Nonprofit Traffic and Conversions with Mike Ruman

Boris Kievsky 0:00
NonProfit Hero Factory, a weekly live video broadcast and Podcast, where we’ll be helping nonprofit leaders and innovators create more Heroes for their cause. A better word from BaDing.

I just love hearing that BaDing. Hey, everybody, welcome to Episode Three of the nonprofit Hero Factory. This week I’m gonna be talking to my good friend Mike Rumen, about how to attract and convert traffic for your cause. Me on your host. My name is Boris Kievsky. I am the chief storyteller and nerd for good at org strategy. I’m excited to bring the show to you every week where we’re going to be talking to different experts about how to help your nonprofit grow its base of heroes, right, create more Heroes for your cause, ultimately, so you can raise more money, you could have a greater impact on the world and really make the world a better place for all of us. I for one, appreciate everything that you do, as I’m sure most people out there do, whether they are actively supporting you or not. So If they’re not yet let’s try to figure out ways to get them into your funnel. Start walking up your ladder of engagement and support. With that, let’s bring in Mike Ruman, who is going to talk to us today about how he does it for many churches and other nonprofits that he works with. Mike is the founder of reachthelost.com, he helps churches and nonprofits establish a home base and grow it. He spent over 10 years working in publishing, helping authors and nonprofits create and market their content. He lives in Colorado spends his free time on the trails of the Rocky Mountains and is an all around swell guy. Hey, Mike, come on in.

Mike Ruman 1:39
What up Boris?

Boris Kievsky 1:41
How’s it going? Oh, you got punched For a second there by that little girl that she got to the way she’s very nice like that.

Mike Ruman 1:47
Yeah.

Boris Kievsky 1:48
Mike, you and I have known each other for a few years Now. Let’s just say you still have more hair than I do. So you’re still ahead of the game. You’ve done a lot of things in the past. We’ve known each other most of them in, well, all of them in the space of online marketing and online content. I know you’ve been working with nonprofits the entire time. Recently, you really started to focus on nonprofits with reach the last. Tell me a little bit about that.

Mike Ruman 2:17
Well, first, I need to ask you about that intro. What is that BaDing at the end? That is so cute!

Boris Kievsky 2:23
So, my middle child who I asked to record that intro, thought that it would be cute to have a BaDing on there, I had some music, initially, not music that we find that we want to be using. She wanted that sparkle, like on a toothpaste commercial at the end, ding. That was her version of it. I thought it was so hilarious, like, Yeah,

Mike Ruman 2:43
I love it. Yeah.

Boris Kievsky 2:45
Makes me smile every time you start the show.

Mike Ruman 2:47
Yeah. Yeah, thanks for having me on. My background is I spent 10 years in publishing. Our publisher, we were a nonprofit that I went to a large nonprofit Then six years ago, I jumped to start my own company. I work with a lot of nonprofits, a lot of churches. All over the gambit. I have a magician client to a CrossFit gym, to a mom’s ministry. What I found is that there’s some pretty universal strategies that any nonprofit can bring in to grow their donor base to give back to the donor base to give to their members. So yeah, I’m happy to come on here and share that with you today.

Boris Kievsky 3:34
Awesome. Yeah. You said that your nonprofit superpower is to get and convert traffic. I watched your intro video we’re going to link to that later on in the show and in the show notes everybody could find it. I hope they do. I watched the video, which was awesome and you talk about felt needs and felt need funnels with reach the lost. Tell me what first of all I guess what’s different right now that churches are going through? Why is reach the last the right solution these days? What’s going on in the world that you’re thinking this is the approach people need to take?

