Trent Ricker: Welcome back, everybody. I’m excited to have this session with one of my brilliant colleagues, Laura. Laura, why don’t you introduce yourself to the listeners out there and your role, and we’ll dive in a little bit about what Integrated Media Solutions are.
Laura Hinrichsen: Hi, everybody. I’m Laura Hinrichsen. I lead the Integrated Media Solutions team here at AGP. That’s our incredibly fancy term for handling all of the omnichannel, full-funnel paid media campaigns for our clients. I’m really proud to lead a robust team of currently nine folks. We’re all in-house in a group integrating with all the other channels and capabilities that AGP offers.
Trent Ricker: Yeah, that’s fantastic. I think digital takes us down a lot. When you and I were talking about what to frame in the next generation of what digital is. You and I were always talking about it’s not just digital. That means something to some people and something else to others. And, so, talk about it because I think omnichannel also is a word that gets thrown around a lot as it relates to the digital landscape – talk about some of those channels that would be part of omnichannel in the digital landscape.
Laura Hinrichsen: Sure. We handle all kinds of channels for our clients. Some of the most common channels that we execute are paid search. That could be anything within the Meta platform – that’s Facebook and Instagram. We do things with Snapchat, with X, with almost any other social platform you can imagine.
People are always surprised when I mention that because I think there are some myths out there of, well, Facebook doesn’t work or Facebook is dead. We find that not to be the case with the way that we approach it. I would argue that it’s still incredibly effective. I think a lot of times also when folks come to us and say, oh, well, we’ve tried social. Often, when we unpack that a little bit, what we find out is they’ve made some social posts on their organic page related to fundraising. That is definitely something you can consider, but that’s not necessarily where my team comes in.
Another channel that we’re very active within is the paid search space that would almost open that up much more broadly and talk about that is the Google and Microsoft ecosystem space. So that is paid search, display ads, demand gen. There’s a ton of different campaign types within that. Those opportunities give us a very low funnel way to be the answer to a question that a potential donor has. I think across every sector, organization size that we work with, we will often find paid search to be one of the highest return on ad spend mechanisms out there. There’s also a lot of noise out there right now with AI and summaries and the different other options like Copilot and ChatGPT. There’s a huge misperception out there that paid search is dying or that it’s going away. That also could not be further from the truth, in our opinion. We also have a case study and a blog coming out about that soon, so I’ll save that for later.
We also spend a lot of time doing things in the programmatic space, so that is display, native video, so connected TV or OTT, streaming, whatever you like to call it. That has really been a game changer for a lot of our clients in the last few years. What that allows us to do is instead of buying this particular site and that particular site because we think people that go to that site might be like our donors, we’re able to essentially serve our client’s message to any brand-safe inventory on the web, but on an impression by impression basis, decide if we’re going to bid on that because these people fit the right criteria. For one of our clients, it would be someone in LA that has a vested interest in curing cancer, that has donor behavior of a particular type and often has an age qualified and income qualifier as well. For a lot of organizations, we’re able to tap into a connection with the mission, which is a lot harder to do on a lot of other channels. Those are some of the channels we are in the most, paid social, paid search, and the programmatic space.
Trent Ricker: That’s helpful. I mean, I think the reason why I want the audience to understand how this has evolved, I think for those of us that have been around a long time, we used to think of digital as just kind of that, you know, web, e-mail, then it evolved into some texting and what might we do on the phone. All still very valid and true.
First of all, let me back up. We believe at AGP, and we just believe in general, I think, from engagement with your constituents, that omnichannel should truly mean both online and offline.
Laura Hinrichsen: Absolutely.
Trent Ricker: So, what we might be doing with mail or telephone or canvassing or face-to-face or events – any place that our mission or our fundraising can connect our communities – is critically important. And of course, that does naturally lead into the digital ecosystem. So, I’m always puzzled still why some of our clients in the nonprofit space or nonprofit organizations in general seem to bifurcate the strategies. They understand they need to be together.
We’ll park that and maybe come back to that. But let’s recap what you said, because clearly web is still important. We have another team at AGP, obviously, that can work on content strategy, website/user experience. You kind of extend beyond that more than that. So, websites, certainly e-mail, text – which may be text to give or brand extension – I want to hit that in a moment as well. You talked, I think, really importantly about how things are changing related to search, both paid search, organic search, as the evolution of AI search evolves. That’s a very important aspect. I love what you’re talking about for kind of “out of home” digital. That’s getting quite a bit interesting so that we could be very precise in messaging.
