How to Increase Your Impact Through Product Packaging

Whether you’re a brick-and-mortar or an online store, as a cause-focused organization, you already know that your products change lives. But have you thought about how your packaging can take it a step further?

Yes, you want to minimize costs to help as many people as possible, but what if premium product packaging could actually provide you with a greater return on investment, more loyal customers, and spread your mission even further?

Want proof? Read on for my Q and A with Bob Dalton, founder of Sackcloth & Ashes, to learn how to increase your impact through product packaging.

As a big fan of this social enterprise, I was delighted to have a few minutes of Bob’s time, and he has some valuable lessons for you.

Why Great Packaging Matters for Your Mission

Q: When did you decide that the product packaging would become an important part of relaying your mission to customers? Why was the unboxing experience important to you?

A: In 2018, we launched Blanket the United States, our campaign to donate one million blankets to homeless shelters by our 10-year anniversary on June 1, 2024. To compliment this campaign, we felt that we needed customized packaging for the blankets that not only shared information about our campaign, but also allowed people to patriciate on a deeper level.

On the inside bottom of our boxes it says, “Take it a step further: Place the following items in this box and donate to your local homeless shelter.” Then there is a list of items, inviting people to fill the box and donate it. This was our way of repurposing packaging and allowing people to further make an impact.

How to Source and Develop the Perfect Packaging

Q: The current version of the box is very sturdy, has a map of the shelters you partner with, and tells people what to donate to their local shelter if they want to continue the mission. Did it go through several revisions and stages?

A: Sourcing the boxes was quite a process. We got about 15 different samples from manufacturers around the world. One of our first orders was around 5,000 boxes, so we had to be extremely strategic in who we chose in order to eliminate as much risk as possible. We needed the boxes to feel and look premium. 

Make Your Product Stand Out—Even With a Small Budget

Q: What advice would you give to brands who have yet to launch or are in their early stages who also want their product packaging to be unique and convey their mission, but have small budgets and are still bootstrapping?

A: It’s worth upping your prices $2-$5 to ensure you have premium packaging. Think of all the most elite product companies: Apple, Nike, etc. When you get a product, the first experience with your product matters.

Packaging is not something you use to sell to customers, but to create returning customers. Our company has over a 20% repeat customer rate—packaging is part of that. 

Customize Your Packaging for Partners

Q: You have quite a few corporate partners, and you also customize the boxes for each partnership. Was this a “surprise and delight” factor or a selling point?

A: Companies love their logos on stuff. Since we don’t allow other companies’ logos on our product, the box the blankets come in became the vehicle to allow us to do custom branding without jeopardizing or cheapening our brand.

Seeing the Impact

Q: How have customers responded to the boxes?

A: I receive photos and messages all the time from people saying that they filled their boxes up and took them to a shelter. I love seeing people take it a step further and become contributors. Many people want to make a difference but don’t know where to start—our boxes are that start.

Unboxing the Product

Thank you, Bob, for your thoughts and incredible, purpose-driven product!

When I received my very own Sackcloth & Ashes’ blanket, I was absolutely wowed by the packaging! It was definitely a “surprise and delight” factor for me, and made me instantly love the product even before I held it in my hands.

The box does a terrific job of explaining the company’s mission, how customers are already a part of it, and other steps customers can take. The simple act of opening the product made me feel like I was making a real difference. Curious to see it for yourself? Take a peek at my beautiful blanket and watch me unbox it here:

If you want to hear more about Bob and the Sackcloth & Ashes story, be sure to also listen or watch his interview on the Logistics with Purpose podcast series, presented by Vector Global Logistics and Supply Chain Now. You’ll be inspired—I certainly was!

How does this make you rethink your product packaging?

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Bob Dalton is the founder and CEO of Sackcloth & Ashes, a mission-driven company that gives a blanket to a homeless shelter for each one purchased. In June 2018, he launched Blanket the United States—a campaign with the goal of donating one million blankets to homeless shelters by 2024. He now works to bring awareness and resources to grassroots organizations and speaks at events on the topics of entrepreneurship and social sustainability.

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I’m Kristi Porter, and I help cause-focused organizations understand and execute effective marketing campaigns so they can move from stressed to strategic. Your resources may be limited, but your potential isn’t. Whether you’re a nonprofit, social enterprise, or small business who wants to give back, I’ll show you how to have a bigger impact.