Mike Ruman 4:13
Yeah, good question. So working with churches, the last, what, 15 years, what I found is churches need to provide a function to help society. We would do church SEO, and we would try to rank for like, churches near me, Christian churches, kind of like those really basic like church terms. What we get are a lot of like, church hoppers. Someone gets offended at what a pastor says, and so they, I’m gonna go find the next church. Those searches are great, maybe people new to the area that they’re searching online, and we still want to get those but really like, if the church can be the church, what we want to do is we want to help society. And so reach the last. Like Jesus has a verse about he came to seek and save the last. Who is the last like? We all are. I’m not sure if you’ve heard about Celebrate Recovery, it’s kind of the AA for the Christian space. In that program, he talks about everybody has a hurt a habit or a hang up. So everybody has something that needs needs help. My guess is if you and I turned the camera off, and I said, Hey, what’s one good thing and one bad thing? Like, your bad thing would be like, something that needs needs help? Why shouldn’t the church help? Reach the loss. What we do is we identify, so when I go into a church, let’s say it’s a nonprofit as well and say, What do you guys do? Like what value do you add to the community and Maybe it’s hypothetically, let’s say it’s a pet rescue. What do you guys do to the community? Then what we do is we we tie into Google. I know you mentioned you’re the nerd, Chief nerd.

Boris Kievsky 6:15
Storyteller nerd for good.

Mike Ruman 6:16
Nerd for good. I love that. So I’m a data geek. It’s kind of how I pitch myself. I go into Google. I look at what are people searching for? 90% of Google searches are questions looking for answers. And we try and position that church or that ministry, that nonprofit, as the answer. If it’s a pet rescue, we want to go out there and like answer pet related questions. Then that’s how you provide value. I think we’ve all heard of Gary V’s, give, give, ask or right was it?

Boris Kievsky 6:52
Jab jab Right Hook.

Mike Ruman 6:53
Yeah, Jab, Jab, right hook. The idea is like give, give, give and then ask. We follow that model and reach the loss is very targeted to churches. I’ll go into a church and say, Okay, what programs do you have? And a lot of churches, it’s cool because they’re spinning up like counseling centers, because like there’s needs. I’m not sure if you’ve seen the data, but like, depression, anxiety, suicide, all these search terms are on the rise. It’s not just because people are going to Google like clinically depressed, like this is even before COVID like, those numbers are through the roof. Our whole mission is to intercept the searches, and get people help get people hope. To me, I believe that the local church is the hope of the world like that’s where people can find help hope. We want to connect them to to have that ministry to that program. It might be like, well, I guess I might go a little too deep, but I kind of Have a good like funnel, I can kind of show you how we do this with churches that other nonprofits can steal and use for them as well.

Boris Kievsky 8:07
Yeah, no, I’d love to get into that funnel. I even just want to break down what you were just talking about, because it’s critical. It’s something that I pardon the pun preach to all my clients too, which is basically, you need to start by identifying the value you provide. It could be your unique value proposition. It could be an aspect of your mission, but too many nonprofits and I don’t know nearly as much about churches and how they function as you do. It’s interesting to me to hear that it’s exact same issues.Too many nonprofits kind of sit back and say, well, we do this, everyone should just come to us, rather than saying, Hey, here’s the value we provide, here’s how we can be of service to you right now, and solve your pain points right in every avatar that we all create. There’s pain points in their solutions from the to, I’m shocked how often and look, they’re not marketing Professionals but how often I’ll have someone fill out a client fill out an avatar, and the pain points will be kind of general. But the solutions More importantly, don’t solve the pain points directly.

Mike Ruman 9:12
Yeah.

Boris Kievsky 9:12
Or they’ll also be general Well, this is what we do. Well, what is that particular person that avatar experiencing right now that you’re going to help them address? It sounds like that’s exactly what you’re doing? Then finding ways to drive Google Ad traffic, if I’m understanding correctly, to helping people solve those problems, right.

Mike Ruman 9:34
Yeah, so I am, I had a hashtag shower thought this morning. I was thinking about you in the shower there and what we’re going to talk about today and I thought about NPAAS, (nonprofits as a service). We’ve heard of Software as a Service website as a service, but I would love for nonprofits to think of nonprofit as a service, because that’s kind of the new model, like one of the nonprofit’s I worked at, like, this model is going away. We had a project that was $5 million that needed funding. I’m like, man, there’s no way we’re gonna find $5 million. One of the guys in the company hopped on a plane, went to this town in Texas that had struck oil came back with $5 million, like funded it. Like, I don’t see that happening. Like ever like, again. Like that model is going away, especially as like donations and donors are going down. This idea of nonprofit as a service, I think, is just getting started. A few of my clients are ministries nonprofits, in their membership sites. For your, this is where you’re going to have to be a little bit tricky or talk with a lawyer But like with your donation. I love Kevin Kelly has the power of 1000 true fans. Imagine if you’re a pet rescue, and you said, Hey, we’re really going to focus on. I have a golden doodle. I know you just got a dog recently here,

Boris Kievsky 11:15
Golden doodle.