And you’ve also talked about streaming mechanisms that I think are really important with CTV – connected TV. We could spend podcasts on any one of those topics. I’m glad that we’re just rolling out what those might otherwise mean. Let me ask you this. How do you think our market – the nonprofits – currently think about this digital landscape today as it relates to digital, what I described that there might have been to a more sophisticated perspective. What’s your experience on that?
Laura Hinrichsen: I think it is still a big, black unknown box for a lot of organizations. And I think that’s because folks feel very comfortable with direct mail. They know what it does. They know exactly how to measure it. Similarly, with e-mail. Last-click attribution is very clear. I send this, I get this many clicks. I think because paid media measurement and attribution can be a little bit more challenging to understand.
And I think if they’re not getting the proper guidance on how to measure, how to implement it, it can be very intimidating to clients. I think it’s also that organizations are maybe under the misperception that you have to be a massive multi-million-dollar budget organization to effectively execute paid media. That is absolutely not the case. We find our approach; we work with organizations that sometimes spend maybe $10,000 to $15,000 on an end-of-year test campaign across a couple of digital channels, all the way up to some that spend several million dollars. So, you can have a really robust, really effective strategy, no matter the size of your organization, no matter the size of your budget.
Trent Ricker: Yes. That’s a great point. And I think that that is probably the biggest myth – that to engage in paid media you need to have a big budget. And frankly, there are some table stakes as it relates to creative and strategy and your media placement. But to your point, one of the things I’m most excited about is the approachability. There’s a lot of media out there that could be deployed. And anymore as it relates to the personalized, relevant, and timely media, it goes back to Seth Godin in 2000 – one of my favorite books — Permission Marketing. I think today what’s very intriguing is that we can really have refined pinpoint campaigns that can get strong results.
Let me take that to the next level talking about results because paid media, and again, you and I were conscientious to say this is not our paid media division – it’s integrated media solutions – because paid is an important part. But people are going to buy media to have their audience do something. And in some cases, we work with some clients where awareness is an important goal. Advocacy organizations sort of the take action might be to do something in your community. But for those in the fundraising world, I think the direct connection, that’s a little bit different than mail. We might send a piece of mail, and ask for a gift, and we have a very directly correlated cause and effect there. But we’ve built relationships with those people.
So, talk a little bit about what there is usually a call to action, but not always. I want you to delineate on that. And then talk about how the call to action might be that we need to start a conversation, get permission to continue conversation, and then ask for an action later, which might be an advocacy action or participate in an event or make a donation or bring some food to a food drive. So, talk about that and call to action and what paid media is all about.
Laura Hinrichsen: It can definitely vary. The way we approach it here at AGP is we work with the client to ultimately uncover what is the problem you’re trying to solve? What is the objective? Is it list growth? Is it acquisition? Is it retention? Is it upgrade? And I would give you a different answer for probably every different one of those in terms of the CTA. What we often find with some of our clients that have kind of a true omnichannel program and know they might have a brand awareness challenge, but they also want the list growth, and they also have the donations. That’s where that real, like truly intentional full funnel strategy comes in. So, we might have some upper funnel media focus on awareness, let’s say in the month of August, and we will have things saying, learn more here, watch this video, see what we did here, where we’re getting folks, we’re still asking them to do something, but it might be consume a message, read an article.
Trent Ricker: Maybe it’s a viral campaign, right?
Laura Hinrichsen: Then what we will also do is sort of in the mid-funnel – that’s when we’re generally looking to get them to take a first action. So that might be fill out a form to give us your contact information, get our newsletter, download and get this piece of content. Advocacy is very important for our clients, for many of them, so it can be sign this petition or send something to a legislator. That can be very common what we might do mid-funnel. Some clients are able to go right from the upper funnel down to lower funnel, which most often in our world is an ask. It’s like, donate now. And by intentionally targeting those strategies together and making sure there are elements of our paid media plan to retarget and reserve a message to folks based on what they’ve seen or not, based on how they’ve interacted or not, that is something that we can do to kind of give that halo effect of all the other things that they’ve been exposed to, even outside of paid media, and making sure that we are reminding them to take that action.
