Tap International Markets

As we enter into the second decade of the 21st Century it is more and more apparent that we are living in an ever-shrinking world! The people at Pathmaker Marketing are not only aware of this, but, rather, they stand ready to help you and your company compete in an ever expanding arena where English is not the only language spoken. As a result, Pathmaker Marketing is always looking forward to helping you accept the challenge of Internationalization!!

At one point in time, Internationalization meant that a company would be reaching out and expanding into other nations around the world. Today, however, the nations have come to us. The number of ethnicities that surround us is remarkable and, as astute business people, we need to do all that we possibly can to tap into these most viable markets.

How, exactly, can Pathmaker Marketing help you do this? First, they can assist you in doing a survey regarding the number of possible ethnic markets that you are currently missing out on! Once accomplished, the next step will be to help you consider to be the major aspects of Internet and Social Network Marketing!

The key to this program will, of course, be the utilization to put virtually all of these Marketing Programs into a myriad of languages. To show the extent of what can be accomplished, please take time to visit one of Pathmaker Marketing’s most recently completed projects, a 3D Virtual Tour of the Tenboom Museum in Haarlem, Holland at www.tenboom.com. Due to the extensive worldwide interest in this particular topic, the client’s goal was to have it presented in twenty different languages.

Think of how wonderful it would be if prospective clients could go to your Website and click on a tab that would allow them to read it in their native tongue - - Español, Deutsch, Francais or whatever! Rather than struggling trying to decide what, exactly, you have to offer that they may need, you can imagine their thrill in being able to do their research so much more readily and easily.

In regard to Keyword Research, you will be opening up a whole new world of obtaining Winnable Keywords for Page Ranking with Google, Yahoo, Bing and other Search Engines This, in itself, might open the doors to actually doing business overseas, to say nothing of serving the prospective clients in your own community!

Building on the concept of Keywords and Winnable Terms, imagine how beneficial it would be to have your Blog Posts be in more than one language! As your knowledge is shared in multiple languages, your stature as an expert will build exponentially and there is no telling what heights that can lead you and your company to!

As you increase the number of languages you are offering your services and products in, you increase the number of Websites and Directories that you can be Linked to. Whether you strive for Unilateral or Reciprocal Links, additional links will give you additional opportunities.

As Social Networking continues to be the rave, imagine how many more “friends” you can have, and how many more people you could “tweet” if your postings and twitters were multi-lingual. A wonderfully simple way to expand your number of contacts, with the help of Pathmaker Marketing your Networking efforts can become even more profitable!

One of the areas we have been particularly successful in is assisting clients with instituting and conducting Contests and Sweepstakes. By conducting your contests in more than one language, you have positive testimonials that are not limited to only those individuals who can speak and read English.

Finally, imagine the positive affects of being able to produce a monthly E-Newsletter that could be distributed in multiple languages! Again, whether you want to Market around the world or just in your own community, the ability to do so in more than one language can be a tremendous boon to your business!

To learn how, exactly, you and your Company can benefit from an Internationalization Program you need to contact Pathmaker Marketing to schedule a private phone conversation with CEO Randall Mains as quickly as possible. After all, you want to reach everyone in your community!

Develop Email Fundraising

by Randall Mains

The primary goal of your email fundraising is to raise gifts or sell products, not deliver ministry (that’s what your e-newsletter does). E-fundraising is an entire course in itself that fundraising professionals like Pathmaker Marketing teach, but when done effectively, it can become an monthly income-producing channel for your ministry that might even rival your direct mail and telephone fundraising efforts.

But you’re not ready to do e-appeals until you’ve properly introduced your newfound friends to your ministry. Once they know who you are and what you stand for, then you can begin implementing fundraising for nonprofits and begin requesting their support for your worthy causes.

In general, the basic components of any email solicitation include your Subject Line, your message in HTML and/or text, and your Landing Page.

The primary goal of your Subject Line is to get your emails opened. The primary goal of your email is to get click-through traffic to your Landing Page. And the primary goal of your Landing Page is to get conversions on your offer (i.e., gifts or sales, leads, list signups, etc). Each component has a specific goal, but they must all work together harmoniously to produce effective results.

There are different schools of thought on basic email fundraising strategies like: short email to long landing page, or long email to short landing page, but to determine what works best with your constituents, you just need to test, test and continue testing.

In addition, there’s the landing page process of effective internet marketing, which brings to mind to importance of your understanding of landing page conversion protocol. This subject is a big one and we’re only touching its surface today, but to show you how advanced you can become in this arena, here’s a patented formula I use to improve landing page conversion:

Landing Page Conversion = 4m+3v+2(i-f)-2a

m= the user’s motivation; v= clarity of the value proposition; i=incentive to take action; f=friction elements of the process; a=anxiety about entering information. Proper use of this formula from the Marketing Experiments Corp. can significantly improve your landing page conversions.

The formula basically says that the greatest weight in the conversion process is given to the motivation of the donor to support your cause, followed by the strength of your value proposition, followed by your incentive less the friction of your checkout process, less the anxiety that the donor feels about doing business with you online. Three factors can improve your conversion rates, while two factors can decrease them.

For more assistance with your email fundraising, contact Pathmaker Marketing 623-322-3334.

Church Outreach Ideas for the Internet: Interactive Prayer Wall

Prayer is a powerful resource that God has given to all believers. As a community, a church should continually pray for one another. An interactive online prayer wall allows church members and guests to share their prayer requests and praises, both anonymously and publicly. It is a great way to building a stronger community by praying for others using the benefits of modern technology.

Consider building a prayer wall in your church website. It is a wonderful tool for church outreach.