4 Methods for Understanding What Your Customers and Donors Really Think

Consumers and donors today have the world at their fingertips. They’re able to conduct their own research on organizations and products, and are faced with a wide variety of options to choose from. If you want to stand out from the crowd—and attract your ideal donors and customers—you need to have a deep understanding of your audience, their behavior, and why they make the decisions they do. 

Basically, you need to have a good grasp of why they would choose to support you rather than another nonprofit or social enterprise.

But how?
Two words! Market research. 

You may have heard this term thrown around before, but what is it really? Market research is a way of gathering information to better understand your target audience and what they want. Using a few proven techniques, you can gain valuable insight into your audience and get direct feedback from them about their interest in your organization.

No more guessing or assuming!

When done intentionally, market research can help you gain more support for your cause, reach a bigger audience, improve the experience of your current customers or donors, and build a stronger overall marketing strategy for your nonprofit or social impact company. 

So, let’s get into the nitty gritty of how to understand what your customers and donors really think so you can reach more people for your cause! 

When To Use Market Research

You know you could probably benefit from learning more about what your donors and customers want. Who couldn’t? But where do you start? When is the right time for it? 

Maybe you’re thinking about launching a new product or service and you’re not sure how much support it would actually receive. Or, maybe you want to pivot and take your organization in a new direction, like if you’re a nonprofit wanting to start selling products or build a social enterprise. Knowing more about your audience will help you create services and products that people actually want.

Market research is also beneficial when you already have a product or service that’s not performing as well as you’d like, or your sales or donations have decreased lately. That’s a perfect time to reevaluate or troubleshoot your strategy.

Expanding your client or donor base is important, too! But you need to know as much as you can about them in order to successfully grow.

Market research is also just a great way to check in with your audience regularly. People change, and so do their priorities. This can help ensure that you’re still providing what they’re looking for. 

To illustrate some of the ideas above, let’s take my annual holiday giveaway as an example. I host this giveaway every year in order to hear directly from my clients and email subscribers about who they are, what they need, how they found me, and much more. It also allows me to collect information that helps me refine my current products and services (and website copy!) as well as gives me ideas for future products and services. And who doesn’t love free things? A win for both of us!

To sum it up: Market research is essential housekeeping for your organization, and should especially be implemented in any of these cases. It will help you stay relevant, in-touch, and even anticipate your audience’s needs.

Tips for Getting Started with Market Research

So you’re ready to better understand your audience, awesome! Here are a few tips that will help you define your goal and set you up for success.

• Determine the objective of your research: 

  What is your goal? What are you trying to achieve with this research? 

  Do you want to expand your audience, increase sales, get more donations, something else? Determining this objective will help you figure out what method of research will work best for you and what data you hope to collect.

• Define your target market: 

  The point of this research is to learn all you can about the people in your market, but you need to know who you’re talking to first. 

  Think about who you want to reach. Who is your message, product, or service for? Be as specific as possible when thinking about who you want to attract to your nonprofit or social enterprise.

• Look at the competition: 

  It’s equally as important to know who you’re up against! Look into other organizations like yours from the eyes of a donor or customer. What do you like? What do you not like? What are they doing well and what needs improvement? How do you compare? 

  This is a great way to hone in on your own unique position and create an even better experience for your customers or donors.

How To Better Understand Your Customers and Donors

With market research, you’re hearing straight from the source rather than relying on your own personal thoughts and biases, which is crucial. 

Here are four ways to conduct market research to gain valuable insights into your current audience or target market.

1. Interviews

   Interviews allow for one-on-one, face-to-face (virtually works, too) discussions with members of your target audience. This is a great method for digging deep and also allows for a natural flow of conversation. You can follow different threads of the conversation to gain more insight, and it’s good for reading non-verbal cues, too! This is great for really connecting with your audience and building a rapport, but be sure to ask targeted, direct questions that evoke thoughtful responses.

   Additionally, be sure to take really good notes, or when possible, record the interview so you can hear their exact words again later.

2. Online surveys

   Surveys are a quick, inexpensive, easy way to hear from people, and the most commonly used method. These can be delivered as an online questionnaire or via email. They don’t require the scheduling and time of an interview, but you also may not get as in-depth responses or be able to ask clarifying questions. You can, however, collect a lot of data very quickly with surveys, and it is generally pretty straightforward and easy to analyze. This is the easiest way for people to participate as well.