I’ve seen in a lot of studies – and I feel like I even heard some conversations back at our Converge Conference a couple months ago – is sometimes organizations make the mistake of not asking people to do something. You’ve got to just ask them. Ask them to donate. And so just having a relevant CTA that makes sense at that moment in time for that consumer is, I think, where paid digital media can really excel and make an impact for any organization.
Trent Ricker: Right. I want to bring you back to something that just to slow down for our listeners, because I think it’s implied, but you talked about the funnel, and you talked about up funnel, mid funnel and down funnel. I think a lot of nonprofits, there’s a myth that may be, you know, in digital, I’m going to invest X dollars, and I expect Y return because everything’s immediately down funnel. That’s really not a practical aspect of a good, solid strategy. It can work at an appropriate breast cancer awareness month, and we’ve got a match gift, and we’re going to go straight to help us reach our goal. Those campaigns and tactics will work. But in general, we have to think about all three areas of the funnel. So slow down a little bit and talk about that funnel as it exists for paid media.
Laura Hinrichsen: Sure. In the upper funnel, we are generally just trying to make sure that someone is aware of the organization and what they do. In case they’ve never engaged with you before, they’re not in your file, but we might say through paid digital media, let’s say it’s a nature and conservation client. I want someone who likes birds. I want someone who goes for likes. I want someone who has donated to other environmental causes. Those are the type of demographics and behavioral characteristics that we might use in the upper funnel.
Trent Ricker: Someone who might be part of a community who might not know that we would be a good meeting place for that community?
Laura Hinrichsen: Exactly. We’re going to use that targeting to say, okay, let us introduce you to this organization. It’s just all about awareness, kind of planting the seed, kind of getting them in. The top of the funnel is the biggest. So that’s where we’re trying to get people in.
In the middle of the funnel, we’re educating them a little bit more. They’ve expressed
some interest in the organization. They’re familiar with us in some way because they’ve consumed something; they’ve done something that we’ve asked them to do. They’ve been exposed to a number of messages. That’s where we’re taking the message a little bit deeper, again, sometimes asking them to take a first action that can allow us to test the waters a little bit more to see are they someone who might go down this track and be more of an advocacy type of supporter? Or is it something we can nurture through to donation? Some organizations will have very distinct paths where that kind of splits in the mid-funnel.
The lower funnel is all about conversion. That’s where the paid search that we talked a lot about before – that’s where that’s really going to play in. That is take an action right now. If you are a very familiar cause, like you mentioned – breast cancer is a great one. You know, that’s a type of kind of tentpole moment that many folks know. Someone who’s been impacted by it, they might just need to see one thing and donate. But for the majority of organizations, that’s not the case. So, you really want to make sure that when you can, you have some sort of full-funnel approach. And sometimes that can come between things you’re doing through your own channels like organic, like other things that you might be putting out through PR or partnerships that you have on traditional media, for example.
It’s really just all about making sure folks know who you are. And that’s really important, especially when you think of end-of-year as we get into Giving Tuesday and calendar year-round giving. There’s a lot of noise out there, but it’s also one of the most important times to be out there in paid media. You need to make sure that folks are aware of who you are and why they should donate to your mission before you just ask them to.
Trent Ricker: Right. You’re reminding me that it’s probably worthwhile before we move on to actually click up a level even more remedial, right? There are three buckets primarily of media. There is owned, earned, and paid. And that’s kind of a traditional marketing approach, and many nonprofit organizations can understand that.
In your owned media, you have subsets typically that could be donors, advocates, volunteers, some of them are non-donors and some of them are donors, but there are important calls to action in what you own. The reason why you own it is they’ve already given you permission to continue to have conversations with them.
Laura Hinrichsen: Right
Trent Ricker: I think for nonprofit organizations that work with media and earned partnerships, well, corporate partnerships and the like, there’s another audience for them to reach out to and to start moving them towards your owned media. And then in your world, paid media, our goal obviously down funnel is to convert that paid media into becoming part of your owned file so that you can continue to have conversations with them at a much lower expense. Is that a fair characterization of owned, earned, and paid? Would you add anything there?
Laura Hinrichsen: I think so. I think we’re; you know the beauty of paid is control. We can control how it’s targeted, in many ways, who sees it. You can make changes and react to it. You can a lot of times, budget and shift a little bit more reactively when something is live. But I think in the big picture, I think that’s a really interesting way to think about it.
