Ep 279 | Matching Your Website With Your Goals with Monica Pitts

A website isn't set it and forget it. Year end is a great time to ensure your website is aligned with your business goals. Guest Monica Pitts, founder of May Create Design, shares strategies to ensure your website aligns with your goals, converts effectively, and engages the right audience. From website audits and stakeholder engagement to using AI tools for refined messaging, this episode is packed with actionable tips to improve your nonprofit's digital marketing efforts.

What you'll learn:

→ How to align your website with your organization's evolving goals
→ Effective nonprofit marketing strategies and stakeholder engagement
→ Continuous website management and optimization tips
→ Utilizing AI tools like ChatGPT to enhance nonprofit messaging
→ Maximizing clarity in communication for efficient advocacy

Want to skip ahead? Here are key takeaways:

[05:20] Update your website to align with your goals. Messaging and the alignment of your website and your goals needs to be consistent. Now is the time to ensure that its updated and showcasing the priorities you've set for your organization.
[10:45] Speak in a language your audience understands, remove the jargon. Utilize your team to ensure that it makes sense for how they talk with their stakeholders. Bring in people that would use your website to see if they can find what they need from the website.
[15:30] Take your goals and start the review process with your website. Ensure the structure is what you needs to be to support conversions. Set up automations for updating content so it is more seamless.
[20:15] Use AI for refining website messaging and engaging donors. Take your existing language and use ChatGPT to update the language you need. 
[25:50] Be positive and uplifting. Balancing clear communication with mission alignment helps with effective advocacy. Share imagery that shows the transformation and what will be when they give to your organization.

Resources

The Marketing with Purpose podcast

Full Transcript

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
If you're not getting the conversions you need from your website, and you're wondering why it might be because your website is not aligned with your goals for your organization. A lot of times we build our website, it set it and forget it, and we just assume that it's going to have all of the information that people need. I mean, we spent a lot of time and effort getting it done right so it should continue to work for a long period of time, if only that was true. Now this doesn't mean you need to make dramatic changes to your website on a regular basis, but as your goals evolve and change, as your audience evolves and change, so must your website. So today, I'm excited to have a special guest with me today as we geek out over websites and all of the things that we might want to consider when it comes to our updates and refreshes in the coming year. So my guest to help me tackle the website question is Monica Pitts. Monica is the founder of may create design and host of the marketing with purpose podcast. She's a tech, techie, crafty, aerial dancer with a Bachelor of Science in agriculture, Monica possesses a rare combination of design, savvy and technical. Technological. Know How She puts her down to earth, problem solving skills to work, providing solutions to marketing and communication challenges through technology. When she's not running her business, she's raising her two daughters, nine and 13, having her puppies, traveling with her husband, Mike, and dancing in air or digging in the dirt. We have a great conversation just about what to think about when it comes to our goal setting and our website, and how we can make sure that it converts some of it might be simpler than you think. We tend to overthink our strategy here, and so let's just get back to basics and make it work for you.

Whether you're a small team with a smaller website or a larger team with a larger website, or anything in between, you're going to get some great tips for what you might want to consider you're doing it yourself, or you're sharing you have somebody who kind of manages your website for you. You'll get some questions to answer questions, to ask, things to put together all of the goodness we want your website to convert. We want it to lead to registrations, to transactions, to donations. And so this episode is going to help you with just that, based off of what your 2025 goals are for your organization. And I have been saying 2025 and all of these episodes since this is our 2025 goal setting month, and it still blows my mind anyway. Before we get into it, this episode is brought to you by our October freebie, which is a video that I recorded just for you. It is how I plan for my year. What I do to kind of start thinking about the big picture things that I want to make sure to implement, and make sure that I have enough time and space in my schedule to execute on all the things that I want to do. We've got a lot of great ideas out there, but that doesn't mean that they need to happen right now. So go to thefirstclick.net/resources, check out and download the video, watch it and start putting your plan into motion in a way that you can actually execute and be consistent with. Again, that's at thefirstclick.net/resources, let's get into the episode

Intro
You're listening to the digital marketing therapy podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell-Mulhern. Each month we dive deep into a digital marketing or fundraising strategy that you can implement in your organization. Each week, you'll hear from guest experts, nonprofits, and myself on best practices, tips and resources to help you raise more money online and reach your organizational goals.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Hey, friends, please join me in welcoming Monica Pitts to the podcast. Monica, thank you for being here today.

