms on key pages of your company web site, you might just be able to thrive during this recession.