Trent Ricker: Good point.
Laura Hinrichsen: I guess the only other thing I would add is that I think also you can, there’s ways to kind of blend those. When you have someone on file, that becomes first-party data that you can use in a number of ways. For example, someone fills out an advocacy form or maybe they donated several years ago and they’ve lapsed. We can take those data segments. If you’re an AGP client, we can pull up GivingDNA.
If you’re not a GivingDNA AGP client yet, we can take segments of your donor file that meet certain characteristics and then load them back into paid digital platforms and say – if it’s relevant to the strategy – I want to target these exact people, go get them. Or it can inform the targeting and say, go meet them, go help me find more people that look, and I don’t mean physically, but behaviorally, demographically, philanthropically, go find more people that look like that to go out and prospect to. That is a powerful way where you can kind of bring those things together. And with paid media, we can.
Trent Ricker: Sure.
Laura Hinrichsen: Another way of saying that too is yes, we can help with acquisition. But when it makes sense, we can help with renewal. We can help with retention. We can help with upgrade.
Trent Ricker: Because we have that first-party data. That’s a great point, too. And for the listeners that may not know what GivingDNA is, it’s a constituent profiling tool that we use for our clients. Once somebody’s raised their hand, we can begin to learn more about who they are. And to Laura’s point, if they begin to resemble more of those that are in our tribe that are either taking action or giving to our organization that can trigger certain things that we might weave into our strategies. I’m going to pivot just a little bit because you brought up acquisition. And I, as you know, preach at AGP that I believe that kind of retention is the new acquisition. And the reason why I preach that and glad you brought that in for paid media is that I think traditional mail acquisition, while still effective in some areas, is waning in its effectiveness. It’s limited in the audience as it approaches. It typically requires some creativity or expense up front. Sometimes people dismiss that. They realize it’s not as cheap as you think it is because you’re actually putting a front-end premium or the like in order to acquire. Usually, of course, you’re not at positive ROI on traditional acquisition until multiple gifts down the road. I think that we need to make sure that people understand in good paid media online, integrated media solutions, that that’s going to be the case as well. Patience and cultivation are going to be critical.
But I like to pivot there because I do believe that digital plays a distinct organic role moving forward that traditional mail really never could. Talk about your philosophy on how paid media and IMS can be kind of the next generation acquisition tool.
Laura Hinrichsen: Absolutely. I think that’s great. A lot of that goes back to all the opportunities against which we can target in paid media that you just quite simply you cannot do really in any other channel. We can go find people that are not on our file that might not have heard of us, but by using a wealth of online data, we can understand what type of content they’re consuming, what other organizations — either sometimes specific organizations or just category — what other organizations are they giving to, what type of content are they currently consuming, and what is sort of the tone of that content? Is that supportive of the mission? Is it not? And that’s a really important distinction because that goes just beyond looking for a particular keyword.
Keyword and context, I think, are equally important. It is really finding the right type of people and then leveraging really about a million data points when we’re thinking about some of the channels that we’re in and to identify — is this impression served to this person at this time likely to result in the desired action? That is huge. And so, you know, when you have a food bank, for example, versus a cancer research treatment organization or an organization that’s fighting anti-Semitism, there’s a whole bunch of different characteristics that you might look at.
Trent Ricker: You’re right.
Laura Hinrichsen: You don’t want to kind of – to use an old term – spray and pray. You want to find people that have a connection that are already demonstrating behavior that suggests they are very likely to be a supporter. And what’s also important is that information insight is literally like in the moment – real time. It’s not based on an old file or a list, and so we really find that in many cases, paid media acquisition can be an immediate positive ROI on its own. What we also see is that pairing a really focused digital paid media acquisition program with a direct mail acquisition program, those two can really be an effective combination when planned together.
In some instances, we have paid media kind of planting the seed to let folks know that, hey, a piece is coming up, you might get something like this, or it’s simply just looking at things being live at the same time with a similar story, a similar look and feel, a similar call to action, just to provide that sort of halo effect. What we are finding is that clients that are investing, choosing to invest in paid digital media as part of their acquisition specifically, are really kind of outperforming those that aren’t. Their file is growing faster.