3. Focus groups

   Focus groups bring together a carefully curated group of people who fit the target market. A professional moderator leads a discussion and asks questions about the product, service, or organization and gains insight into how the group feels. However, focus groups can be expensive and also lead to errors in research. Dominance bias (when one participant influences the rest of the group) and moderator style bias (when different moderators’ styles influence the group in different ways) are two effects that can skew your data results.

4. Customer observation

   A less expensive alternative to focus groups, this allows you (or someone from your organization) to observe a member of your target audience interacting with your product, whether it be navigating your website or testing something more concrete. While you won’t be able to get into their head like with the other methods, observing people in their natural setting without the influence of others can allow you to get a sense of where they hit roadblocks, what they like, and how they use your product or service.

Before we move on, let’s talk about incentives for participating in your market research. Offering an incentive is a great way to increase participation. This could be a small discount, giveaway, or free access to a resource. People love to receive something in return for their time, and you’ll likely receive more feedback!  

Oftentimes, this does depend on the amount of work required to participate, the number of responses you want, and your relationship to the person. For example, a focus group or interview is more time consuming than filling out an online survey. And if your audience isn’t highly engaged, they may need an enticement in exchange for their time. It can, of course, just also be used as a nice gesture.

How to Choose the Best Format for Your Market Research

There are clearly pros and cons to each method of research, and you have to determine which one works best for you and for your needs at this time. This is largely dependent on who your target audience is and what your objective is. That’s why they’re so important to define!

If you’re a nonprofit wanting to drive more people to your cause and gain more donors, an online survey may suffice. That way, you can gauge what people think about your communications, the feelings your messaging evokes, and what programs people are most interested in. 

If you’re a social enterprise and you want to introduce a new product, an interview might be best. Having a conversation with someone may allow you to get deeper insight into how they feel about the product and if they would really spend their money on it. An online survey could allow you to see if someone is interested or not, but it may be harder to discern intention versus action, and it doesn’t give you the level of detail a face-to-face interview does.

A conversation I had recently is a great example of choosing your format. I was speaking with a nonprofit leader and she wanted to create a new revenue stream by introducing a subscription box of premium bath and body products. This was a completely new venture for them, so I suggested that she conduct some market research to find out if her audience would be interested in making the purchase.

This was going to be a LOT of additional work for them, so she needed to gather information on whether it would even be of interest to their current donor base, since that was who they would initially start selling to.

Additionally, I suggested that she conduct focus groups or one-on-one interviews rather than an online survey because her audience may think that it’s a great idea but may not be willing to make a premium purchase ($100+) in reality. They needed to have actual conversations with people to work through potential issues like these ahead of time.

Ultimately, you want to choose the method your audience will best respond to and that will get you to the answers you need.

Asking the Right Market Research Questions

The other challenge in determining how to conduct thorough market research is figuring out which questions to ask participants. Whether via an online questionnaire or an in-person interview/focus group, you need to ask questions that are not only open-ended (more than a yes or no), but will help you achieve your goals.

There are some base questions you should be asking, but you also need to assess what questions best fit the purpose of your research. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Gather background information:

• What are the demographics of your audience? 

  • Age, gender, race/ethnicity, location, employment, etc

• What are the psychographics?

  • Their ethics, values, personalities, attitudes, lifestyles, and interests

  • You can find some of this out with questions like, “What are your hobbies?”, “What causes do you regularly support?”, “What five adjectives describe you best?”

Learn about how they view your organization: 

• How did they find you?

• How would they describe your organization and what you do?

• Why do they think your work matters?

• What do they think you should offer in the future? 

  • You can also give them a few options and let them choose what they like best!

• What do they think the benefits of your organization are?

• Where did they find the most useful or valuable information?

Gain more insight into what they want:

• What challenges were they facing when they realized they needed this product/service?

• What made them interested in organizations like yours?

• How did they know something in this organization could help them?

• What made them want to get involved with your mission or use your products?

• How familiar are they with other options on the market?

• Where do they go to find more information/different options?

Asses the roadblocks:

• What issues are they facing with your product or service?

• What problems do they currently see?

• What problems do they think could arise?

• What did they dislike about your product/service/organization? 

