Ever wondered what a Digital Strategist is or does for Christian Non-Profits and Churches?
Todd Turner spends a few minutes explaining his value to small to mid-sized organizations who need help moving the needle on new names and increased revenue to fund their God Sized missions.
Ever wondered what a Digital Strategist is or does for Christian Non-Profits and Churches?
Todd Turner spends a few minutes explaining his value to small to mid-sized organizations who need help moving the needle on new names and increased revenue to fund their God Sized missions.
Welcome to the, this is his story podcast the executive director
and Pastor guide to sowing and reaping online givers.
Welcome to episode 13,
the nonprofit digital strategist.
I get asked all the time.
What is it that you do?
Whether that's my kids or friends are even people in the nonprofit World,
which I serve, you know, how do I help?
Who hires me? What gaps,
do I feel? Well, let's start with who I serve and that's going to help everyone understand the Apps.
I feel and how I come alongside Ministries and churches.
So I serve Christian organizations that are Ministry minded.
It's a very unique, I even caught in,
such newest, lean industry.
It has fluctuating revenues, and budgets full of volunteers,
overworked employees that we're a lot of different hats and executive directors that are tasked.
Task with many many things.
It also the nonprofit world and especially Christian.
Nonprofits is even though it's small Niche,
you know, considering, you know, the whole United States in the whole world.
It's still very large and I focus on small to mid-sized organizations.
I've found that, you know anywhere from an income of 100,000 dollars up to even 20 million dollars.
That's considered small to mid-size for Christian.
Those are the organizations that I helped the most and the bigger ones,
even though I can help, they normally hire agencies that are a lot bigger than
me because they actually need more hands on than I'm able to do as a One-Stop shop.
So I focus on small to mid size.
I normally work directly with the executive directors and or the marketing,
and web directors, but normally both of them together because they have to be hand in.
And everything that they do
and I like to make sure that they are talking and communicating accordingly.
So, you know my has a little aside,
my old boss. This is in the secular world,
but one of my first bosses that I reported to you
as a CEO and I was literally working in a purchasing inventory,
control specialist role.
He gave me good advice and said, you know, Always room
for a middleman between the management and the technical.
He said, if you can fill that Gap,
you will always have a place in an organization.
And so, here I am 25 years later,
30 years later. And,
you know, I have given board of directors speeches.
And I can go and talk to the person writing code and doing artwork.
I have learned that Gap.
Very well. I was blessed to know, learn technical.
I can talk to the people who Ooh,
code, I can talk to artists.
I can talk to social media strategist at the same time.
I can roll that up and speak high-level to Executives who may not can speak that language.
And so, that my gap-filling abilities have really helped me in my career.
And they've helped my clients to because,
quite frankly, I get hired a lot by non technical leadership,
but Not my only focus but that's where people really can use me,
or maybe they are technical. They didn't want to focus.
Their, we will talk about that here in a minute.
But basically, I feel like I do two things for organizations.
I sometimes feel what I call the brother-in-law role at that.
Is everybody needs a friend, you know,
the old saying that, you know,
everybody needs a lawyer in their family
and everybody needs a doctor and their family just you know,
be able to Up the phone and call and, you know, I don't want to go in
and have to go to the doctor for this.
But man, I got this little mole right here. What should I do?
And so you just call your brother-in-law? Well,
I'm the brother-in-law for digital strategy is,
you know organization. Like, well, we're about ready to get a new website.
You know, it's a hundred thousand dollars too much as twenty thousand.
What should I do this by report showed this?
What does that mean? My guys are telling me X,
but I don't know. That's true or not.
And should I spending a lot of money on my digital As It prepares are performing correctly.
So I'm the brother-in-law on the sounding board.
And so a lot of organizations put me on retainer and I will literally just answer the phone get on,
you know, when they need me to pick up the phone and call me.
But sometimes we have weekly or bi-weekly calls just to go over reports or information.
And what what?