One of the things that you said a little while ago about the hesitancy of some organizations to be willing to invest in paid media and why that is, it reminded me of something that I think has been a little bit of a surprise kind of silver lining with how everything in the world is getting more expensive and all the chaos that happened with federal funding that impacted so many organizations in the last year and a half. It has sort of forced a lot of organizations that were very hesitant to consider paid media in the past, whatever the reason is, to be like, okay, maybe I need to give it a try because I just have to try something different because I can’t afford this anymore. And they are always very pleasantly excited and surprised by the results that we’re able to deliver.
Trent Ricker: That’s awesome. Well, that’s a good segue too, I think, into, as this has evolved, it’s fair to say the conversation thus far, it’s sophisticated. I think that’s fair to say. It’s very detail-oriented because we can’t have many segments and multiple variations of creative that we’re testing and then fully deploying. And I think I’m about ready to unleash the beast here because I think that there’s a perspective. I know I’ve talked about this quite a bit and I know you’re quite passionate about it. I think both in the for-profit space and the nonprofit space that these digital ad agencies and this evolving sophistication, that it’s too complicated for you. Just trust me. It’s a black box, and I’m just going to take care of it. It’s very proprietary.
I think our philosophy at AGP has always been highly transparent. And you certainly, I think, are a leader in that. You exemplify that. We kind of look at it as more of a glass cube. Let’s look at it together. We’re not the smartest people in the room, but we hope to bring our experience and instincts. So talk a little bit about transparency, because I think there’s a difference between bridging from here’s how acquisition could or should work to, can they see what’s working and what’s not and why so that we can continue to collaborate and refine and get better and always improving results.
Laura Hinrichsen: One hundred percent. This is my favorite topic in the entire world. You have indeed unleashed the beast. I will say that what I’m about to say goes for acquisition, retention, renewal, reactivation, upgrade – all the things. Our philosophy with paid media at AGP is literally all about transparency so from how we work from moment one. We are going to show you your budget broken down by month, by channel, even by partner within a channel. So, you’ll know within paid search, for example, you’re going to know exactly how much is going to Google, how much is going to Bing. Even before we’re activating things, we’re going to show you this is our feed and how to manage it because it is fair for us to get compensated for the work that we do. But we are going to also show you your working media spend and your working media spend is truly working media dollars. There’s no hidden markup or additional fee baked into that. That is truly working dollars that are going to go out there and get you results.
Trent Ricker: More strategically aligning that, absolutely, yeah.
Laura Hinrichsen: When we’re activating campaigns, we will activate our campaigns in accounts that you own. If at any time you want to log into your Meta ad account just out of curiosity, or maybe you got your boss popped in down the hall and asked a quick question, how’s this campaign doing? You’re going to have access to every single thing so you could know on a very granular level how this particular ad is doing. You of course can always ask us, that’s what we’re here for, to answer those questions. But there is no data point related to your program that you shouldn’t have access to. You know, it’s full transparency from the plan in terms of optimization. We will tell you in real time what’s working and what’s not, why we think that is, and then more importantly, what we’re going to do about it.
Trent Ricker: I think it’s fair to say too, and I want you I want you to challenge or validate this thinking on it, because I love having these conversations with you. We again, our philosophy at AGP is respectfully disruptive – that we are going to lean on our experiences and our instincts, that we focus on better practices, that we’re very transparent, that we partner with our clients, that we aren’t telling them what to do, but that they look to us to bring smart ideas that have worked for others that are similar to them and hopefully get to success faster, fair to say. I think some of the cynicism that exists in paid media, and again, this is for for-profit as well as nonprofit.
Laura Hinrichsen: Absolutely.
Trent Ricker: I have some colleagues out there that are in the marketing space that in this paid media world, they have cynicism because the agency may have preferred relationships with particular vendors. And so, they’re curious, like, are you just pointing me towards Vender X because you get a better deal or that they are friendly to you? I don’t want to suggest that it’s an unethical thing related to kickbacks or anything, but we do know that vendors like that certainly entertain those that actually can place. And I think we really pride ourselves and it’s like, I’m agnostic. Like I don’t want to create partnerships that would sacrifice the integrity of my agency or our clients and then put somebody’s media placement somewhere where it may not yield the best results. Is that a fair characterization of the way that we do it and should the industry approach this?
