95. Some Personal News (SPN)
11 ways to expand reach to every audience
A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers. I’m thrilled to have you as readers and truly appreciate your feedback and support.
We know that a donor’s journey from intention to action isn’t always linear. More on that below! Yet Fundraise Up’s data shows that up to a staggering 75% of abandoned and initiated donations are never completed.
Enter → the Abandoned Donations feature: a groundbreaking tool designed to bridge this gap and enhance your donor engagement plan.
Game changer? It was for me.
In this week’s SPN:
How to prepare for an SGE-driven donor experience
Google’s HUGE update to Search
Donor engagement: loops and funnels
11 ways to expand your reach
Jobs & Opps that caught my eye this week
Let’s dig in!
How to Prep for an SGE-Driven Search Experience
Google’s HUGE update to the Search Engine Results Page, named Search Generative Experience (SGE), will have a ginormous impact on how nonprofit’s approach SEM, SEO, and Branding Campaigns.
This isn’t a technical Search Engine post. I’ve tried to keep it practical and included recommendations.
What is SGE? A summary of all the results available on the SERP (search engine results page), put together by AI and placed right at the top of the search results page. It usually looks like this:
The SGE-generated snippet can be expanded, usually includes up to 8 links selected by Google for the user to learn more, and sometimes provides the functionality for the user to ask a follow-up question.
Even though SGE is supposed to be in Beta and only enabled for those who opted in for the Google Search Experiment Labs, you can try it out by adding “Google sge” to most search queries if you haven’t seen it before.
Let’s explore how this update will impact the donor’s search experience, how it will impact your approach to SEO, SEM, and Digital Marketing, and then what you should be doing to prepare for an SGE-driven search experience.
How will it Impact the Donor’s Search Experience?
SGE is in its early days of maturity and will evolve drastically over the following months and years, but 3 things are safe to say:
AI-generated search experiences are here to stay. Gone are the days of “ten blue links” and paid ads on top of them. Users are looking for simplified experiences, gladly taking one paragraph of text answering their question or one product recommendation instead of a list of options.
SGE pushes Ads down the page. Despite a couple of examples where this is not the case, for most of us, SGE means the ads will be pushed down, leading to fewer impressions, clicks, and site visits.
Websites included in the SGE summaries will reap the rewards. The 8 websites included in the “learn more” links are guaranteed to receive more organic traffic than anybody else.
There’s much to learn about SGE - check out Bright Edge’s technical guide on how SGE works for the user and SE Ranking’s snippet research, which covers the SGE experience among 100,000 handpicked keywords.
How will it Impact your SEO, SEM, and Digital Marketing?
With evolving user experiences, Orgs’ search channel performance must follow. A few facts stand out so far from the SE Ranking’s research I shared above:
64% of the analyzed keywords already have an SGE answer or a Generate button, and this number will undoubtedly rise to above 90% by the end of 2024.
85.5% of SGE snippets link to one or more domains from the top 10 organic results, proving that good SEO “today” will give a head start to organizations “tomorrow” as SGE gets out of beta and user adoption increases.
Quora.com, local.google.com (Google Maps), and en.wikipedia.org are the most linked domains in SGE, highlighting that locational (Maps) and contextual (Quora, Wikipedia) relevance and depth of content will be the name of the game.
Long-tail keywords are more likely to trigger AI-powered responses, further amplifying the importance of educational content. This behavior is very similar to what we already see with Voice SEO that I discussed in SPN #59.
In 27% of cases, no ads accompanied SGE snippets, and in 73%, ads were present. This means a minimum 27% reduction in SEM traffic is coming. This number will likely end up even higher because of users who never scroll down to ads even when they are present. Knowing Google’s unwillingness to reduce its revenue, it’s also safe to assume the remaining clicks will be more expensive.
SGE experience includes text links, YouTube videos, images, and Product recommendations. The number and type of SGE-included elements are bound to expand, but the evidence is clear that visual content will remain important.
How to Prepare for an SGE-driven Search Experience?
Produce lots – LOTS – of educational content and landing pages. With SGE adoption increasing, landing page relevancy to the long-tail, conversational keywords will likely become extremely important. Websites will be fighting for inclusion in 8 magical “learn more” links and concepts that used to be typical for paid search ads – answer the question, match the keyword – will migrate to landing pages.
Long-tail keywords tend to be less inclined to generate immediate donations. They should be considered as “Branding campaigns”, introducing prospective donors to the Org when they’re only researching causes close to their heart. Hot take: SEO will become an essential part of the Branding budget.