Monica Pitts
Thank you for having me

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
so we are both website geeks. We love a good website. We love a good website that works. So as we're talking 2025 planning this month, let's just start off with, why do you think that we have this mental block, and why are websites not part of our 2025 like we set our goals, we have everything going, we're ready to go, and we don't include our website in kind of part of that planning process. Why do you think that is for organizations.

Monica Pitts
I think that the website, it can be such a heavy lift, like it can feel like a lot, and it's kind of like when your car breaks down and you have no idea what's wrong with it, and you're like, I just don't, I don't know. Like you just feel very some people feel very powerless when it comes to their website, and it feels like such a big undertaking and without direction, any task is challenging. You know, I don't like it when somebody's like, hey, just go do this. But I have no direction, right? And I feel like it's just like, this big, open ended Could, could be a one hour task, could be a 10 hour task. It just feels yucky, but it's not, I promise it's not yucky.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
No, I feel that because we're working on a refresh for a client that I've been with for a long time, and I know their stuff, but when I look at their homepage, sometimes I'm still like, I know this isn't how I want it, but I don't know where to go from here, because, look, you're too in it like, it's almost like you have too much information. So when we have our goal. Set for our year. How do we kind of translate that, like, where should we start with? Okay, this is what we want to execute next year. How do we kind of start to make sure our website is in alignment with some of those bigger goals?

Monica Pitts
I think you could work backwards, right? So if your goal is to grow your team or grow your services or get more donations, you're going to start with that goal and then work your way backward. What do you need to have that to happen? Right? How's that going to shift to what you've got now? And if I get clear on what I want at the end, it's a lot easier for me to go over and retrofit what I have. So for example, if you want to get more younger donors, then you know, you're like, What do I need to do to get those younger donors right? And then we're going to go back to the website and put our younger donor hat on and look at it and say, as a younger donor, how do I feel about this? What do I need? What you know, am I being spoken to? Am I represented in the pictures? Am I represented in the messaging? Like, how do I fit in? Like, I want to fit in. And it might be that, like, you've got a donate page, and the donation increments start at $50 and maybe your younger donors are not capable of that yet. Maybe instead, you need, like, a really strong volunteer section of your website that can, you know, incorporate those younger donors and call them to action. So I would just start at the end and be like, what do we need? How are we going to do that? And just realize that, especially if you're going after a different demographic of donors, like, who are they? And just recognize they're not the same. They're not the same as everybody else. Sometimes they overlap, but sometimes they're not the same. And so we just want to make sure we're giving them what they need.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Okay? Well, let's keep on that example, because I think this is great, because then the other fear and hesitation that organizations have is okay, but if I change my donation page to talk to a younger donor, then I'm excluding, like, I want my donation page to talk to all donors, or I want it to, I don't want to exclude these people or those people, and we start to get in our head about what's there and how we're communicating with people. So is it multiple donation pages or services pages or whatever, for different audiences? Is it like, how do we kind of start to navigate that so that we don't feel like we're maybe alienating our our current base, in light of trying to, like, grow and increase and reach a new audience, doesn't be young donors, it could be any subset of a whole bunch of things.

Monica Pitts
Well, I, I mean, think you need to start probably with your customer avatars, you know, like, whatever you want to call them. I call them buyer personas because I'm old, like, so what I do with them is I go through this, that activity, and then I'm looking for the overlap, right and or the the differences, and you kind of start seeing, with the differences in the overlap, how they might have to be separated or together, right? Or could be together. And then another thing I found from having lots of conversations with boards and volunteers is that oftentimes we feel like we're going to be alienating them, but they're actually on the exact same page that we are, and they're excited, like they're excited to have younger people in or they're excited to have, you know, whatever this other thing is they wanted as much as we do, and so we feel like we might be alienating them, while if we had just pick up the phone, have a few conversations with some stakeholders and see what they say, somebody who will be honest with you, right? And maybe somebody that doesn't even know you that well, it's great. It's a fun it's a fun activity to do, but then you can get engaged. It might be that they don't feel alienated, that they feel completely great, you know? So, yeah, that would be my suggestion of where to start. No,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
I love that, because I think we also get in our own heads, and we make a lot of assumptions. Nonprofits, more so than any other business sector in the world, make their they make decisions on their marketing based off of their own emotions and how they use it. And so I love reaching out to stakeholders, just to get their opinion. And so also kind of double down on that is once you kind of have worked backwards. So like, we know these are the pages that we want to kind of update. How important is it for us to then also have maybe some of those people take a look at the website and say, Is this clear? Like, does this make sense? Is this does this kind of help you get from A to B?

