There is a lot of marketing talent in Denver – and there are a lot of great nonprofits that need great marketing talent. However, getting the two together isn’t always easy.

So what is Insights for Good?

Insights for Good is a gathering of local marketing professionals that want to give back to a local nonprofit while also networking with like-minded professionals.

How does it work? The first 15-20 minutes is like many networking events – introductions and conversation. Then the nonprofit will introduce themselves, give an overview of their challenges, and then the brainstorming and real interaction begins. The goal is to generate as many fresh insights as possible that the nonprofit can take away to further explore and build on.

There is no further commitment beyond the one night – just an evening of networking, brainstorming, and doing some good!

Our first event is already scheduled and nonprofit selected.  We will be hosting The Journey Institute by brainstorming ideas on how to get the word out, building buzz, and getting submissions for an upcoming event.  No matter what your expertise or interest in marketing is, we can use your help!

To learn more, join the group, and RSVP for the event, visit our meetup page.

You can also follow the group on Twitter @InsightsforGood.

And thank you to the Colorado AMA for their support in promoting this event!

Last Spring the Denver Business Journal ran an interesting article about how Colorado has one of the highest rates of browsing to e-commerce sites.

The research, produced by Hitwise (a company that uses Internet Service Provider data to track which websites people visit), found that Coloradoans are 16 percent more likely to visit retail websites than the average citizen in all other states. Colorado had the fourth highest e-commerce browsing rate in the country.

In a tough economy, many businesses are looking to leverage their internet presence to make all this internet browsing benefit them.

Whether your organization is for-profit or non-profit, what does this mean for you?  How can you survive online?  These questions should be considered in any strategic planning process you engage in over the next several years.  Although every case is unique, the following points will be helpful for you to consider:

• Have a well thought out internet strategy. The flashiest website won’t matter unless you have a clear, well thought out reason for its existence and a person or team in charge of regularly updating your content.
• Make it easy to find and buy you. If people are going to buy your products or donate to your cause online, you have to make it easy for them to do so.  If a potential customer, volunteer, or donor searches for your product or service online, can they find you?  As a quick and dirty test, take some terms that are relevant to your business or non-profit and see how high you show up in the google results.  Once people find your site, is it easy for them to navigate around?  Usability testing and web analytics can help tune your website to perfection.  In usability testing, we examine the behavior of individuals as they navigate your website to see what they find clear or confusing.  Web analytics (using google’s software or the myriad of other existing solutions) examine the behavior of actual visitors to your site.  How do users get to your site (and what other sites or google searches are doing the referring), where do they go on your site, how long do they stay on each page, and which pages cause them to leave your site.
• Make it easy to find information about your products. Just because Coloradoans are likely to go to websites doesn’t mean they are necessarily buying more from websites! Hitwise only tracks where people go — it doesn’t say anything about what they actually do. And as it turns out, the vast majority of individuals who visit e-commerce sites probably do not buy anything. Less than a quarter of those who visited music and cell phone e-commerce sites before buying those products actually made their purchases online. However, that does not mean that a good website is a waste! According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, many internet users use information they find online before making a purchase at a brick and mortar store. And a Yahoo study agrees with this, showing a noticeable increase in purchases from physical locations after people researched products online. Yahoo calls this the ROBO effect–Research Online, Buy Offline.
• Keep everything current. This is obviously important because having the most up-to-date information will provide the most useful experience for your users and will enhance your credible reputation.  If the last thing on the “news” section of your website is an event from last October, you send the message that you either do not do enough or do not care enough to let people know.  If you don’t update your website, there’s no reason for people to come back again.
• Know who is (and is not) using your website. We mentioned web analytics above, but this topic is important enough to warrant a bullet of its own.  Do some research with your customer base (or donor base) to determine their level of awareness and use of your website.  If the people who already know you do not use your website, find out why.  Are there certain demographic groups that will not use your web store or web donations?  Consider focus groups or interviews to find out why.  Try discount codes, donation matching, or other incentives to encourage use of your website (and measure how well your different initiatives work so you know what to keep doing!).
• Stay informed. The web is exciting and scary precisely because it changes so quickly.  The amount of brainpower that is used to create new services and new paradigms online is staggering.  The hot things recently have been social networking and microblogging (i.e., twitter or plurk), but who knows what’s next.  Not every hot new web gizmo needs to be adopted by your organization, but by keeping current you can ensure that you will not miss the developments that are essential for you.