The things I do with one client, not exclusively,
but they'll just say, hey,
we're firing off these emails this month.
Would you take a look at them? And I look at them and I tweaked them.
I'm their quality control person, one of the examples.
I like to use, it was one of great story is they had created an email
and they were going to send it out
and they asked me to look at it last second and I marked it up and came back then,
and say, I suggest this. Subject change line and I would bold this remove this,
you know, just simple little tweaks.
Well, they just thought, well, we're just going to A/B test
this and we're going to send ours out the way we had it.
And I'm going to send Todd's out. Well,
mine rage seventeen thousand more dollars than theirs
and it was because I have set out thousands of emails and I have just watched the reports.
And I just things, I know that they don't know and it's easy.
E for me to tweak things, you know Max right by direct.
I don't even like starting from a blank page. I love working with
people who've already put content in their voice.
I just know that a lot of organizations are in a hurry.
They're just happy to get an email out
and then they just don't know how to put lipstick on
it or they don't know some of the best practices.
So I come alongside them and sort of boost what they're doing and just make it a little bit better,
but but That's sort of the retainer model.
There's also people who just bring me in one time though.
I would say, 90% of people who bring me in,
actually keep me, but that's okay.
That's not a requirement. I will meet with people for a one session,
but one of one of the sessions I like doing
is what I call a digital audit is for people who just want me to come in and help,
move the needle, get them off where they're at,
and I come in and doing a quick analysis of what are your goals?
What are your issues? Let me look under the hood for a minute.
And it's only a two, two days at their location where I sit down with probably the head of marketing
and web and the executive director founder and we just go through numbers.
Show, me your numbers. Show me your goal.
Let's literally go through your website.
Let's go through your social. To Media. Show me your emails and it's just a pouring,
in of advice when we leave.
They should know. We'll have a list of to do items organized by order of importance.
Some of those are quick fixes. Some of those are three months,
six months even year goals for their whole team to march to,
to help them. Move the needle in whatever it is. What the hell?
Hey, we need more new names or we need more donations,
or we, you know, we think we need, To do this.
What do you think? And so it's just a couple Day digital strategy.
I used to try to do this in one hour and I've done that before people.
You paid me $500 an hour just to have me blow through their website really quick
and those work they work.
I mean, trust me, I've had people say that was the best hour I've ever spent with someone
because I can just quite frankly vomit.
A lot of information, but I don't like to do that.
Quite frankly. I know when people, To hire me.
They'd rather pay 505,000.
I get it. I'm gonna liken it to somebody with cancer walk in the doctor's office,
and they just give you two aspirin. And,
you know, to say, well, you need to exercise more and,
you know, go for a walk. So, well, that's not really going to get to the problem.
Those are just quote, unquote Band-Aid Solutions.
And I think, sometimes, with, with websites,
you can get Band-Aid Solutions, but I want people to know the why?
Why? Am I doing it? Why am I telling you to change this on your landing page?
Why am I tweaking your navigation?
You know, why all that those wise come out and longer relationships longer sessions.
And I really encourage that
because I want to teach the methodology
so that when I'm no longer there those that are there can have new lenses on
when they do the next project.
So that's pretty much the Profit angle of what I do.
I come in with fresh experienced eyes.
And I move the needles for organizations with their digital strategy,
with the whole. Hope of collecting new names for the organization,
and to develop storytelling that results in new donations,
increased donations, monthly partners of an organization.
I'm not one to just say, here's how You mark it or here's what a good website looks to.
My whole end game is to increase exposure in such a way that
their people want to join the organization,
join the movement, join the mission,
and be a part of that. And so when your organization hires me on the other side of that,
you should see increases and moving of the needle of new names
and more funds to do your God sighs Mitch.
Now, I also work with churches.
This one is a little bit interesting.
I'm just going to be very blunt.
Churches, even though I have a passion for churches.
It is a very hard industry to serve at least servant the way I see my value to those organizations.
I'm sure I could serve all kinds of churches.