• What would they find more helpful in the future/what areas do they think need improvement?

Evaluate the cost:

• If you’re offering a product, how much are they willing to spend on it?

• If you’re a nonprofit, how much are they willing to donate?

Note: Money questions may be tricky. My sales coach always says, “People buy with emotion and justify with logic.” So, just be prepared that you may not get the answers you want with these questions . . . or people’s actions may be very different from their intentions. It’s not bad to ask; just use it as a guide rather than gospel.

Notice that these are mostly open-ended questions. Asking open-ended questions helps you get deeper insights. You could also mix in numeric scale questions and vary the question structure. For example, the question could ask the user to rate their answer on a scale of 1-5, one being “Strongly Disagree” and five being “Strongly Agree.”

There are many examples of great questions here, but be careful in asking too many! You don’t want to overwhelm people or take more of their time than needed. Choose strategic questions from a few different categories that will best benefit the goal of your research.

Wrapping It All Up

Once you conduct your research and gather all your data, you’ll be left with a vast amount of helpful, insightful information to analyze and keep on hand. This process will likely uncover new patterns and trends you might not have fully noticed before. Not to mention give you a deeper understanding of your audience and how they respond to your mission.

After all is said and done, you can take your newfound knowledge and create an action plan to implement what you’ve learned. By conducting market research, you can not only better understand your current audience, but find new customers and donors that deeply resonate with your mission.

Moving forward, your services, products, and marketing will be more aligned with your ideal audience, making all your efforts more successful. In fact, your customers and donors may even think you’ve read their mind!

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I’m Kristi Porter, and I help cause-focused organizations understand and execute effective marketing campaigns so they can move from stressed to strategic. Your resources may be limited, but your potential isn’t. Whether you’re a nonprofit, social enterprise, or small business who wants to give back, I’ll show you how to have a bigger impact.

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This post was co-written by Kristi Porter and Megan Westbrook.

4 Tips for Turning Your Customers and Donors into Passionate Fans

If you haven’t heard of Change the World By How You Shop, you’re in for a real treat! LeeAnne McCoy has been a member of the Signify community since the early days, and I can testify that she and her ethical shopping guide are dedicated to helping people find products that they’ll not only love, but allow them to make a difference.

And in the course of researching brands to include in her guide, LeeAnne has had dozens of conversations with makers and founders, and has unique insight into why some brands can turn their customers and donors into passionate fans while others simply sell their goods.

I’ve asked her to share those differences with you in the hopes that you can also make the leap from store to sensation. Because when you can successfully turn customers into advocates, you’ll be able to take your mission to a whole new level and make a bigger impact.

A few months ago, one of Mercy House Global’s homes for teenage moms in Kenya burned to the ground. And in a passionate response to the tragedy, I watched the bars quickly fill up on their online fundraising campaign. Within a matter of hours, they raised thousands of dollars—enough to replace all the items lost in the fire including clothes, beds, and more for the young moms and their little ones.

And recently, Shelley, founder of Papillon, was visiting Haiti. She shared with her Facebook followers some of the medical needs of the artisans who work for her. Before she got on her flight home the next morning, she was able to tell her employees that people they had never met had donated enough to cover all their medical expenses. 

These kinds of stories are actually common for these two nonprofits. Not only do they quickly raise funds for their needs, but they also frequently sell out of newly released fair trade products. Why? 

They both have a very loyal following of customers and donors who are as passionate about their mission as they are. 

So, how can you turn your customers and donors into fans as loyal as those who follow Mercy House Global and Papillon? Below are four ways nonprofits and social enterprises turn followers into passionate fans.

1. Be Real

Lauren, owner of the small ethical online boutique Naupaka, is not afraid to admit her mistakes. As a one-woman-show, she sometimes sends out newsletters twice or sale notices on the wrong day and then sends a funny apology email with the correction.

Her transparency makes shopping from her online store feel like shopping at your local brick and mortar.

Shelley from Papillon is also very transparent about her challenges in running a nonprofit, as well as her relationships with her employees. She recently posted a live cell phone video on Facebook of the Papillon workshop in Haiti. Watching the banter, the smiles, and even those who ducked down because they were too shy to be on camera was like being there in person. This did far more to inspire support for Papillon than any professionally recorded video could have done.

Your supporters are inundated constantly with advertisements and requests for donations, but a sense of authenticity can make your requests stand out from the crowd. 