There’s no good way to test it now but one example can be checking your most important keywords by adding “google sge” – whether it triggers the experience or not is secondary. In the below example, IRC is well-positioned to be included in the SGE summary for opt-in users:
Invest in Video content and a YouTube channel. Org’s not present on YouTube will miss out on a huge chunk of traffic. YouTube videos are already a significant part of Google’s Search Results page, but given the likely decline in paid clicks on Google.com, it’s safe to assume Google will push even more than needed video results into SGE—moving users to YouTube and further monetizing them.
For Orgs, it presents an opportunity – and a need – to produce more video content about its impact that users will likely click on.
Get your Technical SEO ducks in a row. Machines work based on instructions, and large language models - such as the one behind SGE - are not exceptions. Regardless of how much content you have on your website, it must be readable by the machine for SGE to “get” it, score it, and include it in its summary. If your website doesn’t yet include Schema Markup, it will remain a mystery to SGE.
If your Org has physical products – you’re starting from pole position. I mentioned that Shopping Ads are the only ad type that appears above the SGE summary. Assets such as charity: water store, St. Jude Gift Shop, or UNICEF Inspired Gifts, will be the only ones that qualify for the Paid Product promotion – allowing these Orgs to ingest themselves into the search flow above everyone else. Shopping Ads are hard to make work profitably. If I had physical products at my disposal I’d start playing with Shopping Ads now.
Finally, start experimenting early. As a nonprofit operator, tap your curiosity and sign up for the Experiment Labs for Google Search - here are the steps - and explore the following →
Create a list of non-branded keywords that are most important for your Org’s paid search program. I’d aim for those that drive more than 1% of revenue each.
Set aside ~$100 a month from your paid media budget.
Create a new Google Ads campaign called something like “SGE Experiments.”
Target the above keywords and limit the targeting to your Org’s staff members as much as possible – using geo-targeting, interests (here is how you can see yours, in Google’s definition), and any other relevant parameters.
Turn on the Incognito mode and set aside 15 minutes daily to see how your ads appear for the above keywords with SGE enabled to avoid unpleasant surprises and be ready early.
Experiment with ad copy, landing pages, and YouTube content – immediately see the changes in experience.
SGE is new and it’s here to stay. It will have a profound impact on SEM and SEO performance for your Org’s Digital Fundraising. Orgs who experiment and learn with it quickly will come out ahead, and considerably improve both brand and fundraising performance.
Jobs & Opps 🛠️
The Hunger Project: Director, US Philanthropy ($130,000 - $150,000)
Partners in Health: Managing Director, Major and Principal Gifts ($170,000-$190,000)
ALSAC St Jude: Senior Director, Corporate Partnerships
The Trevor Project: VP Partnerships and Philanthropy ($160,000-$180,000)
Start Network: Director, Impact & Change (£69,615-£73,096)
UNWRA: Chief Private Sector Partnerships (P5)
Center for Reproductive Rights: Manager, Digital Fundraising ($93,000)
AbleLight: Chief Advancement Officer ($240,000-$250,000)
UNESCO: Public Partnerships Specialist (P3)
Texas Advocacy Project: Chief Development & Marketing Officer ($130,000 - $140,000)
Bloomingdale’s: Cause Marketing & Corporate Giving Specialist
InterAction: Director, Development ($125,000 - $160,000)
How to Expand Your Reach
Almost everything we do as Nonprofit Operators, not to mention everything we experience as a prospect and customer in our daily lives, is driven by the concept of converting people through some kind of funnel.
Your “funnel” represents the full donor journey from someone’s initial awareness of your mission all the way to their final donation decision.
It’s visualized as a funnel because at each stage, there’s going to be some percentage drop-off in the total number of people who graduate from the next step. It always gets narrower and smaller the further down the funnel they go.
What I find challenging about the funnel is there’s an end point. Any engagement and talk of lifetime value (LTV) is ignored. And funnels so easily create silos between teams.
At any level of giving, the traditional funnel view overlooks significant friction points and opportunities for improvement. Instead of thinking of acquisition in linear form, loops create self-reinforcing systems that integrate storytelling, fundraising and retention strategies holistically.
Growth Loops
Funnels give you distinct and independent inputs and outputs (people who converted to donation), whereas loops are self-sustaining. The reason? The output generated at the end of the loop can be reinvested as an input to make the loop bigger, benefiting from compounded growth effects.