Laura Hinrichsen: Absolutely. We are 100% partner and platform agnostic. Of course, there are some partners that we might tend to work with more than others, but that’s because they perform. Right? So, if something’s not working, we’re not going to do it. So that goes into when we’re developing a plan, but that also goes into when a plan is live. If something is not up to the performance expectation that we have and that the client has, it’s going to change. And most importantly, it’s not going to change for that campaign the next year. It’s going to change in real time. And we are going to have that conversation with the client to say, hey, this is a shift we’re going to make and this is why.
You also mentioned something like asking questions. Clients can and should ask us questions at any time. If they’re not, because paid media is still, it’s a lot, and a lot of folks are new to it. So, we encourage clients, ask us questions at any time, ask us why this partner and not that one.
You know, we’re onboarding a lot of new clients right now, and so we’re having a lot of very productive conversations about past partnerships. And we’re looking at, are you getting value out of this or not? And there are some instances where a partner I might have had in my head as being an option, I’m learning, oh, this might be a better way to go. So total transparency – open to new partnerships at all times.
Trent Ricker: I think one of the things I really appreciate about you, Laura, and your team is that if we aren’t getting the results that we expect, you lean on our partners as an advocate on behalf of our clients to continue to have them refine their promise. I mean, that’s good, right?
Laura Hinrichsen: One hundred percent, yes.
Trent Ricker: Because if Meta is delivering really strongly for a particular client and a similar client to them are not getting comparable results, you are very curious in asking why. And sometimes it may be policy changes or access to particular segments that evolves.
Laura Hinrichsen: Yes, every single day, every platform, every client.
Trent Ricker: You recently brought to me a couple of recent clients that had some pretty significant ad budgets that were frustrated at not being able to maybe see all the things and pleased to start a partnership where we could be collaborating. Hey, we want to understand what worked previously for you so that we can continue to do what’s working. And we might have some thoughts to substitute some other things and be good stewards of your budget. But what are some questions that nonprofit leaders should be asking of their agency that maybe they aren’t today? What are some of the key metrics that you would make sure that they have at their fingertips?
Laura Hinrichsen: What I would consider as like the bare minimum that you should have if you are working, and this goes to if you’re working with a freelancer versus working with like an actual agency of any type, bare minimum, you should always have documentation that shows your budget articulated by month, by channel, and then by partner within channel. So again, for example, if it’s paid search – Google, Bing – if it’s programmatic, this network versus that, if it’s a direct buy, this site versus that site. At bare minimum, you should always have that transparency. I have been really surprised. I come across several examples in the last year where we’re onboarding a new client. We will ask, oh, what partners are you using for X, Y, and Z channel? They have no idea. That is baffling to me, to put it mildly. That is just, I…
Trent Ricker: They should have an idea where their ads are being placed. I mean, that would, you know, if I was doing a television commercial, I should know that I am buying time at NBC on this program. So that, yeah, you’re right. It’s a great, great point. Yeah.
Laura Hinrichsen: Right, you’re going to know what programs you’re in. And what’s further concerning is a lot of times I will hear sub comments of, well, we didn’t think we could ask or we’ve asked and they said no.
Trent Ricker: Meaning that the media mix is some sort of proprietary.
Laura Hinrichsen: Essentially, like it’s our secret sauce, our secret partnership, or they just don’t believe in that level of transparency, which it hurts me to my core when clients say that. Especially, I mean, I worked in for-profit clients and agencies for 20 years before I came to AGP, and we didn’t do that there either. So, it really hurts me that in the nonprofit space, where I would say every dollar is even more precious, and some organizations don’t understand the level of detail and insight that they should have.
Trent Ricker: That’s great. And I, again, I implore you and your team to continue on that quest. I know you will. I know you will. Because like I said, I think you’re passionate about it. And frankly, again, I think it’s something that’s important in our industry that we are to be good stewards of our clients’ money – hard-earned charity donations or the grants to do good work.
Laura Hinrichsen: Oh, we will. Yes – down to the penny.
Trent Ricker: We should be very transparent in just continuing to find the right mix to get them the best possible results. And I think the best way to do that is to engage them as experts in their field as well. They might be able to identify things that we didn’t see based upon their own personal experiences or experiences with other agencies or the like. Keep up that good, hard work. Let’s, as we kind of, land the plane a little bit, I want you to for our audience, there’s those that are listening that some have never done paid media or anything in integrated media solutions. And there’s others that have done some or maybe are running sophisticated programs.