Mike Ruman 11:16
Yeah. Like me and you are going to start a golden doodle rescue. We want it to be a nonprofit like that. We care about golden doodles, we want to see them like thrive, whatever. What I would do is is not say, hey, donate to the golden doodle rescue. I would create content for golden doodle owners or golden doodle fans and say, hey for 100 bucks. You get this you get to be a part of the Golden doodle rescue team. And we have to address as nonprofits what’s in it for them?

Boris Kievsky 11:50
Yeah.

Mike Ruman 11:51
The idea of like, hey, send me a $25 recurring donation without giving the donor anything back like, I think that’s done And so hey, for your hundred dollar a year donation, we’re gonna give you a bumper sticker that you can put in the back of your car that says I love golden doodles or I rescue golden doodles some to make them you know, we talked about the hero like, how do we make that donor the hero like, actually on the way into my office today I was behind a guy who had a my kid beat up your honor student like bumper stickers tell us a lot about people. Oh, hey, with your hundred dollars, like maybe we say 20 of that we’re gonna build a cool donor kit for the donors and have the the bumper sticker how to care for your golden doodle. There’s gonna be videos online of like golden doodle care, but that kind of and you know, courses and membership sites. They’re just blown up everywhere. I mean, it’s billions of dollars a year are spent on courses. Why can’t your nonprofit if we’re that golden doodle rescue. Write articles about what to feed a golden doodle on how to train a golden Doodle, and really treat that nonprofit as a service.

Boris Kievsky 13:07
I love it. I mean, we’ve talked a lot over the years, you and I about earned revenue for nonprofits in general. I think there’s a couple of things, though, that I want to unpack from what you just said again. The first is, yeah, I think most nonprofits think of themselves as a service organization, but they don’t necessarily think of themselves as a nonprofit as a service where they need to be constantly providing value. That’s, of course, something we always talk about whether it be providing value in terms of content, or in terms of actual work in the world, or physical or software, whatever it might be value that the donor is getting. One of the values though, and I kind of want to maybe tease this out a little bit because one of the things is that donors get a lot of emotional value, and a lot of ego value, if you will, from supporting a nonprofit, right? There’s a story that we all tell ourselves, about ourselves, and that we tell the world about ourselves whether we’re sharing content on Facebook or actually talking to someone at a party or on a zoom session these days and who we support and what we choose to devote our time and our money to, our resources, our voice, one of the most important resources to that says a lot about us. The biggest thing I think that nonprofits offer people is offer their donors, their supporters, is not even tangible.

There’s actually some studies that showed that when you’re doing a crowdfunding campaign, for example, offering people like something that looks like a Kickstarter thing where if you donate this much we’ll give you this much has actually decreased donations because people feel it’s too transactional, and nonprofit they want to feel good rather than feel transactional like they’re buying something off of Amazon. At the same time, people love feeling of value for money. There’s different ways to show ROI. I do think and I’m going to come back to supporting you on this whole bumper sticker thing, whether it’s a bumper sticker or something else. People love to feel gratitude. If someone does donate to your organization, and you don’t promise them anything, they don’t say for your donation, we’re going to send you a tote bag. I don’t know how many people still need a tote bag these days. You do send them something small, something just hopefully personalized, that makes them feel special. Sometimes these could be digital things but a physical thing I think is great to put into their space and to help them identify.

Not to ramble on too long, but it reminds me of Robert Cialdini and in the book influence, he talks about. People who first identified themselves with a small sign in their window is caring about something later allowing someone to come back and put a giant billboard In their front yard, versus the people who didn’t ask to put something small in their window first, it was much greater political percentage than let them put up billboards. It’s that self identity thing, right? Even if it’s a, what would you call those Facebook frames these days that people are using, right? Help me identify as a supporter to the world and you’re going to reinforce my desire to keep supporting you to keep what is it? It’s congruence, right congruence with my own self identity, right?

