11. heart: inspiring your audience to care
This is where the magic happens. The best way to
build the relationship and inspire your audience to
care?
• Storytelling
• Authenticity
• Empathy
• Surround-sound engagement
• Community
16. ask: inspiring action
Once you have your audiences’ attention and have
worked to build the relationship, THEN you can make the
ask.
The ask should:
• Offer multiple points of entry
• Match the audience
• Be clear and direct
• Be easy to find on your website,
on an email or wherever
22. you have to build the relationshiphook, heart, ask in action
EVENT
TARGETED
ADS
FACEBOOK
PAGE
CELEBRITY
SPOKESPEOPL
E
LANDING PAGE
SHARING
ENGAGING
OFFLINE
EMAIL
CAMPAIGNS
MEDIA
TARGET
ADVOCATE
There are more nonprofits than ever today– and most are doing incredible things to make the world a better place.
It’s great that there are so many nonprofits working to solve social problems. But from a communications standpoint, it brings a challenge. There’s a lot of noise. Every day nonprofits are going after similar audiences, asking them to do similar things. Your audience is constantly making choices about what they’re going to devote attention, dollars and time to.
So the question is: how can you capture your audiences’ attention and ultimately turn that audience into active participants of your organization? Today, we’re going to talk about how you can break through the noise to do just that.
Before you go any further, the first step is making sure that you know the answers to a few key questions. First, it’s crucial to know who you are trying to reach. And the more specific, the better your communications campaign will be. Rather than Millennials, how about 25-30 year olds living in major cities who care about the environment?
Once you’re clear on who you want to reach, make sure you define what you ultimately want this audience to do. Are you trying to drive donations? Awareness? Volunteers? Whatever it is, make sure to gain clarity on that upfront.
Knowing your audience and your ask is great. But there’s a lot that has to happen before you can make that ask of your audience. Asking someone who doesn’t know or care about your organization to donate or volunteer won’t get you very far. It’s kind of like proposing on a first date– you have to let things build.
At Fenton, we use a framework called Hook*Heart*Ask to help our clients understand the importance of building relationships and making their audience care before asking them to do anything big. The idea is that you must begin by getting your audience intrigued. Then your job is to build an emotional connection—make them care about the work you do. Finally, you can make the ask in a way that feels natural and authentic
Remember when you were in middle school, and you were learning about how to write attention-grabbing introductions? Think of the “hook” as that attention-grabbing first line– that thing that’s going to make your audience click, keep reading, engage, etc. It’s really about building an audience– building your list and awareness of your organization to pave the way for a deeper connection. A lot of the time, this “hook” will lead your audience to enter their email address, sign up to learn more, like a Facebook page, etc.
In terms of format, the hook can be many things. And ideally, your audience will be exposed to more than one. Hooks can take the form of targeted, releventFacebook ads; shocking infographics; live installations; PSAs and media stories.
The HEART phase encompasses all the ways that you build and maintain relationships with your audience and continue to inspire them to care about the organization. This could happen through the regular creation of compelling content, email campaign, social media management, event opportunities, op-eds, longer-form videos, curated stories—No matter what,
The HEART phase encompasses all the ways that you build and maintain relationships with your audience and continue to inspire them to care about the organization. This could happen through the regular creation of compelling content, email campaign, social media management, event opportunities, op-eds, longer-form videos, curated stories—No matter what,
The HEART phase encompasses all the ways that you build and maintain relationships with your audience and continue to inspire them to care about the organization. This could happen through the regular creation of compelling content, email campaign, social media management, event opportunities, op-eds, longer-form videos, curated stories—No matter what,
The HEART phase encompasses all the ways that you build and maintain relationships with your audience and continue to inspire them to care about the organization. This could happen through the regular creation of compelling content, email campaign, social media management, event opportunities, op-eds, longer-form videos, curated stories—No matter what,
Asks vary- you might be asking your audience to host an event, volunteer, dedicate their birthdays to a cause, make a monthly gift or make a one time donation. Whatever it is, if you’ve successfully built a relationship, your audience will be more likely to take that action. That, plus you should make sure that the ASK is clear and easy-to-do. It should also match that audience’s level of engagement.
Asks vary- you might be asking your audience to host an event, volunteer, dedicate their birthdays to a cause, make a monthly gift or make a one time donation. Whatever it is, if you’ve successfully built a relationship, your audience will be more likely to take that action. That, plus you should make sure that the ASK is clear and easy-to-do. It should also match that audience’s level of engagement.
Asks vary- you might be asking your audience to host an event, volunteer, dedicate their birthdays to a cause, make a monthly gift or make a one time donation. Whatever it is, if you’ve successfully built a relationship, your audience will be more likely to take that action. That, plus you should make sure that the ASK is clear and easy-to-do. It should also match that audience’s level of engagement.
Asks vary- you might be asking your audience to host an event, volunteer, dedicate their birthdays to a cause, make a monthly gift or make a one time donation. Whatever it is, if you’ve successfully built a relationship, your audience will be more likely to take that action. That, plus you should make sure that the ASK is clear and easy-to-do. It should also match that audience’s level of engagement.
Asks vary- you might be asking your audience to host an event, volunteer, dedicate their birthdays to a cause, make a monthly gift or make a one time donation. Whatever it is, if you’ve successfully built a relationship, your audience will be more likely to take that action. That, plus you should make sure that the ASK is clear and easy-to-do. It should also match that audience’s level of engagement.
While the “HOOK HEART ASK” framework provides a useful way for thinking about relationship building, it’s important to remember that these aren’t three separate phases that exist in a silo. In reality, HOOK HEART ASK is often happening on multiple levels at the same time.There isn’t just one tactic per each category- the idea is to surround your audience with hooks and then hope they bite! Once they do, you surround them with stories across channels, as well as progressive opportunities to take action. As you can see, this image shows HOOK HEART ASK in action– it’s a process that includes many tactics and channels.
So now let’s take a look at some real world examples of how organizations successfully built relationships with their audiences over time.
HOOK: TARGETED ADS FEATURING TRUSTED CORPORATE PARTNERS (TO REACH YOUNG MOMS)HOOK-HEART: FUNNY CONTENT DESIGNED FOR YOUNG MOMSHEART: STORIES ABOUT THE PEOPLE STC HELPSASK: CLICK/SHARE/LIKE TO DONATE; MAKE A $30 DONATION
HOOK: NEW YORK TIMES PIECE, CLOTHING TAGHEART: FACEBOOK; STORY EXCHANGES BETWEEN WORKERS AND COLLEGE STUDENTS; VIRTUAL TOUR OF FACTORIES FOR STUDENT GROUPSASK: SPREAD THE WORD. BUY ALTA GRACIA
HOOK: STATS, TRAILERS, EVENT APPEARANCESHEART: FILM; BOOK CLUB; EMAIL’ INSTAGRAM ASK: HOST A SCREENING; DONATE TO PARTNER ORGANIZATION
HOOK: MEDIA; INTERRUPTORSHEART: CONTENT; NEWSLETTER; STORY/SUCCESS SHARINGASK: DONATE; BE AN INTERRUPTOR;