2. Be Personal

Because of the pandemic, connecting in person with your followers may not always be possible, but there are numerous ways to personally connect from a distance.

A handwritten note goes a long way. I treasure the many handwritten notes I have received from various social enterprises and artisans I support through Change the World by How You Shop. A personal email can have the same impact.

Facebook offers some great opportunities for connecting personally with your followers. Shop with a Mission has had to close the doors of their fair trade store in California all year because of COVID-19. However, they started weekly Facebook live shows where they laugh, tell jokes, host giveaways, and show off products. By watching the live shows, both local and out-of-state followers get to connect personally with the owners and employees.

Several other fair trade shops have utilized Facebook to introduce international artisans via live video. Others, like Mercy House Global, have created an “insiders” group which invites a small group of their fans to be a special part of their mission. Shelley from Papillon goes one step further and “friends” customers and donors on her personal Facebook page.

People are more likely to support organizations they have a personal connection to. Thus, the common joke about “Mom is my biggest fan.” Whatever method you employ, keep looking for ways to help your followers feel like they are personally invested in you and your mission. 

3. Be Specific

Recently, I purchased a basket from Eternal Threads, a nonprofit fair trade organization. Beautiful as the handwoven basket is, I bought it not just for its beauty or because I wanted to support a generic cause such as fighting poverty in Africa. I bought it because it was Rosemary’s basket. From following Eternal Threads, I had learned Rosemary’s story, how she lost both her parents and was raising her younger siblings and selling baskets to pay their school fees. I bought her basket to remind me to pray for Rosemary and because she inspires me. 

Even when you cannot share names or pictures, you can still be specific: 

Likewise, Papillon recently shared that one of their employees’ sons was HIV positive. Because of the stigma around HIV, they could not share names or pictures, but they shared enough details of the story to inspire many to donate.  

And when Mercy House Global started their fundraising campaign after the fire, they raised funds for specific needs, one at a time, such as mosquito nets, beds, and toddler clothes. Each individual need they posted was quickly provided for by donors who understood their mission, what was being asked of them, and what the result would be from their contribution.

4. Follow Up

Giving frequent updates on your supporters’ impact will strengthen their commitment to your mission. Papillon sends frequent updates to the donors who contributed to their employees’ medical needs. And Mercy House continues to send updates on the teen moms who lost their homes in the fire and the new homes they hope to purchase for them.

Eternal Threads, who sells Rosemary’s baskets, continues to share her story. Recently, her little brother was robbed and beaten on the way to work and his cell phone and bicycle were stolen. When they shared the need for donations to cover his medical care, it was simply one more chance to be part of an ongoing story.  The update and personal thank you from Rosemary they forwarded to donors ensured they would be quick to participate in the future as well.

Every little step you take towards having authentic, personal, specific, and ongoing communication with your followers will help build their relationship with you. And nurturing those relationships over time will turn customers and donors from occasional supporters into passionate fans who will be vital partners in accomplishing your mission.

It’s certainly worked for the organizations above. How will you make it work for you?

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LeeAnne McCoy is a mother of six young children and a piano teacher in Washington State. In her "spare time," she is also the creator of Change the World by the How You Shop, an online ethical shopping guide which makes it easy to find products from brands that go beyond ethical and fair trade to change lives around the world. Her mission is to support those brands by helping more people discover their products.

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I’m Kristi Porter, and I help cause-focused organizations understand and execute effective marketing campaigns so they can move from stressed to strategic. Your resources may be limited, but your potential isn’t. Whether you’re a nonprofit, social enterprise, or small business who wants to give back, I’ll show you how to have a bigger impact.

4 Ways to Help Donors and Customers Find Your Social Impact Mission on Google

Getting found by your ideal customers and donors on Google . . . it’s the Holy Grail, isn’t it? It’s one of the main reasons you created your website, but you quickly learned that it isn’t a “build it and they will come” scenario.

Or, is it?

While it’s not easy and it does take time, there is one method that you can’t overlook if you want your nonprofit or social enterprise to show up on that coveted first page of Google: Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

By this point in Internet history, you’ve probably heard the term, but you may be lost as to what it is and how to make it work for your mission. I know I was. For several years, I tried to learn from the latest guru but kept getting overwhelmed and scratching my head—until I met Meg Casebolt of Love At First Search.