Mike Ruman 16:34
Yep. Yeah I have one client, their nonprofit and they started, they’re looking at donations donation program. They even called it it’s called Pathfinders. When you donate, I think it’s really any amount any any recurring amount, you’re part of the Pathfinders. What’s cool is like you You belong, like one like we believe in what you’re doing. Then like, As a Pathfinder, you’re in the inner circle. Even this the president, he sends out a Pathfinders like hey, here’s behind the scenes, here’s what’s happening. You feel like you’re part of something bigger than just writing a check each month. Yeah, even like, just in the bumper stickers cool, like you can do something like that. Even digitally, it’s crazy. Like we’ll give like iPhones, wallpapers, coloring pages, just simple things that just give back to that to those. I mean, I want to say donors, but why don’t say like supporters or members, that community of people who care about that mission, and also using that term of we like, Hey, we’re in this together, you’re part of us. This is not a you fund us. We do the cool stuff like you’re in this with us as well.

Boris Kievsky 17:52
Exactly. The donor the supporter, that’s the hero the nonprofit is basically the the guide or the the enabler, the power up tool that really lets you lets a supporter become the hero in the world. Right?

Mike Ruman 18:05
Yeah. Can I talk to you about the you mentioned the Google ads? Can I tell you tell you the secret that

Boris Kievsky 18:10
Yeah, definitely, definitely.

Mike Ruman 18:13
Here’s the cool thing. This is kind of why we started reached the last. Google has the Google Ad grant, which a lot of people know. A lot of people don’t. Google gives any nonprofit as a 501c3. 10 thousand dollars per month of free Google ads. A lot of people have them, but they’re shut down because they went out of compliance or they were using it to like send people to a donation page. Like, you can’t do that. You have to go solve problems with that money, provide resources. We do branded campaigns, which are kind of Captain Obvious stuff, like people looking for whatever, but like using that Google grant to answer those questions that people are asking on Google what brands have? How should I train my dog to sit or whatever? Like, why not provide value? This is kind of where we have that felt need funnel? I’ll do a church. Let’s say we had a marriage event happening. Like I would not run Google ads and Google grant ads to, hey, come to this marriage event. It’s kinda like the dating approach where you’re asking people to, like, get married on the first step, like what we do is we say, people are searching for date night ideas. We’ll give you 10 date night ideas on a budget in your city. People are searching for date night ideas, they get this date night ideas, they download it, free content, brought to you by XYZ church, and then they download the date night ideas and then we want to we want to give them again, so they happen to an email drip. Email number two is here’s some data Tonight conversation starters.

Boris Kievsky 20:02
I just want to clarify, we’re talking marriage events. Those of us that don’t attend these things on a regular basis, this is for already for married couples or about to get married?

Mike Ruman 20:14
This is an actual funnel we did in the fall. This was for engaged and really targeted, like newly married couples.

Boris Kievsky 20:23
It’s date night ideas for couples. For people who are either newly married or recently or about to get married.

Mike Ruman 20:30
Right.

Boris Kievsky 20:31
Okay. clarify that. It’s not like for single people.

Mike Ruman 20:35
No, like I have a funnel here, but we start with an avatar. Who do we want to reach? What about the eventually do want them to come to this, like, come to this marriage event over here? They download the date night ideas, and then they download the conversation starters. Then email number three is going to be kind of who we are, and then we’re going to invite them to this marriage event. The beautiful thing about this is you have 10,000 bucks per month with that Google Ad grant to like, give, give, give give. I think we had maybe like a 15% conversion, like come to the marriage event.

Boris Kievsky 21:11
Wow.

Mike Ruman 21:11
What’s cool is like, if they didn’t, like you’re making the, you’re making the community better by giving them like good content, and like conversation starters, like, I think we’ve all kind of lost the art of conversation. Hey, here’s some just, here’s some questions to like, ask on your date to kind of go a little bit deeper. With churches, like, you know, we’re providing value and it’s like, hey, this was brought to you by XYZ church. Like, we might not say, like, make sure you come this weekend, but like, we’ll invite them like, hey, if you want to talk to a pastor, like we’re here, but then we’ll bounce out. I think with like influence, he talks about the law of reciprocity, like there’s, yeah, when you when you give someone something, there’s just like universal law, they want to give back. it could even be like an emotional like, Man at church that did that was like really cool Or that nonprofit who gave us that those pet training tips like that was really cool. They may never be, I’m a supporter or member but you give and I think as humans, like we’re making the world a little bit better place by just giving. Eventually they’re gonna come into our funnel like, hey, Who is this golden doodle rescue? Hey, it’s Boris and Mike. We love golden doodles. We’re very manly men who love our golden doodles. Just that whole model, solving their problems, getting them into your funnel, and then there could be a membership site, there could be courses. At the end of that end of that funnel,