Cross Pollinate Your Online and Offline Communication Strategy

by Randall Mains

One important mistake that many ministries make is to consider online communication to be separate from offline communication. But these days, savvy marketers put their web addresses on all printed materials and even in their radio and television ads. Likewise, your website should contain toll-free phone numbers and mailing addresses. Cross promote as much as possible. You should also put your web address in your catalogs, on your brochures, business cards, in your radio or television program. You get the idea.

Another good strategy is to cross-pollinate your monthly direct mail appeals with an online fund raising effort. Our typical email fundraising approach, when synergized to snail mail, is to start Split Testing 10 days AFTER the snail mail arrives in homes, then go to full blasting 3 days after that. The email will stand on its own results, plus give LIFT to your snail mail this way. After reblasting and remarketing for another week, you can have your email efundraising efforts done in 10-13 days total, and be out about 1 week before the next fundraising snail maill effort arrives.

The combination of the two channels – direct mail and email fundraising -- working in tandem with each other to promote the same initiative will raise the water table overall on your results. Combine telemarketing in this mix and you have a powerful one-two-three punch for your fundraising efforts.

This topic — maximizing your nonprofit fundraising efforts by combining traditional channels with online marketing tools — is quite detailed and I plan to expand on it in future blog entries. For now, I’ll wrap up this series by again leaving you with these words:

A strategic online communication plan will use integration to strengthen existing donor relationships while building new ones to enhance your ministry and expand its church outreach.

Church Outreach Ideas for the Internet: Email Fundraising

As nonprofits look for new ways to raise money in the digital age, email fundraising is beginning to stand out as a compelling option. Many of the larger and nationally active nonprofits are already using this approach to save money and reach broader constituencies. Your church should too.

There are many people out there who are willing to support various Christian causes through online giving. As long as you have a strategic e-fundraising campaign, your resources will continuously grow. This will contribute to the fulfillment your mission to share God´s glory and enlarge His territory.

Pathmaker Marketing has solid experience in assisting non-profits and churches raise funds via the Internet. An email campaign in June 2009 yielded over $30,000 in gifts from 375 donors. a 13-month campaign for another not for profit organizaton raised $192,000 in gifts through the email fundraising channel. We have a proven track record of increasing our clients´ funds multiple times over in proportion to what it costs our clients.

Schedule a meeting with Pathmaker Marketing to discuss and learn more about how you can make your church outreach on the internet grow even larger.

Tips Christian Blogging

Christian blogging can help your church or ministry with your church outreach. It is no doubt a powerful outreach tool. For church outreach purposes, you want to take a strategic approach to your Christian blogging.

Invest in a good blogging tool.

There are several free blogging tools available. These free tools might seem like a good deal, but they don’t compile each of your blogs into multiple blogs and then optimize them to secure page one listings on search results. You have to do that yourself and that takes a lot of work.

Compendium does the opposite. It makes Christian blogging easier, faster and more effective. For a free demo on how this tool can help you in your Christian blogging, call Pathmaker Marketing for a free demo at 623-322-3334.

Invest in keyword research.

Whenever Pathmaker Marketing sets up a blog, we gave Compendium a list of strategic keywords that people would search when looking for a service like ours. The Compendium tool automatically compiles our posts into multiple blogs under all appropriate keywords, not just the one into which we posted it. This work-leveraging feature also optimizes the posts to tell the search engines to, “Come find me.”

Pathmaker Marketing helps clients do keyword research that select keywords that are not only used by people searching for their services but also (a) get a lot of searches and (b) don’t have too much competition to break into. Pathmaker also helps clients evaluate where they currently stand in search results for those keywords and then develop strategies to improve those standings.

Develop ministry-oriented content that uses keywords.

Not only do you want people to find your blog entries, you want them to find the information useful enough to convince them to visit or contact your church and get the benefits you offer them. Christian blogging should be ministerial in nature, and you should provide contact information so people who need the ministries you offer can easily find you.

When you use the right kind of blogging tool, put adequate time into choosing the right targeting keywords and develop concise but helpful content using those keywords, your Christian blogging can become an effective online extension of your church outreach efforts.

Church Outreach Ideas for the Internet: eWelcome

Whenever you welcome someone to you church, it is likely that you have a team ready to make sure the new person feels welcome. They serve him coffee, exchange sincere pleasantries and ask for his contact details. Your church does this to make sure that the newcomer comes back to your church and becomes a regular attendee and active participant.

Using the same analogy, your church website can strategically welcome and interact with your first-time and returning visitors by offering them something "ministerial" in exchange for their basic contact information.

There are many ways to do this. For example, you can offer free Christian e-books, spiritual gifts tests, MP3 files of your best sermons, invite them to read your ministry blog, or install a prayer wall where they can leave their prayer request. In exchange, the website visitor would simply have to provide basic contact information: First Name and Email Address.

Typically, once they have requested your special free offers, your system will have a triggered set of email messages that automatically go out at pre-established intervals: one week later, two weeks later, etc. Each email is designed to get those newcomers further acquainted with your church and encourage them to return, possible even get further involved.

Each autoresponder email message is designed to welcome the newcomer to a different aspect or your church or ministry, and of course, encourage them to get involved. Why not collect email and snail mail addresses on church visitors in exchange for a Welcome Kit about your church, then place those emails into your electronic welcome series?

Some good real-time examples of this practice can be found in Gregory Dickow Store and in the Jewish Voice Ministries.

By developing an incentive-based e-welcome series, you can be assured that you will remain in contact with people who have shown in interest in your church outreach inperson or on your website. This may not yield instant results in increased church membership, but you are establishing relationships with newcomers, who as long as they remain on your email list, are indicating that their interest remains. Plus, typical results show that for every 100 emails you acquire, 63% of those will also give you their full name and mailing address in exchange for a Welcome Kit from your ministry!

For a Free Demo on how this process works, contact Pathmaker Marketing at 623-322-3334.