What Kind Of Donors Do You Want?
Some of marketing guru Seth Godin’s blog posts are simply elegant in the way they make such important points. Here’s an example, written about attracting customers … a group that to Godin includes “donors, backers, voters, members, vendors”.
He asks: What kind of customers do you want?
And offers some possibilities:
- Price shoppers
- Loyal
- Demonstrative
- Followers
- Trusting
- Bottom fishers
- Easily amused
- Part of the crowd
- Desperate
- Rich
- Easily distracted
This is just a selection, about half his list.
His point: “You attract the customers that respond to the way you act.”
[Of course, Roger’s corollary would be: “And, equally, you lose the customers who respond to the way you act … or don’t act!”
And Godin’s wonderful conclusion: “You might not get the customers you deserve, but you will probably end up with the customers you attract.”
What kind of donor is your charity or cause attracting? Those donors — one would think — must like what they see in you. And what exactly do they see?
Tom
P.S. A classic focus group tactic is to ask participants to list the personality characteristics of the brand/organization/company being studied. You’ve got a problem when their list doesn’t correspond with how the entity (i.e., its managers) sees itself. Whose perception is the wrong one?
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