Meg is the first person to make SEO click for me, and she’s going to break down some of the basics for you below. If you start to put her advice into action, you will see results. After taking her course, I have seen a steady uptick in new leads and clients from Google! And it’s exciting every single time.

Your work deserves more attention and with Meg’s advice, you can help ideal customers and donors find your social impact mission on Google.

Let me guess, when you first announced your nonprofit or social enterprise and launched your website, you expected people to come to you in flocks. And maybe they did . . . at first! Who wouldn’t? You’re awesome and you believe in what you do, and it’s having an impact on the world! 

But now that the initial excitement has worn off, your social media channels aren’t getting as many clicks as you’d like and it seems that all your efforts are falling flat. You know that you have the power to change lives, but people just aren’t finding you.

What if I told you there’s a way to help more people find your amazing cause online?

When people want something, they search for it, and if you set your website up correctly, it can show up around the clock to lead them to learn more about your cause. The secret to getting those new leads from Google? It’s called search engine optimization, or SEO.

I know it might sound intimidating or even a little sketchy (we all get those spammy emails!), but I promise that the SEO tactics below are all based in solid business practices. Good SEO, applied to your blog posts in particular, will help every part of your online presence so that more people are aware of the beneficial work you’re doing.

Wait, What is SEO?

To put it simply, SEO is a collection of activities to improve the amount and quality of organic traffic reaching your website from search engines. It’s the way that people find answers to their questions on traditional search engines (like Google, Bing, and Yahoo) and also on sites you may not think of as search engines (like YouTube, Pinterest, eBay, and Amazon) and even industry specific directories like Charity Navigator or Guidestar by Candid.

Optimizing for search means that you’re trying to get search engines like Google—the world’s most popular search engine—to see your website and blog posts or other content as both knowledgeable and trustworthy, and to lead people to it quickly and efficiently.

And the combination of more people finding you plus being seen as knowledgeable and trustworthy means an increase in sales or donations.

There are three main components of SEO:

1. Content (pages, blogs, videos, podcast show notes, infographics, etc.)

   Search engines are constantly reviewing new and fresh content on the internet. When someone types in an online query, Google searches through a huge index of text and tries to find content that has the information they’re looking for. 

   When it comes to content, a major part of the SEO process is keyword research (aka figuring out what people are searching for) by finding the intersection of:

   • What you want to be found for

   • What people are searching for

   • What doesn’t already have a gazillion results

2. Ease of Use

   When search engines deliver results, they want people to get the answers they’re looking for quickly and easily. So, if your site takes forever to load, is hard to read on a phone, or has tons of dead-end links, Google doesn’t want to share those results with people. Search engines want to recommend sites that not only answer people’s questions but also look good doing it—just like you, hot stuff!

3. Reputation

   Google relies on other sites to tell it how credible and trustworthy your site is. So, how do other sites give you the digital equivalent of upvotes? By linking to your site. And for once, the SEO gods have given us an easy-to-understand term for this: backlinks. 

   Backlinks are any links from other sites to yours. The best backlinks come from websites in your industry that have high authority (aka they have a lot of backlinks going into their site).

You can write the best blog post in the world and have the smoothest user experience, but if nobody trusts you? Womp womp, sad trombones.

What are some easy ways to get great backlinks for your nonprofit? Sign up for popular directories like Guidestar by Candid and Charity Navigator, post your job listings on Idealist, write guest blog posts for the Chronicle of Philanthropy or Nonprofit Quarterly . . . and make sure they all link to your website.

For you guys in the social enterprise space, you can become a member of the Social Enterprise Alliance, register as a B Corp, participate in 1% for the Planet, or any other number of organizations that have trusted online directories.

Even more PR-related opportunities like being a guest on a podcast (that has online show notes) or being listed as a speaker on a conference website helps to build those coveted backlinks.

Local SEO for Nonprofits and Social Enterprise Businesses

If you serve a specific geographic area with your services, you also want to consider Local SEO tactics. 

The first step for Local SEO is to set up a free Google My Business account, where you can easily tell Google where you’re located (if you have a brick and mortar location) and/or where your service area is (if you’re a home-based business or meet your clients at another location), as well as what you offer and who you serve.