Monica Pitts
I think that's a great idea. And I think too, like, you've got your stakeholders, your existing stakeholders, that know your nonprofit really well, and they can look at your stuff. But maybe you also need to have a, like, a recruited group of a few people friends, that you can send it to and be like, Hey, you look at this. Do you have any idea what I'm talking about here? Because I think that's one of the trickiest things. Is when you are a nonprofit, you start using your lingo of what you do and what makes sense to you. It's like, there's. Verbs and nouns that only make sense to you. And then even your mission. It's like this big, arbitrary thing. And then if you can reach out to these other people and be like, Does this make sense? Look at this page. Does this make sense? I use my husband for this a lot, believe it or not, because he's not a high tech user, but he is someone who is a very generous and so he'll go to these websites, and he'll be like, I don't even know where to click. And I'm like, Oh, I have failed. I have failed. And then I had to just realize that I have to listen to him, even though maybe I don't like what he's saying. I love that. But yeah, no,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
so true. We just had a conversation the other day where somebody was like, well, I could you send me the link for all the things that I need, because I can't find them. When I go to the website, I'm like, okay, backup. If you work for the organization and you can't find what you need to share with your audience, that is not a you need to work in my world. I need to work in your world. So I think even sharing with your I think marketing and the website and the tech all seems to live in a silo. And so even just bringing it to your team to say, Okay, what do you need? What do you need to see? What do you need to share? What types of things like that's kind of the other side of the goal setting pieces. How do we, how do we take what our team needs and make our make their lives easier?

Monica Pitts
I like to use Kara. Kara is our office manager, and she does not design anything at all, ever. And it's not that she couldn't, it's that she doesn't. What she does is like invoicing and collections, and she orders like, all the toilet paper and the treats and so like, if I'm trying to plan something and communicate something, and I'm really not sure if I'm doing it right. I go to Kara, and I'm like, Look at this, Kara, what do you think? And she's like, Oh, I don't understand what that word means. And I'm like, okay, all right, you know, I didn't hit the mark on that. But she's like, but these other things, and she's really, really good at giving feedback. So like, Kara's not even on the design team, but she's a great resource for me to make sure that I'm effectively communicating with my audience.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
So just find your Kara. There's somebody in your team that is perfect for that, and I think we just don't ask the questions. And to your point earlier, we might be make vague statements, like we might say, hey, we just did some refreshes on the website. Could you go review it? And they review it. But what are we reviewing it for? Right? Like, okay, it looks great. It looks pretty. So let's get to your take on design over messaging. So if we're working on kind of cleaning some things up, do we start with the messaging first, or do we start with the pretty pictures and kind of how, how it looks like, where would you tackle? What would you tackle first?

Monica Pitts
I always start with words, um, that's how my universe rolls out. Because I like to decide what needs to be on the page first. And then I let what is going to be on the page dictate the design I then, you know, and I want to make sure that there's a clear hierarchy, and I'm getting people to what they need effectively. So it's like, I keep the design in the back of my mind, you know, like, and even when I get done with writing stuff, it kind of looks a little bit like a web page in my like, Google Doc, you know. And then when I get it into the page, I do edit stuff back, or, like, maybe elaborate a tiny bit to, like, balance it out and make it feel right once I get it in there. But I do start with the words first, and the messaging first, the goals of the page first. And then I roll it into the design.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Yeah. So then would you recommend people start with kind of those pages? So you mentioned like, we have our goals. I'm going to start with my donation page. I'm going to start with my services pages to make sure they're in alignment with our 2025, plan. Do you work on the home page last or I feel like that's kind of where people get stuck. Is that like, then what? What do we put on the homepage at that point? Like, how? Because that's, you know, usually the most trafficked of all of your pages, the most visited of all of your pages. So how can we make sure that that is also laid out and designed to match some of the updates that we've done on on those other specific pages?

