This document discusses how the non-profit organization Operation Smile can launch an effective online marketing campaign. It recommends using search engine optimization techniques like optimizing keywords, titles and descriptions. It also suggests using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Foursquare to engage potential volunteers and donors. Sample marketing campaigns for each platform are proposed to increase volunteers by 20% and donations by 30% within set timeframes. The document provides guidance on using both on-page and off-page SEO tools as well as leveraging popular online tools to maximize Operation Smile's online presence.

1. Operation Smile
How to Launch a Marketing Campaign Online
Mathieu DEGAND
Claudia GALEANA
Maxime GRIMARD
Therese LARROZA
Charlotte MARY
Anna RELLAMA
Camille THIḖBAUT
Direct Marketing, Fall Semester
Tim Lyons
21 October 2011
i

2. Abstract
With the increasing trend of online marketing and the current shift to the online
world, it is crucial that even non-profit organizations such as Operation Smile adapt to
the changing tides and begin establishing a solid online presence that would hopefully
generate more volunteers and donations for the benefit of the organization’s charitable
programs. One way to maximize Operation Smile’s online presence is through search
engine optimization (SEO), which focuses mainly on on-page tools such as keywords
and off-page tools such as Google Adwords. Another way would be through largely
populated social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Delicious and
some blog sites such as Blogspot or Wordpress.
Operation Smile ii

3. Table of Contents
Abstract ...................................................................................................................... ii
Operation Smile .......................................................................................................... 1
Objectives ................................................................................................................... 2
Search Engine Optimization........................................................................................ 2
On-page Marketing Tools ........................................................................................ 2
On-site Factors .............................................................................................................................. 4
Off-page Marketing Tools ........................................................................................ 6
Other Potential Online Tools....................................................................................... 7
Facebook ................................................................................................................ 7
Twitter .................................................................................................................... 7
Delicious................................................................................................................. 8
Youtube .................................................................................................................. 8
Foursquare .............................................................................................................. 9
Sample Campaigns .................................................................................................... 10
The Facebook Campaign ........................................................................................10
The Delicious Campaign ........................................................................................11
The Foursquare Campaign .....................................................................................13
Conclusion and Recommendations ............................................................................ 14
Operation Smile iii

4. Operation Smile
Operation Smile, although internationally acclaimed for its generous acts of
charity especially in the cleft palate sector, still experiences problems when it comes to
the acquisition of not only funds and donations, but also volunteers especially since their
projects have been increasing every year. As a response, the group believes that it is best
to make use of a tool that encompasses and reaches out to the most individuals in the
world at a low cost, and that is, the Internet. The Internet has proven to be a powerful
tool nowadays and is actually still growing at a very big rate. Not making use of such
would be a mistake as the move towards the online world is becoming more and more
evident each day.
Table 1: Internet Usage Statistics – The Internet Big Picture (World Internet Usage and
Population Statistics)1
Throughout the study, the group will try to be in the aid of Operation Smile as it
tries to expand it’s online presence through tools such as Google Adwords, on-page and
off-page marketing tools, social networking sites, blogs and other famous sites such as
Youtube.
1
From http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
2
T. Singh (2008), Blogging: A new play in your marketing game plan, Business Horizons,

5. Objectives
For this study, objectives had to be established by the group so as to guide them
in the formulation of all the other marketing ideas that they had for Operation Smile. In
this case, the company aims:
1. To increase the numbers of volunteers, medical ones and community ones of
Operation Smile by 20% within two years;
2. To increase collected donations, both financial and material, by 30% within a year;
and
3. To double the number of visitors of the website who not only sign up for the site, but
also stay involved in Operation Smile’s activities.
These objectives were kept in mind as the group tried to optimize Operation
Smile’s online presence through tools such as blogs, email blasts and social networking
sites. The group made sure that these are aligned with the company’s corporate
objectives, mission and vision so as to show consistency, thereby preventing any
misunderstandings that may result from such.
Search Engine Optimization
One way to increase Operation Smile’s online presence is through the use of on-
page marketing tools such as keywords and off-page marketing tools such as Google
Adwords. Such tools, when used properly, can reach out to more individuals—that is,
more potential donors and volunteers. As to how, however, this will be discussed further
as we go on with the study.
On-page Marketing Tools
Considering
that
our
target
is
made
up
for
doctors
and
medical
students
who
may
not
have
much
time
but
they
have
great
interest
in
social
responsibility
focused
on
volunteer
work,
we
decided
to
build
a
website
that
has
a
simple
but
attractive
structure
to
ensure
that
users
remain
on
the
site
and
remain
interested
in
joining
Operation
Smile’s
projects.
To
ensure
effective
navigation,
we
have
identified
five
bases.
Firstly,
don’t
make
your
user
guess.
We
classified
the
information
found
on
the
website
in
four
areas,
which
contains
the
main
points
of
interest
to
our
target
as
follows:

6.
Figure 1 The links for the subparts of the site need to stand out.
Taking
into
account
the
second
base
that
is
quality,
not
quantity,
we
included
more
information
only
in
the
areas
that
need
to
be
clarified,
for
example:
VOLUNTEER
n Medical volunteers
n Community volunteers
DONATION
n Financial
n Material
Similarly, to
facilitate
the navigation of
the
pages, we took
into
account
our third
and fourth bases, which are “consistency is key” and
“don’t
be adventurous.” Making
the website
structure similar
to others
found on
internet gives
the
user
an easy
understanding of the format. Also, the
structure of
the
pages (titles, subtitles,
navigation buttons, placement of
information, etc.) were made similar,
thus providing
consistency
and easy
usage
of
the
website.
Finally,
considering
that
the
main
information
is
on
the
Home
page,
the
option
of
Back
to
“Home”
(this
is
the
5th
base)
is
always
visible
to
allow
effective
navigation.
Figure 2 The Header for Operation Give-A-Smile must contain shortcuts to all parts of the site
including Home.

7.
On-site Factors
A recent report from DoubleClick.com (2005) reveals that about half of all
purchases in the business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce category are preceded by a
web search (Ross A. Malaga, 2007). In line with this, we decided to implement search
engine optimization so as to increase our chances of being the first one selected for the
search engines and users, thereby increasing donations and volunteers for Operation
Smile. Some of the elements used by the major search engines to determine relevance
include, but are not limited to: age of the site, how often new content is added, the ratio
of keywords or terms to the total amount of content on the site, and the quality and
number of external sites linking to the site (Sullivan, 2003).
Figure 3 How on-site factors fit in the generation of site profits.
(Ross A. Malaga, 2007)
Although more complex searches are possible, most web users conduct simple
searches based on a keyword or key phrase (Ross A. Malaga, 2007). For this reason, we
performed an analysis of the on-site factors of our competition and the official website of
Operation Smile to determine the title, description and keywords best suited for our
website. The results are as follows:
Operation Smile 4

8. Figure 4 The title, meta description and keywords that are most appropriate for Operation Smile.
Looking at these results, we decided that the title to our website should be simple
and must refer to Operation Smile, because a more
extensive selection would not be practical since it
would not be visible in the tab.
With regards to the description, since we are
looking for volunteers and donations, we have decided
to focus on the emotional appeal to the users. For the
keywords, we took some of the proposed bases for
Operation Smile, but added more general terms such
as children world organization, free for children,
operation and operations help, to attract more users
when they are looking to support an association. Figure 5 The resulting details for Operation Give-A-
Smile.
Operation Smile 5