Google My Business is a great tool not only for you to directly share your business information with Google, but also to solicit feedback from your clients, who can add reviews and user-generated content like photos directly to your account. This would then allow searchers to see them in Google Maps and/or local listings . . . like the B Corp company that installed our solar panels, which shows up in search results for terms like “green energy rochester ny.”

But how do you FIND those phrases that people might be looking for? 

Keyword Research for Cause-Focused Organizations

You probably already have some ideas for topics you could show up for like “educational charity atlanta” or “community gardening initiative” or “microfinance for poverty alleviation.” And you might have those words plastered all over your website. 

But is that really what your people are looking for? How do you know what they’re typing into Google?

Simple: keyword research. 

Keywords are the phrases in your web content that make it possible for people to find your site via search engines.

And often, the words that WE use (as people who deeply understand and care about our missions) are different from the words that new people search. 

For example, TOMS shoes starts their website with “we’re in the business to improve lives,” but do you know what keywords their traffic actually comes from? Keywords like “booties” (they get ~5000 visitors/mo from that), “wedges” (3500 visitors/mo). And “slip on shoes” (~2500 visitors/mo).

And it’s not just those large categories that TOMS shows up for . . . they also get about 75 people per month for “black canvas shoes” and 65 for “captain america shoes.” 

Those people aren’t specifically looking for TOMS because of their mission or corporate giving program, they just need new shoes, and it’s not until people get to the website that they find out about the company’s social impact. That’s not necessarily what they’re searching for, but it might be why they trust the company and want to buy once they discover it.

Here are three steps to help you get started with keyword research:

1. See what people are asking about your topic

   The best way to answer people’s questions is to go to the places they’re asking them and look for trends. So poke around the web! How do you know what phrases people are actually searching for once they get to Google? Easy! Use a keyword research tool.
   Type your topic into an idea generator tool like Answer the Public or Also Asked to get some fun ideas of the types of things people are looking for. 

2. Find the right keyword phrases

   One of the best free keyword research tools is Ubersuggest. It gives a ton of keyword research data to you—for free—in a user-friendly way. Using a tool like this, you can do some research on the keywords and topics you want to get out to the world and get an idea of how many people are searching for it. You can also get an idea of the SEO difficulty of these keywords, or how competitive that search term is. The lower the number, the easier it is to rank for that search term.

3. Choose 1 primary keyword and 2-3 secondary keywords

   In order to be super clear with Google about your topic or expertise, you should choose ONE KEYWORD that is most important to your end goal so that your writing has something to focus on. Then, you can sprinkle a few other keywords throughout your writing to make sure Google knows that they’re related. 

   If you’re having trouble narrowing down a keyword, don’t worry about it! Select a group of keywords for a specific post, and then if you find other keywords you like, write another post to talk about those!

You can create as much content as you’d like, and you can rank for infinitely keywords. The Red Cross has over 300,000 keywords pointing to over 10,000 pages on their site—heck, they have 14,000 keywords just about CPR!—so don’t feel like you have to limit yourself to a top three for your entire site. 

Keyword selection criteria

How do you select a good keyword, you might ask? For my visual learners, these are the three qualities of a good keyword. We’re aiming for that sweet spot in the middle). 

And here are some examples of how detailed your search terms can be, so you can start thinking about the level of detail that you need to rank for a high volume, low competition keyword:

Let’s take a look at what comes up when we search for “social impact” in Ubersuggest.

Here, we see that people are indeed searching for “social impact,” and we can see all the important metrics. VOLUME is the average monthly number of people searching that phrase, CPC and PD are about how many people are running Google Ads and how much they’re paying, and SD is “search difficulty” (how easy it would be to rank for that term).  

So when you’re looking at these numbers: The higher the volume number the better, and the lower the “SD” (aka SEO difficulty, aka competition) number, the better.

And if we search “social responsibility,” as seen below, we have even better volume numbers, meaning more people are looking for content relating to social responsibility! So, you may want to focus on a blog more catered to this topic.

Alright, so you’ve done your research and you have a keyword now, but I bet you’re wondering where it should go on your site or in your blog . . .

Where Do I PUT the Keyword in My Content? 

There are seven key places where you can include your keyword in the text of your website and your content. You should aim to include it in all these places, but if it doesn’t quite fit into one, it’s okay. It’s more important to be easy to read than to have the perfect placement.