Boris Kievsky 22:46
a lot of people don’t realize and you’re talking directly to this, that Google exists to answer questions, right, whether somebody knows it or not, when they type a search term into Google, they’ve got a question in their minds, the better Google can answer that question, the more likely people are going to come back to Google to look for those things again versus asking their voice assistant or just asking their neighbor. Especially with ads, and and nonprofit ads, specifically on the Google Ads grant, your answer has to be totally relevant to the question that they’re asking. It has to show value somehow. Google does all kinds of tricks to verify the stuff. The more value you can provide, the better. It’s also a branding play in a couple of ways, right? The way I talk about brand is it’s the story that people tell about you, right? It’s the association they have, whether it’s with your logo or your name, so the Church of the Golden Labradoodle, somebody says that just to combine all our themes here, when somebody says that what do you think of that church has provided me with value, then I’m going to say, Oh, that’s the church that gave me this. It’s a positive association. The more of those associations build up over time, the more likely I am to just have a desire to give to the organization and also to share it with others, right? If someone else is looking for help with their golden Doodle, then I’m going to say, Oh, you know, what’s a great organization? Yeah, I haven’t attended their events, but I love the stuff they’ve been sending me. I’m sure this event will be great for you to let me pass that along. Right?

Mike Ruman 24:21
Yeah, this is uh, so I do a daily Bible reading and I use this book called The Bible recap. They just every day they they give give me like a five to 10 minute podcast like breaking down today’s reading, given a context. We’re in May. I’ve been listening to them since January 1. It wasn’t till last month. They started giving because it was like man, they gave me like, 90 days of like, amazing content. I felt a little guilt like they asked for like seven bucks a month. Like I can do that like wanting to get rid of this guilt but to like, if I would have tried to buy the same thing. They Gave me like I’d probably paid 50/100 bucks for the same type of content that they’re just giving away for free. That’s where sometimes these donor cycles are not like seven days sign up donors like for them it was probably 120 before I became a monthly recurring donor. What that did is that I unlocked, show transcripts like now if I want to go read like what she said in the podcast, but they started with, here’s amazing free content, but they also care. Like they really have a heart to help people like learn the Bible, read the Bible, and like I get it like I love their heart. It comes through everything.

They do every email every episode, and they got me in for seven bucks a month. I don’t really care about the show transcriptions but there’s like, that’s cool. I have these things. We know there’s tools out there for Was it 10 cents a minute you can get your stuff transcribed like it was an article them, but it provided value to me. I’m kind of like looking like cool. Like, this stuff’s amazing. What else do they have that? They have like in person like discipleship groups. Yeah, that that whole model I think is the NPAS nonprofit as a service. Like, to me, that’s the future. Why not like you have this nonprofit with people who care about this one particular topic. Like, turn your camera on record something like write blog posts, like you started a nonprofit where this mission like, get after it.

Boris Kievsky 26:34
I think a lot of nonprofits feel like it’s hard to compete with all the noise, right? I mean, that’s one of the things that I focus on is how to help them break through all the all the noise that’s out there. There’s probably 1000 bloggers talking about golden doodles every single day. How does a nonprofit stand out? It can be a little intimidating, but there are definitely strategies to do that. The Google Ads grant is one of those right? You could run basically no cost You ads as long as they’re well done. But also I, you know, when you were talking about the, the length of time that it took the 90 days or something that they were providing you with value before you felt guilty to enough to give to them or just you felt that need to reciprocate, right. In the for profit world, of course, there’s, especially in SAS companies, there’s the customer acquisition cost, right? When Amazon first started, I think they were giving free $50 free or something $20, free, Uber first started, it was get your first ride free, get $10 off, $20 off whatever it was. That’s all factored into their customer acquisition cost. They know that in the long run, they’re going to make it back. With nonprofits giving value like that over the course of a long period of time, and it doesn’t cost them much to do it. I mean, the ads grant is free, although it will take some resources to administer it. It’ll take a little time. time and resources to create some of these downloadable guides or whatever it might be. It’s not expensive. Ultimately, if you factor that in to your customer acquisition cost, in the long run, you should be tracking of course your ROI, your return on investment, but it’s gonna pay off in spades. Yeah.