But let’s start with that first audience. For somebody who hasn’t done it, what sort of advice would you give for them to consider where it might be appropriate and a responsible way to enter into it? Because I think you and I both believe it’s a place where everybody’s going to need to be as time unfolds here. It’s not something that would be optional in the future.
Laura Hinrichsen: Yes. That’s a conversation I have probably at least once a week with a potential new client. And sometimes that could be someone that has issued an RFP, and they’ve never done paid media before, or it could be a current client that is going to my counterparts on the direct mail or e-mail side and saying, help, we have this challenge.
What really often works and is a good place to start is, you know, sort of a test campaign during calendar year-end. That might seem a little counterintuitive to some because you think, oh, that’s crowded. Well, it is, but it’s also the most important time of the year where folks that might not be philanthropic the rest of the year. They’re more likely to be then. And one of my responses to that is like, if it’s not going to work for you during year-end, it’s not going to work for you at any time.
Trent Ricker: I always use the story that if you were selling a product and you wanted to know if your product was sellable, you would maybe want to start by opening a kiosk in the mall during Christmas season because you’d find many potential shoppers that were ready to buy. And is your product something that they would buy?
Laura Hinrichsen: Exactly.
Trent Ricker: It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to do that in the middle of July and when you don’t have as many prospective consumers to buy. But that’s your logical argument about why to go where there is action, right? The end of the year?
Laura Hinrichsen: Generally, yes. The next place I might go is if you might have another critical tent pole event. A lot of organizations might have their own giving day. We also have a lot of clients in the Texas area, so some of them might have a North Texas giving day. If you have your own branded giving day or something local to the market or region that you’re physically part of that can be another good place to start.
Trent Ricker: You’ve talked about awareness weeks or months that might be in alignment with the market segment, or you might think about things like Mother’s Day or Father’s Day if your mission has to align with something along the lines of that. I think that’s good advice. Think about where you might have a pique of interest from other momentum that’s out there.
Laura Hinrichsen: Yes.
Trent Ricker: Year-end getting Tuesday. North Texas Giving Day, et cetera. Breast cancer awareness. Okay, good, good. And now, and what, to your point about how they might responsibly test, what sort of advice would you give to that nonprofit that hasn’t dipped their toe in the water yet?
Laura Hinrichsen: I think we would look at them to say, okay, what’s realistic of the budget you have? And I would also encourage organizations, when they’re open to considering paid media, don’t just come to us when you have leftover money. Take a step back and like, what am I trying to achieve? You know, again, we’ve talked a lot about acquisition, renewal, upgrade. Think of us when you’re having that conversation, not just, well, we have this leftover (money). But we will try to go to the client and say, okay, what is that best time? And then based on the objectives, if this is truly donations, we’ll look at the time of the year, we’ll look at the applicable budget, and we’ll identify which of the channels and partners within those channels do we think are best going to solve that.
I have no predetermined answer to give you because that’s literally the way we work. We’re going to develop every single custom plan. One interesting example that might kind of answer your question is a lot of times some, let’s say a food bank, will come to us and say, well, I really need to grow my file. My file’s aging. My file’s not growing. So they might say, well, we want to do lead gen. And their answer is, well, OK, do you have something that you can send them? What’s the sort of the carrot that you’re going to dangle in front of them?
They don’t have that. Also, what we actually find in the food banks a lot of times is the best way to grow your file through paid media is just ask people for money. You don’t, we don’t, we generally don’t find that you have to do lead and then nurture and then convert. We can often be incredible positive ROI from moment one by just going straight with an ask.
We will really try to understand what the challenge is, and then we’ll custom craft a solution using paid media, also keeping in mind everything else that you have going on through your other channels.
Trent Ricker: You bring up a good point, too, about creating digital premiums at low cost. Many organizations, I find, have something that they can offer a benefit if it’s appropriately repackaged, right? You’re an organization that’s fighting disease or disorder. You might have a great recipe or cookbook – a book that can be delivered via digital. I think we’re very good at helping to brainstorm around existing content, repackaging it in a way that can start that conversation. So that’s good.
Laura Hinrichsen: And there’s some sectors where that works really, really well, because it might be a tougher category, one that requires more nurturing or more explanation. There’s absolutely instances where that works and it works very well.