9. Off-page Marketing Tools
In order to achieve effectively our objectives, we cannot just use on-page
strategies. We need to combine them with off-page strategies to optimize even more the
performance of our website.
The most strategic tool for us is Google Adsense, which permits us to raise
awareness and encourage donations by orienting our advertisements towards users who
are keying in words related to Operation Smile’s actions on Google. We chose to pay
only when users click on our ad, thereby reducing significantly our promotion budget.
The main advantage is that we can easily control and regulate our costs thanks to
Google Analytics, a tool that generates graphs and charts showing the evolution of our
campaign day after day.
The second most appropriate way to promote our actions out of our website is the
use of social networks. As of the moment, approximately 8,544 people “like” Operation
Smile’s page on Facebook but the plan is to be more present on these networks by
subscribing to more platforms and posting news as often as possible. This will be detailed
more later in the paper.
Blogging is another key way to reach more people, but since around 60,000 blogs
are launched every day, it is crucial to know how to blog. With this in mind, it is
essential that we only post the most important information, both to make the navigation
easier and gain more credit from a search engine viewpoint.2
The blog also aims to build relationships between us and visitors, making visitors
discuss about Operation Smile and then redirecting them on our website if they are
interested.
Generally, careful attention needs to be paid to what is being said about
Operation Smile on the web even if we cannot control everything. The least we can do is
balance it by building a large enough network to monitor all these. We can also make
use of forums where posts or topics that are linked to Operation Smile’s website can be
found, which will then be crawled by search engines.
2
T. Singh (2008), Blogging: A new play in your marketing game plan, Business Horizons,
51, 281-292
Operation Smile 6

10. Other Potential Online Tools
Besides on-site and off-site marketing tools, certain sites that can be used as
marketing playgrounds already exist. These sites can range from social networking sites
such as Facebook or Twitter to blogs such as Blogspot or Wordpress. With a well-
defined marketing plan, these sites can add up significantly to Operation Smile’s online
traffic.
Facebook
Business owners are "friends" with Facebook. With 800 million users around the
world and with more than 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
(Facebook, 2011), Facebook is one of today's leading destinations influencing online
identity, entertainment, and content distribution. A growing number of businesses are
making Facebook an indispensible part of their marketing plans. In line with this, the
rules of the marketing game have changed. The command and control television era,
where big brands were built by heavyweight messaging to the nation every night, is
drawing to an end (Ward, 2010).
Once Operation Smile uses Facebook as a marketing tool to reach its marketing
objectives and goals, it will enable the company to find and reach out to sponsors,
volunteers and patients, build online communities of supporters and dig into gold mines
of demographic information. However, relationship marketing for the Facebook
generation demands both thinking and acting differently. In its place, a radically new
structure is emerging that will dominate marketing, recasting the discipline and
demanding a new direction in customer communication (Ward, 2010). Once a good
marketing campaign is created and executed well through Facebook, this social media
will play a critical part in driving Operation Smile’s target consumer intent as well as
delivering brand engagement in the digital networked society.
Twitter
In
a
globalized
world
like
ours,
when
people
think
about
Social
Media
Marketing,
they
do
not
just
focus
on
Facebook
but
also
twitter.
In
fact,
it
cannot
be
denied
that
some
people
have
been
tweeting
much
more
than
necessary.
They
tweet
about
their
thoughts,
reactions
and
actualities—those
that
happen
either
to
their
private
lives
or
Operation Smile 7

11. even
the
public.
Because
of
the
simplicity
and
the
increasing
trend
in
its
usage,
Twitter
has
been
used
by
a
lot
of
organizations
and
enterprises
for
advertising
and
customer
services.
As
a
matter
of
fact,
“marketing
professionals
use
Twitter
extensively
for
communicating
with
and
monitoring
customers,
for
observing
competitors,
and
for
analyzing
chatter
concerning
brands,
products,
and
company
image”
(S.
B.
Rinaldo,
S.
Tapp,
and
D.
A.
Laverie,
2011).
In
the
case
of
Operation
Smile,
a
Twitter
account
could
be
established
so
that
their
updates
can
be
followed
not
only
by
potential
partners
and
volunteers,
members,
but
also
those
who
can
simply
increase
the
brand
image
and
add
to
Operation
Smile’s
online
presence
thanks
to
word-­‐of-­‐mouth.
It
could
be
an
efficient
way
to
provide
timely
feedbacks
and
updates
relating
to
Operation
Smile’s
current
operations
and
how
its
followers
can
be
involved.
The
more
the
subscriptions,
the
more
the
followers,
the
better!
Delicious
When
focusing
on
blogging,
we
tend
to
consider
only
the
classic
structure
that
offers
you
the
possibility
to
post
articles,
and
sometimes
photos
and
videos
online.
Delicious
goes
further
than
that—it
enables
the
user
to
post
bookmarks
on
a
single
page
to
simplify
its
access
to
other
users.
We
can
assume
that
“a
bookmark
posted
on
a
user’s
Delicious
account
consists
of
the
URL
of
a
Web-­‐available
resource;
a
title
for
the
resource
[…];
a
brief
comment,
description,
or
analysis
of
the
site
as
a
note;
and
one
or
more
tags,
which
serve
to
organize
the
bookmarks
and
take
the
place
of
the
rigid
folder
structure
common
to
browser-­‐based
bookmarking
systems”
(K.
Stolley,
2009).
The
use
of
such
a
tool
for
an
Operation
Smile’s
marketing/communication
campaign
could
be
considered
especially
if
we
want
to
give
a
lot
of
information
at
once
to
potential
partners.
Press
articles,
video
trailers,
partners’
website,
and
so
on
could
be
accessed
directly
from
the
Operation
Smile
Delicious’
account.
Youtube
Youtube,
being
the
biggest
video
platform
on
the
Internet,
can
be
quite
advantageous
for
Operation
Smile
as
well.
People
use
Youtube
for
looking
for
advertisements,
movies,
video
campaigns,
music
clips,
etc.
Its
big
network
can
be
Operation Smile 8