If your organization has a web strategy, what has been your biggest challenge and your biggest opportunity?

A few interesting findings, included:

• Nearly all Coloradans surveyed believe nonprofits play a major role in making our communities better places to live.  Furthermore, most Coloradans believe that all businesses should support charitable causes.
• The top three reasons people select the charities they support are as follows: they believe the organization is trustworthy (98 percent), they believe the organization is well-managed and effective (96 percent), and they believe the organization supports a cause they believe in (96 percent).
• Other than their spouse or significant other, few residents consult others when making their decisions about charitable giving. Forty-three percent consult a spouse or significant other;  another 38 percent don’t consult with anyone.
• The typical volunteer provides upwards of 20 hours per month to their cause(s).
• Forty-six percent said they would give less due to the current economy.
• The most common means of contact that compels a person to donate (time or money) is being asked to do so by a person they know.

Click here for the full report (pdf).

In a quick search, I easily found several sites helping people get on a list (here, here, here, here, and here).  I personally like the photos of happy people in the video and the association of market research with telemarketers in the last link…arghh!  For another 2.1 million links for paid surveys, click here.

Now, I’m not against the entrepreneurial spirit of earning a buck, but professional respondents are not good for our industry and therefore not good for our clients.  Especially when they start to misrepresent themselves in order to participate.  WHY?  Completing the survey (or other research mode) and earning the incentive becomes their only objective.  The problem is only compounded when respondents outright lie to qualify for the survey.  And as respondents take more and more surveys, they become more skilled in learning how to ensure they’ll make it past the screener questions and qualify.  Additionally, there is potential concern that respondents who become too skilled at taking surveys – even when not cheating – may not give quality responses due to lack of focus.  Or they may just become “tuned” to marketing in their everyday lives, and in a sense be too sophisticated to represent the “average person” targeted by the marketing campaign.

This goes back to the core tenet of survey research – sampling.  If your sample is not representative of your target population, then accurate conclusions cannot be drawn.  The only group that cheaters represent are cheaters themselves (and even then they wouldn’t fill out the survey correctly!).  Even when not cheating, similar problems arise from using “professional participants” who are not representative because they’ve become “experts” at awareness of marketing.

And this isn’t just some methodology-obsessed research firm speaking either.  Big companies are having concerns too.  A recent BusinessWeek article on the quality of online polling noted that P&G is enforcing stricter guidelines when conducting Web polling.  The article cites one instance in which two different surveys came to two completely different results regarding the attractiveness of a product.

So what can we do?  Stay tuned for an upcoming post on ways to limit professional respondents, cheaters, or respondents who are just plain lazy.

This issue has been causing quite the buzz lately and Corona thought it would do its own analysis to see if it really made sense and what the impacts really are (hey, its what we do).  To check our analysis out as well as other information on the topic visit the ecopassforum.  Educate yourself on the issue and then make your voice heard.

(Disclaimer:  Corona has fewer than 50 employees and provides the Eco Pass to them as a benefit)

• The city has definitely seemed prepared and at least from our vantage point, everything seemed to go as smooth as could be expected with such an event.
• Denverites really seemed to take it in.  We were essentially tourists in our own city checking out the police in their body armor like a tourist would check out the guards outside of Buckingham Palace in London.  Or crowding around protests like street performers on Pier 39 in San Francisco.  Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.
• People were also chipping in to help.  Giving directions, recommendations and tips seemed standard.  Our own analyst, Geoff, had already assisted several delegates and news reporters with directions by only 8am on the first day of the convention.   We didn’t even need an ad campaign to make us do it.
• Just like any area with crowds, there were street vendors.  Buttons by the thousands, t-shirts, bobble-head dolls.
• In addition to the spectacle on the street, there was also great art to be seen.
• The crowds were so big along the 16th Street Mall that the buses could hardly get by.  It was probably quicker to walk, but with such great weather, who would mind?
• With all the celebrities, it felt like we were on the west coast.
• But it felt decidedly dressier too; don’t they know Denver has a casual dress policy?
• And our local shoe shine guy, Claude, outside our office kept everyone looking good – he even brought out the big shoe shine chair.