Monica Pitts
I feel like with your homepage, think about yourself at a networking event, and people will be like, Oh, what do you do? All right, so that's what the homepage is. It's like this quick 32nd infomercial, so people's eyes aren't glazing over. You need to be able to, like, very efficiently, explain to them what you do, who you do it for, and how you're doing it, and then how to get involved, right? So that's your homepage, and so those pieces might be different based on your goals this year. That's what you're trying to assess when you look back at your homepage, right? So, like. That? I mean, that would be, it's a springboard and it's an infomercial. Yeah, it's a combo between the two, right?

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
I mean, the goal is to make sure people take that next step, not that they completed action, right? I mean, if they do, that's great, but likely they're not going to. They're trying to find the information they need.

Monica Pitts
Then they take the action Exactly, exactly.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Okay? So our goals are not static. It's not like we plan for 2025, and then, like, that's just how the year runs. It runs perfectly, and we hit every benchmark, and we do all the things, and everything's great. Yeah. So like, Do you have a cadence for kind of how you recommend we continue to stay up to date. Because I feel like if you are managing your website and the content on it in in steps throughout the year, then at the end of the year, when you're kind of quote unquote refreshing, it's not as overwhelming. So how can we maybe set things up for 2025 to be better in a better place next year at this time? Well,

Monica Pitts
I mean, that is a great question. So if you have a super small website, this is going to be a lot easier if you have a really, really big website, or if you're new. I mean, if you're new to it, if you're not sure what's out there, you should probably go out and familiarize yourself with your site. That's what I have to do before I advise anybody on anything. Is I go out and I look at all their stuff, and I make like, this outline of things, and then I'm like, oh, oh, they want to talk to younger donors. Okay, well, that's going to happen on this page, this page and this page, right? Because now I know where it all is. So I always tell people that you know when you're learning and trying to make decisions about what you're going to do with information and marketing, sometimes you have to, like, build a sandcastle with your information so that you can make good decisions with it. Like, you really have to know it. And so, like, I really think you need to know the structure of your website. And then if you're finding that all you're doing is swapping out, like, little bits of information on your homepage or other pieces of your site, like, let's say that you're doing more events, right, or you're releasing an annual, like a semi annual report, or something like that, like a newsletter all the time, and you're finding that you're having to go out and you're going to have to update it in these seven different places. So maybe one of your goals, then, for 2025 is that you're going to streamline that and that when it updates in the newsletter section, it also updates in those other six places without you having to touch it. That's the magic of building a website that's actually built correctly, right, because then you don't have to think about it. You never have to think, where else do I need to put this newsletter? Where else do I need to put this information? Because it's just going to go there. Like magic. Like magic.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Oh no. And those magical things seem so out of reach for a lot of people, but they're really not like automation and things like that, and all of your tech and software is becoming so much easier to integrate. So I love that. So if we are newer or we do have a bigger website, it's like something that we don't understand. Do you have, like, maybe some questions that you always ask your clients so that you can't so that if you're working with an expert, like, how can we help people like you, people like me do our jobs better? Like, what kind of information can we still be planning so even if we're not managing the website, we know, okay, these are the types of things that Monica wants to know about so that she can make sure our website is optimized for what we need.

Monica Pitts
Well, that's like a two fold thing, because one is like, the stuff that's on it, right? And those are questions, like, you know, what do you do? Who do you do it for? How do I get involved? Like, those are like, the questions that I want to know when I go to your website. Are you a good steward of my money? Like, are you making a difference in your community, I look for that on your website. And so those are things that I think we should just always be answering on a website. And it's tricky, because the people who end up building the site out sometimes they don't understand how to communicate that well, and it comes across awkwardly. And hey, that's I like chat GPT to fix that problem, I just literally go in chat GPT and I like copy all the stuff that they put in a page, and I'm like, chatgpt. My nonprofit name is this. I'm trying to communicate with this type of donor. We work with our community like this. Can you take this content and reformat it with subtitles and make sure that it's really clear that I'm making a difference in my difference in my community and how people can get involved. And then it spits something out, and I'm like, Okay, we are moving along in the right direction. And then I edit it. But I think the other piece that you need is like, kind of like that evidence piece, like the tech piece of it. So just having things set up, like Google Analytics, running a load time report, I like to use GT metrics to make sure that, like, I as an administrator, haven't blown something up on accident. By the way, I'm updating the site on a daily basis or monthly basis, and then also having, like, Google Search Console set up for the domain, so that way. You can look at it and have some evidence based tools, because you, like you said, they're making these decisions based on their gut, what they feel. Well, wouldn't it be great if we really knew if people got to that page? Well, you can know that, and it's free, and Google does it for you. You just have to install Google Analytics. So because whenever I'm going to check somebody's website, I'm looking to answer those first questions that I listed off, and then I'm like, Oh, now I need some data. Like, I need to look and see, like, what's happening here helps you make decisions about your other marketing, too. So

