here's the story : the scenario

here's the story : the challenge

here's the story : the approach

here's the story : the results

here's the story : the resolution

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Creating Quality Leads Out of Chaos

Native Hope x Novus

Use this space to tell everyone about what you have to offer.

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475

keywords

The specific terms and phrases people use to find content online.
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11,703

website sessions

33% increase

Traffic to pages connected to the campaign, such as webpages, landing pages, or blogs
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6,853

leads

Potential donors who proactively expressed interest after engaging with online content.
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700

new contacts

Contacts who were sourced as a direct result of the campaign efforts (from paid or organic traffic sources)
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1,223

new donors

New donors who donate after engaging with one or more assets in this campaign
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$340,000

dollars

The amount of money raised due to our marketing efforts
We helped Native Hope reorient its organic presence — and increase their SEO rankings 33x where they started.
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client

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Native Hope exists to address the injustice done to Native Americans. They share Native stories, provide educational resources, and assist Native communities.

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2018

expositio : exposition

The scenario

In 2017, Native Hope hired a digital marketing agency to help bring in leads. And it worked! Well—sort of. 

That agency launched campaigns centered around the issue of sex trafficking, bringing in nearly 86,000 new leads, 99% of which came from Facebook posts and ads. But none of those leads turned into donors. Not one.

So, where’s the disconnect? 

Native Hope is an educational nonprofit that assists Native communities—where sex trafficking is an issue, but it’s not the only one. Those nearly 86,000 leads weren’t qualified at the end of the day.

And when you’re dealing with less qualified leads, you need to do a little nurturing. Native Hope had neither the content nor the team to make that happen.
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The challenge

Native Hope came to Novus with those 85,000+ unqualified leads as baggage. So far, those leads had little-to-no interest in Native Hope’s fundraising efforts, which meant they needed to generate new leads—and their only way of doing that was by paying for them.

Their ask: could Novus get Native Hope more leads on Facebook? And could we turn those new leads into donors?

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We could do better. Here's how.

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The approach

Native Hope’s mission needed momentum. That’s the exact space we like to take up at Novus. How do we tell a compelling story to the masses? Then how do we get that audience to take action?

We needed to create content that captivated the right audience and was aligned with Native Hope’s mission. From there, the right audience would find Native Hope. 

Creating a cohesive content library

Objective: establish Native Hope as an expert in the space, create conversion opportunities, & increase organic traffic

Part of Native Hope’s mission is education. They do that well but, at the time, hadn’t translated it yet to the digital realm. We created content that aligned with their mission and what people were searching for on Google.

The majority of this was educational content designed to set them up as thought leaders and experts in terms of Native American resources. From blogs to downloadable eBooks to pillar pages and more, we spent the better part of a year building Native Hope a content foundation that would inform and entertain their constituents.  

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By gating eBooks behind a form, we captured new leads and tracked multiple interactions throughout the marketing funnel. As we had planned, those new search engine-optimized pieces of content began to play a role in attracting brand-new, high-intent contacts, who were searching terms Native Hope happened to rank highly for. Plus, the pieces in the library could be used as content offers in specific ad campaigns as well as in nurturing drip sequences. And speaking of…

 

Nurturing leads

Objective: clean up the list & turn leads
into donors 

We had to deal with the 85,000+ unqualified leads clogging up the CRM and the potential harm they were doing to Native Hope’s email health. With the new content library, we were able to craft various email workflows to nurture through stories, educational resources, and relevant fundraising offers. These nurturing sequences were crafted to turn leads into donors and one-time donors into monthly sustainers.

We enrolled the 85,000 into a workflow, and those who didn’t engage were deleted from the CRM to make way for all of the new, more qualified contacts coming in from gated content. Now, new contacts are automatically enrolled into these nurturing sequences after engaging with Native Hope content. 

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what does the red hand symbolize for Native communities?

Refreshing the website 

Objective: tell a stronger story & engage at every turn 

We helped Native Hope completely revamp their website. We streamlined their main navigation, simplified the flow of each website page, added more buttons that lead to content or fundraising opportunities, and even created a fully automated chatbot to help engage site visitors.

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The results

The entire goal of this content marketing approach was to build a sustainable growth plan for Native Hope, not just generate buzz and traction in one particular year. 

Sustainable growth looks like increasing organic rankings, website traffic, high-quality leads, one-time and monthly donations, and total dollars raised. 

After just one year of regularly producing SEO-focused content, the Native Hope team increased the number of ranking keywords for their domain by 68% and saw 3x the traffic from those keywords.

Fast forward to today and Native Hope has seen a keyword ranking increase of 3310% and generated 5902% more traffic to their website from high-ranking pages and blog articles. The numbers may look made up but the results speak for themselves. 

Native Hope generated $0 from 85,000 leads with the other agency. With Novus, they generated $340,000 from 6,853 leads.

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Still, Native Hope generated:

475

keywords

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The specific terms and phrases people use to find content online.

11,703

website sessions

(33% increase)

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Traffic to pages connected to the campaign, such as webpages, landing pages, or blogs.

6,853

leads

info-icon
Potential donors who proactively expressed interest after engaging with online content.

700

new contacts

info-icon
Contacts who were sourced as a direct result of the campaign efforts (from paid or organic traffic sources)

1,223

new donors

info-icon
New donors who donate after engaging with one or more assets in this campaign

$340,000

dollars

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The amount of money raised due to our marketing efforts
resolutio

the resolution

If you work at a nonprofit, here are a few things to take away from this story:

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Treasure transparency. 

There are results that speak for themselves and some results that say nothing at all. If you’re working with a vendor, urge them to go beyond vanity metrics. Those 85,000 leads Native Hope had weren’t going to convert. How can your organization do any good if your metrics aren’t doing any good? 

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Novus helped give Native Hope’s mission momentum.
We can do that for you, too.

Let's be partners in crime good

Novus can breathe new life into your marketing efforts.
Let’s talk about what that looks like.
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