And of course the security.  Wow.  You knew it would be high, but who knew there were even this many law enforcement officials in the area?

• Wondering what hotels the “important” people were staying at?  Just look for the uniformed officers on the corners surrounding it, or the police vehicles lined up for a quick evac.  Of course, some people missed this.
• Don’t leave your backpack laying around for even a second.
• Even the horses had riot gear.
• The police were filming the protestors, the protestors were filming the police, and the tourists (or just locals) were filming both.

Our president and head of quantitative research, Kevin Raines has been chosen to present on the topic of Do It Yourself Survey Results for the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and the Denver Metro Small Business Development Center at the Business Excellence Forum. His presentation will explore:

• The advantages and disadvantages of survey research;
• The pros and cons of different types of surveys;
• How to avoid the most common surveying mistakes; and
• Ten simple steps for conducting an effective survey.

From The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce:

The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and the Denver Metro Small Business Development Center have assembled 12 of the state’s top business experts to help you meet today’s business challenges. This is a unique opportunity to gain a wide variety of expertise all in one day! Choose 4 of 12 powerful workshops, all designed to help your business grow during these turbulent times.

The forum will be held at Regis University on Wednesday, August 20 from 8 am to 5 pm. To see information on the other workshop topics, location, and cost, please visits this link: registration

This extensive survey of Denver residents consisted of 814 interviews with residents, including 205 with self-identified African Americans and 204 with self-identified Latino Denverites. The final survey answers for the entire city were demographically weighted to ensure they are representative of the population of Denver.

The results show both positives and negatives for the performing arts in Denver. Primary among the positives is that 80 percent of residents are interested in live performing arts performances and a good number actually attend them, as within the past year 58 percent attended live theater, 41 percent went to a festival, 34 percent saw a live musical concert, and 11 percent attended a dance performance.

To read more about the results and their implications for performing arts in Denver click over to the Denver Post article* or to the article in the Rocky Mountain News. In addition, DOCA has released selected findings from the survey into a report available on the Denver City website.

*The Denver Post article begins “You can’t always trust surveys commissioned by people with a vested interest in the results.” We completely agree! When consuming data and survey results, you always need to be aware of who commissioned the research, who completed the research, and how they carried it out. And when you conduct research, this is why it is important to have someone (like us!) who is aggressively neutral, ethically unimpeachable, and methodologically sound.

But the interesting thing about this project was exactly how Forbes chose to measure sinfulness. There’s no Federal Bureau of Inquisitions to generate and track statistics on the seven deadly sins, so Forbes needed to find a proxy, or another variable that can stand in for the variable you really care about. This process of moving from the concept you really care about to the variable you can actually measure is called operationalizing your variable, and how you choose to operationalize variables can have dramatic impacts on your results.

For example, to measure Lust, Forbes used numbers from ACNielsen regarding the per capita sales of condoms and other contraceptives in grocery and drug stores. Does this truly measure “Lust”? You could argue that it better measures responsible lust, optimism in perceived future sexual behavior, the effects of public-health campaigns, or the number of young professionals in the metro area (to be fair, Forbes does fess up to the likelihood of the last two alternate explanations).

So what would be a better measure of lust? A survey is probably out of the question, because this is one topic where people will likely lie (although there are detailed—and expensive– methods that can be used to lower this tendency). The number of nightclubs per capita? The number of craigslist personal ads per capita per week? STDs per capita? Prostitution arrests? Attractiveness of the population? Or how about a set of extensive neurological measurements of sexual response? All of these have positives and drawbacks, and honestly I would lean toward creating an index that combines several relevant concepts to minimize the errors inherent in any one measure. But regardless of the measure chosen (or the way a question is worded) to operationalize a variable, when interpreting research you need to be very clear about what you want to measure, how you actually measure it, and the distance between the two.