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
no, I love that. And also like who we think our audience is, versus who our audience actually is, like, you know, a great example is, you know, I have was talking with another development professional that has like, a food shelf, Food Bank type organization. And since covid, their entire demographic has shifted geographically, and they would if they could continue to do their marketing the way that they're doing, but now they have a whole plethora of new donors that they can reach out to, because they can say, because of the data, hey, we're actually serving people in this zip code that we weren't serving anymore, right? So like paying attention to that now they can update their website and get some more language out there that is in alignment, but typically that's not who they served. And so they could just keep going straight and narrow, as they've been going and missing out on some potential opportunities. And so I love that data. And also, on the flip side, it'll tell you if you're really missing the mark, right? Like, if you're looking at your data and you serve, I live in Minneapolis, you serve Minneapolis, but all of your website traffic is coming from California like there's a there's a problem there. Mm, hmm,

Monica Pitts
yeah, there is. And when you sort that data by California or by Minnesota, you're gonna see a vast difference in the visitor behavior, because the people in Minnesota are gonna be more likely to behave like you want them to, and the people in California are just going to abandon ship. And then when you are looking at your numbers, and you're like, oh my gosh, I have to make my donation page better, because nobody is, you know, sticking around. They're only on there for 10 seconds. And then if you sort the traffic and you're only looking at your actual like, service area, you're like, oh, oh, wait a second, no, it was just that I have so much traffic from over in California that it's not, you know, serving like, yeah, yeah. It's like, the numbers are skewed. The data is yucky. And so that's always a fun one too. Like that actually makes me feel better when that happens, because then you're like, I didn't It's not failing. It's fine. It's fine.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Well, you know what to fix. You know where it minimizes. The big thing of, okay, I have to update this entire website to Okay. This is the problem. I can fix this problem, as opposed to the blinking cursor like, that's what I love about your example, too. With chatgpt, is you're not just asking AI to like, write your homepage, you're giving it very specific prompts based off of a problem that you found this messaging isn't clear. Here's who we serve. You're giving and you're still editing like, I think that that's a great way for people to start to process things and get out of their own way, because I think nonprofit messaging on websites is typically very about me and not about the audience that's there, and how they can make how it's about them, and how they can serve, serve you, and why they want to

Monica Pitts
well. And what's amazing about chatgpt is like so you're going to start and you're going to write it about me, and then you can go into chat GPT, and you can be like, Okay, so now I need you to write, to rewrite this for me, make it so the donor is the hero, and make sure that they know that they're the reason that these things are happening. And, you know, I mean, I send things to my clients all the time where, like all they'll give me a bunch of texts and it's all jumbled and yucky, and then I'll, like, send it through chat GPT and edit it, and it'll be like, Okay, give me an option where it's in third person. Give me an option where it's in first person. Now give me an option where it's in first person and it's more friendly. And now take out all the weird, awkward stuff that you put into it to make it sound more friendly, no emojis and and then I give them three options so that they can feel it and feel what's theirs. And that's what I think makes it so much easier working with with an AI prompt, is just being able to give people options faster, and then go through and really tool it down and make it better. Because I don't know it's, it's tricky. We write stuff, and sometimes it just doesn't come out right. It's just weird and wordy and chunky and it just doesn't even make sense. We might have, like, made it backwards, you know? And so then you can go to AI and be like, Hey, I wrote. This, can you clean it up? Add commas in the right places? Yeah. I'll be like, can you make can you fix this? Because I think I put too many commas in and chat GPT is like, Yeah, you don't need that comma there. Yeah,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
it's amazing. There's so many tools that are out there. So like, find your favorite find your favorite tool, but don't go too far. One way, like, I like what you're saying is it's very specific, and it's, I think finding your voice as an organization is really important, because think a lot of times we tend to be too stuffy and we're not personal, like we feel like, because we're doing this big thing, we have to be this, like, very serious thing, and that's not the case. Like your organization has personality. And I love that you gave three examples, like, here's three ways to look at this, which one feels like you, and then you can kind of move move forward with the personality of your organization.