1. Your SEO title (the blue text in search results)

2. Your URL slug (the part after the domain)

3. Meta description (the black text in search results)

4. Headline (the title of your post and your H1 headline)

5. In a subheading (H2-H6: you can have as many of these as you want)

6. In your image description(s) as an “alt” tag

7. Sprinkled throughout the body copy

The most important place to include your keyword is your SEO title, which is the blue text that shows up on the search engine results page. You want to include a keyword, but also write a title that people actually want to click on! 

I like to use CoSchedule’s Headline Studio to double check my post headlines (and email subject lines) to make sure they’re the right length, follow a great format (lists and questions do well for SEO titles), and include powerful word choices that make people more likely to click. 

 If you can’t immediately convince people who see your site on Google to click on it, it doesn’t matter how good your content is! You have to make an immediate impression. And your SEO Title will do just that.

Questions to Ask Before You Write a Single Word

Now, before you go writing a few pages and invest hours into your next blog post (or whatever content you plan to create) to promote your stellar social enterprise or nonprofit, ask yourself these four questions to get clear about how that content can get found on Google and turn your readers into customers or donors:  

1. Why does my audience need to know this?

   If you can’t identify why you’re writing the post: don’t write it. BUT. If you can pinpoint the problem that you’re solving or advice you’re giving your reader by writing a post? By all means, continue.

2. How is this different from existing content on this topic?

   You’re probably not the first person to write about whatever is on your mind. But you do have a unique point of view to share with your audience. Take a look around at what’s being written by other people in your industry. Think of a new approach to what’s already been said. Showcase what makes you different.

3. How can it help me when someone finds this?

   Remember, everything on your website should help lead the reader to becoming a customer or donor. What’s the end product, service, or mission that your audience needs or should know about? 

4. What do I want the reader to do after reading?

   What’s the goal of this post? What will be the Call to Action (CTA) for the reader to thank you for generously sharing your awesomeness? Should they make a donation, buy a product, subscribe to your newsletter, or attend your event? Make sure everything you write is leading to that CTA.

Going the Extra Mile: A Quick SEO Blog Checklist

Now that you know what people are searching for and you’ve got those keywords selected and prioritized, it’s time to get writing! To make sure you really have all your ducks in a row and to ensure your blog is in the best position to get noticed, follow the below steps before publishing anything. 

• Choose your topic

• Research keywords (remember: specific, relevant, uncommon)

• Draft your title (Include your keyword and keep it intriguing!) 

• Write the thing!

  • Break up your ideas with subheadings

  • Work in your keyword and related words naturally (ideally every ~250 words)

• Add images (you should have at least one as the featured image)

  • Name the file with your keyword

  • Add an alt tag on each

• Add internal links to other resources on your site

• Add external links to relevant places around the internet

• Prep the listing

  • Make sure the title is 30-65 characters

  • Update the URL/Slug (include keyword here!)

  • Write the meta description (155 characters)

• If you have Wordpress, double check your Yoast traffic lights.

Get the full comprehensive SEO checklist here.

Need some hands-on support with SEO for your social enterprise or nonprofit? 

If you don’t want to DIY your SEO, come check out my Attract & Activate membership, where we help small businesses and cause-focused organizations to reach and convert their ideal customers and donors through the power of SEO.

(KP note: I can attest first-hand as to what a patient and fun teacher is! There is a strong learning curve for a lot of us when it comes to SEO, but Meg will do everything in her power to make sure you can understand and implement her ideas. Plus, after those leads start coming in, you’ll be glad you took the time to learn a new skill!)

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Meg Casebolt is the owner and founder of Love At First Search and has been helping online business owners create beautiful, search-friendly websites and strategic content for the past eight years. 

Before launching Love At First Search, Meg spent nine years in the nonprofit sector, working in the development teams at Big Brothers Big Sisters and Partners In Health, while earning her Masters in Community Economic Development.

She’s your no-B.S. bestie who makes it super easy for your dream customers to find—and adore!—your organization online, resulting in effortless web traffic, consistent customers, soaring profit and donations, and SO much more time (and sanity)!

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I’m Kristi Porter, and I help cause-focused organizations understand and execute effective marketing campaigns so they can move from stressed to strategic. Your resources may be limited, but your potential isn’t. Whether you’re a nonprofit, social enterprise, or small business who wants to give back, I’ll show you how to have a bigger impact.