Mike Ruman 28:20
Yeah, like very practical. Like, if you’re watching this right now, like, go to answerthepublic.com type in your topic, and they’ll give you all the questions being asked in that topic. Look at the notes. They’ll give you the who, what, when, where, why, and how, look at the how, and the what, and just answer some of those with 600 word, blog post. Then if you get that grant, like man run traffic to that, like the cost that acquisition costs when you have 10,000 bucks of free money per month, like that acquisition costs can go way, way, way down, and up. mentioned that other people could be competing with other people out there. Like, there are restrictions with the grant like, you have to be able to convert. If you do one funnel well, and just like hammer that funnel like you could just crush your your niche. Getting people into your nonprofit,

Boris Kievsky 29:19
answerthepublic.com?

Mike Ruman 29:21
Yeah.

Boris Kievsky 29:21
Cool. We’ll definitely add that to the to the show notes. People go check that out. I actually didn’t know that one. I use some SEO tools to research what people are asking around a particular topic. All it does is basically say you take your term and it tries to find matching terms with the word how or what or why or where beforehand to see what Google autocompletes right.

Mike Ruman 29:44
Yeah, yeah, same thing. Yeah, I also kind of like, another step is addingkwfinder.com, you get three free searches per day. I like to use that to see how many people are searching for this topic. Just do three a day, then you can like, have someone else do three, three that same day. Just making sure that people are asking enough people are asking that question that it’s something worth solving. I see so many like YouTube videos done blog posts done answering questions that nobody’s asking. It’s like, you just wasted a lot of time like that you could have spent on this question that’s being asked all the time every month over and over. Use data to like, make sure that you’re solving answering the right questions.

Boris Kievsky 30:34
It’s not all about you as the organization. It’s about the people that you’re trying to serve and help.

Mike Ruman 30:40
Absolutely.

Boris Kievsky 30:40
Oh, Mike, man, we are overtime here. It’s been an awesome conversation. I’m gonna definitely have to have you back real soon. You’ve always got amazing things to share. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming on today. We’re going to have in the show notes, all the stuff that we talked about today, plus, Mike has shared with us a video on exactly how all this works for reach the last that it breaks down his process that really anybody could duplicate themselves if they have the time and resources and if not, they should hire Mike to do it for them. That’s definitely gonna be in our show notes as well as the full transcript of this which we do use one of those transcript services to put together so sorry in advance for the typos or the What do you call it in music, there’s monda greens I think that entered the dictionary a couple years ago, when the singer singing one thing but you hear something else? I think transcript services are great for those. Any last last words you want to share with the folks here Mike?

Mike Ruman 31:46
No, I love nonprofits. I’ve worked I have secular clients like we do. It’s sales funnels, like think of sales funnel, but you’re forgetting For your nonprofit, and just serve that category serve that niche, but also like as a nonprofit, you have access to stuff that a lawncare company doesn’t. Make sure I mean, I know you have a ton of like resources. Yeah, reach out if you have any questions about how to what to even go to get started. This process is super simple. There’s no like, secret algorithm. It’s like just do step 12345. And like, rinse and repeat.

Boris Kievsky 32:29
There you go. Well, I don’t know about the rinse and repeat part. That was for those of you listen to the audio that was me, looking at my bald head and saying rinse and repeat does not always apply. But Alright, with that is a good time as any to wrap this up Mike’s contact info and all the links, like I said, are going to be in the show notes. Thanks, everybody for joining us tuning in listening in however you’re doing what you’re doing, and thank you for what you’re doing to make the world a better place. As always, I’m your host Boris and we’ll see you next week with some more conversations with awesome nonprofit leaders,

Mike Ruman 33:01
Bang!
All right, thanks, Boris.