So by virtue of their very nature, loops not only help in retaining and maximizing the value of existing donors (LTV) but also in continuously attracting new supporters - creating a compounding effect on fundraising growth. In a growth loop, each metric is interconnected: the growth of one directly contributes to the growth of the other.
I adopted this Loop approach to growth at UNICEF. It helped us move away from a fixed paid marketing = growth strategy mindset (every Org will face diminishing returns over time), and instead grow reach and incremental revenue across audience segments. We leveraged paid media to (highly) effectively accelerate other core growth loops, like content, by supplementing them rather than being the primary driver.
When we made this shift - likely simplified because I had content, organic social and paid media reporting into one place, measured against the same KPIs - what we learnt was that as we scaled and expanded our audience reach, we maintained efficient growth dynamics without over-reliance on paid channels.
Anyway, I should probably write a deep dive on transitioning from funnel framing to building growth loops. Hit “reply” to today’s SPN and give me a 👍 if this would interest you.
Let’s jump into 11 ways to expand your reach:
Lots of Orgs are starting to recognize that expanding reach and thinking about new audiences is no longer a secondary consideration this year. It’s a priority. Meta and Google are really the only two channels most Orgs are active in. But there’s plenty of other tools to generate awareness and $$$ demand.
Here’s what’s worked well for me when trying to establish reach, and identify and attract new audiences across every level of giving (Major Donors watch YouTube videos too):
Meta and Google Ads: The Holy Grail of Top of Funnel
Meta and Google, and specifically YouTube, are two of the biggest ad platforms for a reason - they work. Most of your Awareness ad dollars should still be spent on these two channels, and I’d be tempted to put 25% toward YouTube. The key to standing out isn’t in the campaign setup, it’s all in the creative. Invest in creating quality content that tells your Orgs brand story, who you are, why your mission is compelling, what gives you the right to compete in your category.
TV: The King’s Still Here
In SPN #43 we dived deep into TV. It’s the next best place to get massive Awareness beyond paid social. The CPMs on remnant TV are incredibly competitive (can be as low as $3) and convergent TV inventory (linear and streaming channels) still add massive ability for your performance paid social to scale efficiently.
Start simple - produce one engaging 60-second story-oriented commercial. Think of this like paving the road with reach, and then the Ferrari driving on that road is your performance ads. The better the road is paved, the smoother that ride will be.
Audio: The New Frontier of Discovery
Podcasts are a sleeper channel and have become a great place to discover or learn about new products and brands. I know podcasts aren’t anything new, but let me tell you what is… cult-followed influencer podcasts.
You can go to different exchanges to buy inventory on random health podcasts, crime podcasts, etc. But when you sponsor something like The Skinny Confidential or the Melissa Wood Health podcast, you’ll drive some insane numbers.
People aren’t there just for the content. They’re there to absorb and try to replicate the lifestyle of the host. These listeners also know the hosts aren’t going to promote Orgs with missions they don’t actually believe in - it’s similar to how D2C did customer acquisition through influencers on YouTube a couple of years ago.
Short-Form Content
Short form video has been and still is dominating social platforms and new program discovery for so many Orgs. Platforms like Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts are surfing the wave of content consumption. Use these platforms to answer the basic questions about your Org and its programs. Engage with your audience through comments and DMs, and use their curiosity as inspiration for your next video.
The way these platforms can immediately drive hundreds of thousands of views right now, completely for free… really, it’s a shame if you’re not taking advantage of the reach. Talk all about your programs, show behind the scenes footage, explain why you started it, put up 35 videos pitching 35 different reasons people should donate to your programmatic work, and explain the power of an unrestricted donation etc.
You can jump on trends to try ride it out and get views, but that doesn’t need to be the strategy. Genuinely talking about your programs in a way that’s exciting to listen to is all you need. Just pretend you’re explaining your work to a 6th grader, regardless of how deep the pockets are of your audience.
Creator Seeding: The Influencer Effect
When influencers share your product, it's not just the direct engagement that benefits you. Platforms like Instagram notice who views these posts, lowering your CPM and significantly boosting your awareness in a way that’s also a co-sign by the poster. Remember, it's about who sees your Orgs logo and associated programs, not just the immediate fundraising dollars raised.
Long term readers of SPN know that I like to seek inspo from outside of our industry. Brands like Aritzia (fashion) understand this and do a fantastic job. Their fans/customers help them promote new products, new ways to talk about the products, or just help drive awareness in new pockets and communities. This is something that either has to be done at scale or not done at all.