Monica Pitts
I love that because I 100% agree with you. The stuffiness doesn't work for me. Like your your people, like your organization itself. I mean, like we work with a company or company, an organization that builds mobility carts. And I mean, they could have depressing imagery of people crawling on the ground, right? Because what they do is they build and distribute carts for people who can't walk and they don't. None of it is that way. It's all bright colored, people smiling, people on the cart, people making a living using the cart, like it's uplifting. They're like, we lift people up. And they could do it like ASPCA, like dining kennels, you know what? I mean, they don't do that, though they could, but they don't. That's not their way, right? And so, and I love the like everybody deserves to have a personality every organization does, too, and so just let yours be yours. Well,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
I think the trend is showing that aspirational imagery and messaging is much more impactful and converts better than the doom and gloom. Like people that are part of your community, for that example, they don't want to be reminded of where they were. They want to see where they can go. And same people that are donating to your organization, they want to support that positive outcome at the end, they know where that came from. So I love that. That's a great that's a great example. Well, as we kind of wrap this up, because there's so many good things, so many great places for you to start. And I think if you're really taking a look at your goals and putting them towards your website, I love the tip that you gave at the very beginning, starting with those individual pages and working backwards. I feel like everything in marketing is reverse engineering, which is fantastic. Are there maybe a couple other just like quick tips or strategies that you might want to share about how, how we can really use our website to the best of what we need it to going into 2025

Monica Pitts
I think if you have a lot of different audiences, then I would definitely do those buyer personas to make sure that you're speaking to each one of them. One question that I ask myself and I pose to every nonprofit I work with is, do like, how much do these people know about you? How much, how much do they know about what you do and why you do it, because some organizations are very clear, you're a food bank, people are hungry, duh. Okay, got it. And so on that website, it's like, volunteer at the food bank, donate food. Donate money, come get some food. You know what I mean? Like, that's it. But then you have these other organizations that are much less straightforward, you know? And so they're like, for example, we work with and fgmc, and that is, like, I didn't even know what that meant. I didn't and I didn't even understand that, like it was a thing that went on in the US, right, or any of that. And so like, for that particular website, it had to be like, we had to prove that this existed, that it was a challenge, you know. So if you can answer, like, how much do they know about you, then you can decide, okay, are these people coming to the website because they know what they need? Like, they know that they're either gonna volunteer, donate food, donate money, or get food. Or is it like, I don't know, like, Could this? Like, could I be part of this? What is this? You know what I mean, like? And in that case, it might be like, learn about fgmc. Is it a problem? Like it? You know, give them some statistics. It is a problem in the United States of America. What can you do to make an impact in it? And you know, because that's like, a lot different, they're like, you're starting in a completely different spot. So I feel like, if you understand, like, their knowledge level, then you can make sure that you're connecting with them in the spot where they are. Because it's not just it's. That that problem isn't just in like human like human trafficking, or like the fgmc, cause it can also be like in anything that's conservation, right, like anything that has to do with the environment, like, it's just confusing sometimes, right? So I think that can really help people make sure that they are communicating with people and they are getting their message across. Because sometimes you're saying it, you're just way above their head, or Yeah,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
no, 100% and to that point, the how and what part of it you solve. Because I think a lot of times we're in these bigger pieces. So we have a client in the foster care space, and within that there's, like, 18 different I mean, I'm just making that up, but, like, they don't work in the certification and placement space. You know, they work in the once the kids are placed. How do we help support the families to be healthy and work through trauma? That's a very specific piece of that. But to just go out and say, we're in the foster care space, or we work in human trafficking, we're trying to end human trafficking. Well, how and in what regard? Like, are you working with law enforcement? Are you working specifically with sex trafficking? Are you working specifically with child trafficking? Like, there's so I think it's really important to your point, don't assume that people know what we do. We like to think we're really awesome and important, but that nobody's really paying attention. We have to be very clear,

