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FreeImpressions in the news |
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Have you often wondered about those advertising banners and popups which appear when you visit your favourite web sites? Who creates them, who pays for them, how expensive are they, how effective are they, how does one go about booking them? As a nonprofit, you probably thought all these questions were moot; you'd assume, unless you're very large, that online advertising would be far too expensive and too complex a project for you to consider. However ... along comes Free Impressions, a company organized by a group of former employees of Excite@Home and other colleagues with major experience in the online media world. This company's mandate is to open the mysterious world of online marketing to charities and other nonprofits. Established just as the new year opened, the company nonetheless already has three successful campaigns under its belt, for Canadian Cancer Society, Save the Children Canada, and World Youth Day. Low prices, top sites The system involves Free Impression's negotiating lowest possible prices on the network of top tier media companies with which it has developed liaisons. These include msn.ca, altavista, canoe.ca, globeandmail.com, Report on Business, Sympatico Lycos, Bell Globemedia Interactive, AOL Canada, workopolis.com, and globeinvestor.com. In the words of Paul Cowan, Marketing Director: “We negotiate with the portals to get the advertising space for a minimal cost. In turn, we pass the inventory to the charities and develop the turnkey advertising program. The charity pays a flat fee for the program, typically one-third to one-fifth of what a traditional advertiser would pay.” The example he quotes: “We develop a program valued at (priced at) $29,500. A charity gets the turnkey program (strategy, planning, management, creative services, and analytics). The actual book value of the program ranges from $91,000 to $130,000, depending on the array of web sites used and complexity of advertising creative. You can see the savings are fairly substantial.” Took Relay national For the Canadian Cancer Society, Free Impressions took on the task of making the public aware of the Relay for Life event, which had begun in Ontario, and had become national. Banner ads ran on several of the portals, each with a “click here” to send surfers to the Relay for Life site, as well as popping up a preformatted e-mail ready to send to the local organizer nearest to them. The campaign netted more than 4,000 clicks from qualified users, says the company, resulting in cost per acquisition of less than $2.50. It also, the company says, “created substantial brand awareness at a national level.” Agreeing that the efforts had been effective and created a “marked increase in traffic” to the RLF site, Judy Noordermeer, Senior Communications/Marketing Officer for the CCS, also says “Free Impressions provided excellent customer service, including understanding our needs, developing creative ads, placing these ads strategically, and monitoring and reporting on the results.” Child labour the issue In the case of Save the Children, the mandate was to raise awareness about child labour in cocoa fields in West Africa through the promotion of Fair Trade Certified products. The online advertising included a contest element and viral e-mail component. The contest was designed to maximize return on investment by offering a greater incentive for viewers to respond to the ad, collecting user information for future direct e-mail campaigns, and raising additional awareness with e-mail referrals for everyone who entered the contest. The results, says the company, included 4,750 clicks for a cost per acquisition of $2, and information capture from 1,291 warm leads who opted in to receive future messages from the organization. Save the Children is still evaluating final results of the campaign, says Sharron Riley-Persson, Director of Marketing, particularly with the purpose of converting the “warm leads” to actual donations. Other supporters of the campaign were TransFair Canada, which provided the prize for the contest, and HJC Consultants, which participated in program development and assisted with online tracking of respondents. As for the “team at Free Impressions”, she says, they “have been a pleasure to work with. They are knowledgeable, supportive, progressive thinkers and creative.” Several other services In addition to negotiating rates and placing ads with online media, this full-service company provides a wide variety of other support services, exclusively for nonprofits. “Free Impressions is taking unique approaches to servicing the charity sector,” says Cowan. “We are developing innovative marketing programs that have proven successful in the private sector and applying the knowledge to the charity world. We are helping clients secure additional funding for programs through corporate sponsors and looking at developing new revenue streams for charities. Online advertising is the tip of the iceberg for the charity sector to begin developing brands in the digital world.” Among the supplementary services the company offers: online consulting, creative services, paid search and directory placement, nonpaid search and directory placement, internal search engine, contest management, e-mail/viral marketing, and online donation fulfillment.
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