Trent Ricker: Right. It reminds me, and now I’m going to date myself, but going back to, you know, true online marketing leading to first list building and then building relationship and getting donations. Back when I was with Convio back in the day, a couple of our clients, I remember working with Feeding America, and it might be a soft advocacy of take a stand to fight hunger or to end hunger. Now today we use things like food insecurity and the different things, but the reality is back then it was something of saying join us. Now, who’s against fighting food insecurity? When people would take that pledge, then we could follow up and hold them accountable to that pledge. Hey, you took this pledge. Would you mind bringing a can of food to the football game? Would you mind volunteering at our food bank? Would you mind making a donation during this time period because there’s an assertive match that is going to make your dollars go further? The action of telling others or ultimately a donation, if that’s what you’re going to do, or events. We do an awful lot with our clients in peer-to-peer events.
Let’s shift here as we close then. For those that have a healthy budget, because many of our clients come to us that are already engaged in paid media, and I would say whether they’re working with AGP, another agency, they’re doing it internally, they’re working with a freelancer.What are two or three concrete things that you would say to them that they would require of any agency partner and what they should really be looking for so that they can be part of the strategy rather than kind of outsourcing it to their agency’s black box?
Laura Hinrichsen: The three words that immediately jumped to mind are: transparency, flexibility, and insight. Transparency. You should know where every single dollar is going. Flexibility. You should have – your agency should be willing and flexible to make changes in real time based on your feedback, but more importantly, based on what the data is telling you.
Trent Ricker: Right. How quickly can they pivot based on new information? That’s great, Laura. Yeah.
Laura Hinrichsen: And then in terms of insight, generally you get a report after a campaign is done, but that report needs to also say, so what? Don’t just say, well, this performed well, but why? And what are we going to do about it next time? Hopefully we’ve been able to, you know, at AGP, we would be reacting on some of those insights as we could in real time, but also, we will look at, here’s something we can do next year. You know, so what? You spent this money, we learned these things, what are we going to do? Oh, 100%, how can we do more of this? Yeah.
Trent Ricker: I love that even with positive results. That’s great because I think far too often, yeah, we get great results and sometimes people say, yay, we beat our forecast. Why? Like meeting forecast is one thing, but another time, I mean, kudos to you because you actually, you tear the cover off the ball most of the time. A lot of times your return on ad spend are extraordinary. And what I love about you and the team is saying, well, not only this was fantastic, but this is what we learned from it. And this is how we’re going to apply it in another area. So don’t just look at why something might have missed the expectations and what went wrong, what went right and why. I think those are important questions to ask and answer with your team.
Laura Hinrichsen” Absolutely. We imply that same scrutiny to the good and the bad.
Trent Ricker: Well, Laura, are there any other tips or passionate points? I know that you are so passionate about what you do and the team is so wonderful. I am a big, I’m a big fan. I will say before I turn it to you, like as a plug, guys, I think if you’re out there listening and you want to talk to some smart people that are really getting great results, Laura and her team would be happy to talk to you and get familiar with what you are doing or what you could be doing. But whether you’re working with us or any one of the other fine agencies or partners out there, I think our take away today is build a relationship that’s transparent and that you can be nimble and flexible with and that you’re getting good insights. Anything else that you would close with today?
Laura Hinrichsen: I would just say to put a fine point on a handful of the things I’ve said. I think there’s not a client, whether it’s a current client, a potential new client that I’ve spoken to in the last several years that hasn’t wanted to get more younger, more diverse people on their file. Because of all the things we’ve mentioned about transparency and the way that we can target and use data. Paid media has been a massive tool to help more organizations get closer to that goal.
Trent Ricker: Absolutely. And it’s only going to get better. One of the things that I love more than anything else is the real timeliness of it. We can deploy a campaign and see what’s working literally within minutes of something being deployed and can kind of watch and see and tweak. And that’s exciting, getting that real-time result. And I also think, for our audience, that what you do in integrated media solutions, as you know, but for our audience, that helps inform better practices in what we’re doing for other demographics, maybe even in the mail or telephone. We’re learning things about constituents always, which can build a rich profile around our supporter constituents.
Laura Hinrichsen: Always.
Trent Ricker: And everybody wants to have more relevant conversations. When we’re doing that well, then I think results naturally follow. So, kudos to you and the team.
Laura Hinrichsen: Thank you.
Trent Ricker: All right, well, thanks, Laura. And we’ll look forward to having you back on another time, and we’ll get into some more advanced topics.
Laura Hinrichsen: All right, thanks Trent.