Monica Pitts
yeah, and there are some organizations where it just makes sense, and you don't have to do that as much. But I think just understanding where your visitors are in that education journey is a huge piece of you know what you're doing, and just making sure that they know. And I do like what you said about you know that foster care agency, they're a specific piece of it. So, like, there's a lot of organizations that do this, a piece of a bigger like service that needs to happen. And like, a good community of nonprofits in an organization, or like in a good distribution of nonprofits in a community would have, like, their own kind of working silo and doing what they do best, and then they work together synergistically to make it work, you know, and if, and if that's what you're doing, I like what you said, because you're saying, Hey, we're right here. We're in this piece. And if that's what you're really concerned about in this system, then let's, let's do that together, you know, yeah, because I do think that they're just like, well, we just, you know, we save the environment. It's like, okay, how is that different from everybody else, saving the environment like our right. Are you recycling or are you planting native plants? I think we need to, like, narrow it down a little bit here, because it could be anything.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Well, kind of the last point to that, also, before we kind of wrap this up, I know I said that a few minutes ago, but the conversation is just too good. Kind of your thoughts on a website's purpose is, yes, to attract, but also to detract. Right? When you're more clear, like, it's easier to convert if you allow people to come to your website to say, Yeah, this is the part of the problem I want to be a part of, or this isn't. I need to find the right organization for me. Like, we get nervous about pushing people away, but those people that we push away actually take up more of our time, because we're trying to tell them what we do, and at the end of the day, they're still not the right fit for us. 100%

Monica Pitts
it, if you think about it like a sales funnel, you want to go after the low hanging fruit. You want to go after the people that already have the same values and the same like goals as you do like they should already overlap. It's like your marketing suite zone. And there are some really, really, really big organizations that can go after the people that don't necessarily believe yet, or might have the like capacity to believe or have the same values as them, but you don't, as a small nonprofit, you don't have that much time. You need to go after the people that are already like in the love zone and just get them involved. And then once you get this whole like Group of Ambassadors, you could go out and find some people that are tangentially like related to what you're doing. But for right now, like, if you're working in the foster care system, you need to look for people who were maybe in the foster care system, people who work with it, and see the challenges, people who you know, like people who have family members that might be like, involved in it. So like, go through, go to the people that are the closestly, like, closest related to your cause. They're your advocates, and don't worry about having to change the minds of everyone on earth about what you do that's not you don't have time for that. You don't 100% I love that message. It's just like talk to the people that are already in love with you and just just give. Them a task. Just tell them what to do next. Don't, don't try to change the mind of everybody. You don't have that kind of time.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
And you're saying it kind of like, you know, in a silly way, but it's true, like it's, it's, it is that simple. It really is that simple. And we tend, we tend to overcomplicate things instead of just focusing on that. So I love that, and that's a great kind of space. To wrap this up, Monica, such great tips for us as we think about our website and our goals, because they need to work together. They are now two separate entities. If people want to learn more about the work that you do or connect with you, how do they do that?

Monica Pitts
You can go over to mayecreate.com that's M, A, Y, E, C, R, E, A, T, E.com, and we also have a podcast. We have the marketing with purpose podcast, and we talk about nonprofit issues and also business challenges. But we we also always give a nonprofit spin on it, because I feel like a a great business is ran with the same heart of service as a nonprofit, and a great nonprofit is ran with the same fundamentals as a business, you know, and so they they're kind of one in the same. And we just like to give you maybe a different way to look at what you're doing. So yep, those are it. mayecreate.com marketing with purpose podcast.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Love that, and we feel the same way about nonprofits and running their organizations like businesses. So I love that you can find all of the links in all of the information that resources and things that we shared here at thefirstclick.net/279, that's where you can find the show notes. But Monica, thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate it.

Monica Pitts
I love Dorking out about websites in my morning.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Okay, so what did you think? Are you energized and motivated, excited to jump into your website and make sure that it's working for you, not against you? I'm so grateful for Monica to join me, joining me today to talk through some of these strategies and really kind of simplify and take a step back and not be overwhelmed. Even if you're not a designer, you can still think about the things and how your website is is performing, and even if it's just having conversation with a few people to see if they can find the things that they need to find that is something that takes no tech sadness at all. So head on over to thefirstclick.net/279, grab the show notes. Connect with Monica and get the additional resources that we discussed in this episode. For now, make sure you subscribe wherever you listen. Hit that notification bell on YouTube, and thank you so much for taking time to listen to the digital marketing therapy podcast. I appreciate you. We'll see in the next one.