Brand Collaborations: Mutual Benefit and Visibility
Collaborating with a brand (Corp Partnership) can significantly increase your general visibility. It can be as grand as launching a collaborative program or even a product like the recent Liquid Death x Elf Cosmetics collab, but it can also be as light as doing an Instagram giveaway promoting your monthly pledge program.
The whole point is to cross-polinate audiences that you believe have benefits from being exposed to the other. American Express x Equinox. Vacation sunscreen x Prince tennis. TRUFF x Hidden Valley Ranch. All these overlaps create a win-win for both brands, and a win for the customers who’s a fan of the brand.
Another interesting form of collabs I've been seeing is similar to licensing. Disney, specifically, has been approaching brands like Sanzo (sparking water) to create a collab product that advertises a movie of theirs. It's using the brand as a platform to reach the audience they want, and it's helping the brand by giving it the Disney co-sign, as well as advertising rights to reach the fans there.
Program Launches: Enticing New Supporters
Launching a new program can attract a fresh audience and serve as a great way to build new interest. By solving a new problem or targeting a different demographic, you can tap into a donor base that was previously out of reach. This should provide even more reason to be talking to prospects at whatever giving level and identifying interest and affinity, not just capacity.
Limited Edition Products: Creating Urgency
Wearing my e-commerce hat for a moment, I love the idea of releasing products in limited quantities to spur monthly pledge fence-sitters into action.
If you have a sizable donor list, limited tshirt color/baseball cap/signed picture product drops are a fantastic way to drive up engagement and LTV from exisitng donors, as well as create buzz.
Out of Home (OOH): Get Drive/Walk By Awareness
This thought is a little inspired by the people at The Farmers Dog. Billboards on the 101 or in NYC can be great for awareness. I definitely wouldn’t count these out as a way to drive visibility for a new program launch (localized) or a great match offer. Similar to creator seeding, if you’re doing billboards, you want to go big or not go at all here. Just having 1 or 2 won’t do much.
If you have a smaller budget for OOH, I’d recommend one of the following for maximum impact:
Running truck-side billboards (SPN #62) where they drive around major cities and get in front of thousands of people per day.
Run taxi-top inventory (SPN #27) - this is efficient and high impact.
Put up a big posters/bills campaign around a major city with loud creative.
Native Ads: Unlock Billions of Page Views on The Open Web
I wrote about how to leverage native ads and why they matter in SPN #9.
The top native ad platforms (Taboola and Outbrain) allow you to place ads programmatically on major publishers for competitive CPMs. Both companies claim to have access to over 7,000 publisher sites, including nearly all mainstream media sites that each generate billions of page views per month. Your audiences are here.
Drive native ad traffic to an advertorial you know converts and then test it across different publishers. You’ll likely find that 3-10 publishers will work well for you out of all your testing, and then the rest may just be okay or not perform that well.
Traditional PR: Borrow Brand and Distribution From Top Publishers
Traditional PR isn’t as powerful as creating your own content, but it’s definitely a quick way to borrow someone else’s brand and get fast distribution. Getting covered in Forbes, Town and Country, or CNBC (or just a great newsletter like Wirecutter) can still be very effective if you can do it. It’s also another great way to get social proof, which of course helps you earn trust and validation from potential donors.
What else would you add?
That’s all for today!
If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing with your network. Thank you to those that do. If a friend sent you this, get the next SPN Substack by signing up.
And huge thanks to this Quarter’s sponsor Fundraise Up for creating a new standard for online giving.
Now onto the interesting stuff!
Reads From My Week
Modern Measurement Playbook (Think with Google)
Whitepaper: Environmental sustainability of digital marketing (IAB)
Celebrating 10 Years of Reality Labs (Meta)
How Should I Be Using A.I. Right Now? (Ethan Mollick, Ezra Klein)
Microsoft Is Working On An Xbox AI Chatbot (The Verge)
Gen-AI Search Engine Perplexity Has a Plan To Sell Ads (AdWeek)
Instagram Makes More Ad Money Than YouTube (BusinessInsider)
Consumers Hate Price Discrimination But Sure Love a Deal (NYT)
Apple is Rebooting It’s Search For a New Big Thing (Bloomberg)
Publishers Give On-Site Search a Long Needed Upgrade In the Form of AI Chatbots (Digiday)
These Are The Most Popular TV Shows of the Streaming Era (Bloomberg)