I am. Too picky because I'm not,
I'm not a money grabber and I know some Churches sort of,
are they like their big buildings and their,
their shiny things. And I don't know. I have a little bit of hard
time fundraising to feed the church machine,
but I love helping churches that are on Mission
and I want you to hear that work differently than just being a church that are on Mission
and I want to help fund that me.
It is a talking money in churches is so taboo.
It is literally,
the industry is very interesting,
how it works is, it's just they're bad words.
People don't the word Marketing in churches and fundraising in churches are just so - it is,
pushing rope uphill to drop break in to this industry unless a church wants to call an organization.
Say hey, we want I want to build a building or they want to do a quote-unquote capital campaign,
many churches won't even hire outside consultants for that.
But some will because they see a Finish Line with it and they see one purpose of light.
We need to raise a couple million dollars. What are we going to do?
But the idea of just being better at asking for money.
It just it's coming. The doors locked on that is really,
really hard to get in but I still offer that service because guess what?
It's biblical. Actually, okay,
I can't help how there are preconceived,
notions about money and hiring Consultants that talk about money.
But I'm sorry, I'm staying in the biblical realm of it.
It you know, Paul ask for funds to,
it's okay. The Bible is full of asking people to give to certain things,
it is. Okay. It is totally.
Okay. Now, there's a good way to do it in a bad way to do it.
But in my case, the way I say it,
it is the flock a pastor's flock is on the internet,
way more than they're in the Pew,
and they're being their attention is being pulled at off thousand different ways.
And there are good Christians who give to organizations
because they're passionate about something that don't give to the local church
and I helped churches.
Craft their story online,
digital channels being web email,
social media and I help them tell their Ministry story where their donors give
and it's not even rocket science because I've done it for decades.
I know what I'm doing in churches, are in the Dark Ages.
They literally are in the well, just put a gift button in the top,
right? Of our church website. And then that's,
that's, that's passing the plate online.
And that's not what,
that's just not a fish. It. It's not effective.
It doesn't work. I know right now as a time.
I'm recording this that churches are in a place where actually,
a lot of them are doing well,
even though the days coming that they won't
because it goes up and down the economy right now with the covid
and how that happened to have and have not or spreading the givers.
Are giving more, but if churches were really honest about looking at their data,
which most churches do not look at their data,
this way, they would see that the non-gamers are still non givers.
So even though the church may be increased, our revenue or doing well financially,
it's because the givers are giving more and the non givers are still not giving.
And so what I like to do is help them talk to the people in their flock
and in their pews that are not traditional Church.
Earth and help them understand that when they give to the church,
they're giving to their own Ministry, their own passions
and it's not just an act of quote-unquote obedience.
It's an act of of love.
It's an act of oh, wow. I actually care about the kids down the street that
you're giving backpacks to this next school year.
And I didn't even know our church was doing that
because I missed Sunday and the only place that y'all talked about it.
So anyway, I hope this helps. Why, you know, I help churches communicate their needs
and their mission to their flock by using their digital channels.
And a lot of churches don't even do a well enough job from the pulpit.
Quite frankly. They certainly don't do it.
Well enough job online and if they, if they're doing anything and they're trusting who's ever job,
it is to do social media, whoever's job. It is to write the email.
There's just trusting that they're doing it. Right?
And I come alongside and help them do that.
In this price, I do all the above everything.
I just got through talking about I do it in person.
I do it over the phone, you know, you assume and I also have two masterclasses,
one built for small to mid-sized organizations,
and one built for churches for someone or an organization that just doesn't have the time.
And they want to do something at their own pace. Do not just recorded
the content in a way that they can consume that
or they can.
Consume it when they get new employees and say,
hey we want you to watch this.
So you understand the new philosophy that we do
and I'm sort of like a trainer for new employees that are on board at an organization's.
So I hope that helps, you know,
what, I do, how I come alongside you,
I come alongside others, and if you have any questions,
obviously contact me blessings.
Thank you for listening to today's episode of.
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