SALEMGLOBAL CASE STUDY FOR NON-PROFIT - EVA'S VILLAGE
BACKGROUND
In 2006, seeking an online marketing firm that could help it tap into the broad reach of the Internet, Eva's Village (http://www.EvasVillage.org), a New Jersey non-profit that offers social services to the poor and homeless, enlisted SalemGlobal to its cause. Like most charitable organizations, Eva's Village runs on an extremely lean budget. With most of its resources directed toward maintaining its numerous social services, Eva's Village had to be cautious with the money it would invest in marketing, and even more cautious with its choice of a marketing company. Though Eva's Village had a website already in place, little was being done to promote the site online. At the time, Eva's Village formal marketing programs were limited to several fund raising events as well as an annual Gala and Golf Invitational, which is still held today.
In today's Internet-savvy world, charitable organizations are finding that the old practice of receiving donations in the mail is quickly losing popularity. Many contemporary donors, hip to the convenience and expedience of online giving, are forsaking the envelope and the stamp for the credit card. To capitalize on this movement, Eva's Village chose SalemGlobal to develop a campaign to spread its message to a vast web audience and provide the ease of online donations and inquiries about the organization's services and volunteer opportunities.
THE CAMPAIGN
SalemGlobal began its comprehensive optimization process right away.
Website Analysis: SalemGlobal's first step was to perform a thorough analysis of the layout of Eva's Village website. We noticed that, importantly, the site was missing a relevant call-to-action at the top of the homepage directing visitors toward Eva's Village online donation page. Rather, visitors to the site were being encouraged to contact Eva's Village through a general contact phone number. Thus, in addition to surveying the site's use of meta tags, page titles, hyperlinks, and other key SEO components, SalemGlobal's first order of business was, using a large "Donate" button, to change the header of the Eva's Village homepage so that it now emphasized online giving alongside the standard contact information.
Keyword/Metadata Research & Implementation: This is the bread and butter of the search engine optimization process. SalemGlobal researched keywords that were relevant to Eva's Village mission and built new pages based on those keywords. The metadata of the Eva's Village website -- meta tags such as title, description, keywords, and robots -- were all updated to make the website more search-engine friendly. Any new content added to the site went through an optimization process, which included embedding anchor text, performing keyword hyperlinks, and diversifying the metadata for new pages so that Eva's Village website as a whole would become extremely keyword-rich.
Linking Strategy: Different websites warrant different linking strategies. With Eva's Village, SalemGlobal determined that the best approach would be to set up marketing sites through newly purchased domains. These domains weren't purchased at random -- each was made up of relevant keywords emphasized on Eva's Village corporate website. (See for instance http://www.NewJerseyCharity.com.) Furthermore, each individual marketing site was fully optimized on its own; this quickened the search engine indexation process, and further expanded Eva's Village presence on the web. In tandem with the marketing sites, SalemGlobal made sure to promote Eva's Village across the board through all of our in-house outlets: the SG blog, newsletter, homepage, client page, as well as numerous in-company marketing sites.
Press Releases: As an organization that depends on a continuous flow of donations, a crucial element of Eva's Village marketing campaign was its monthly press release, which contained the latest news and updates about the organization. Using copy written by the Eva's Village staff, SalemGlobal optimized and published press releases that (a) were picked up by search engines, and (b) generated inbound links pointing back to Eva's Village website. The published press releases were then added to Eva's Village website as new pages, bolstering the site with fresh and relevant content.
SUCCESSFUL RESULTS
Within a short amount of time, Eva's Village began reaping the benefits of its investment in an online marketing campaign. A 2007 press release about the tribulations of homeless people during the long winter months was picked up by MSNBC and featured on its website, MSNBC.com, resulting in a significant spike in donations and visits to the Eva's Village website. In fact, Eva's Village interactive public relations efforts have been consistently rewarded with higher rates of traffic peaking each month with the publication of a new press release. Overall, Eva's Village annual donations have increased as a direct result of its online marketing campaign.
Most recently, in 2009, Eva's Village was happily informed that it would receive a $75,000 donation from a source seeking to support an anti-poverty program. The funder had found Eva's Village online after performing a search-engine query for "anti-poverty program nj". In addition, Eva's Village online marketing efforts have attracted a number of additional large donors, including participants to its annual events and capital campaign efforts.
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