12. characterized
by
the
65,000
videos
that
are
uploaded
to
it
daily
and
the
“75
million
e-­‐
mails
[that]
are
sent
through
posted
commentary
as
well
as
forwarded
video
links”
(Clark
&
Stewart,
2007;
Kelly,
2007).
“By
posting
videos
on
YouTube,
responding
to
content
via
posts,
and
sharing
posted
content,
consumers
have
the
ability
to
influence
marketing
and
communication
campaigns”
(Owen
&
Humphries,
2009).
In
our
case,
using
Youtube
to
broadcast
its
videos,
Operation
Smile’s
online
presence
would
grow
more
rapidly.
Moreover,
these
Youtube
videos
can
directly
be
added
to
the
organization’s
website.
Thus,
whenever
someone
is
looking
at
the
videos
on
Youtube,
a
link
to
the
website
will
be
available
under
the
video.
An
efficient
Youtube
campaign
would
help
“Operation
Smile”
to
broadcast
its
message
and
then
to
raise
more
funds.
Foursquare
Foursquare is a social media that emphasizes on the geo-localization of the users.
It accounts for more than 10 million of users all-over the world and 500 000 businesses
have already adopted it.
Foursquare allows its users to check-in in different places through their
smartphones, and allows others to get access to such information. Similar to other social
networking sites, you have “friends” who can see your activity and where you make
your check-ins.
Using Foursquare for Operation Smile would be relevant because it will inform
the followers of Operation Smile about its activities, like when they are currently doing a
surgery operation, are making a special event3 in a certain place. By this geo-localization
system, they can segment their followers, and address messages to people who are in a
specific place.
3
Eleven Digital Trends to Watch In 2011, Maddie Grant, Jan. 13, 2011
Operation Smile 9

13. Sample Campaigns
To give you a better picture of how these tools can be used as marketing tools for
attaining our short-term objectives for Operation Smile, here are some examples:
The Facebook Campaign
Facebook has quickly moved from the periphery of marketing into the forefront
with a large and growing portion of some of the most valuable demographics spending
more of their time and attention on Facebook and less on other channels and media.
This is a new and quickly evolving field and there are few established formulas for
success (Ward, 2010).
With Facebook, Operation Smile can “start small.” For most businesses,
Facebook pages (distinct from individual profiles and Facebook groups) are the best
place to start where the organization can post updates, photos and videos about their
activities. This will allow Operation Smile to collect “fans” the way celebrities, sports
teams, musicians and politicians do (Pattison, 2009). Because Pages are more
customizable than groups, Operation Smile can add HTML, Flash, or even Facebook
applications to their page to extend their functionality and the depth of experience users
can have with the organization.
The next step is to create Facebook Events that Operation Smile can use to
promote their events, sponsored parties, or even celebrity endorsements, launches,
transactions, or company milestones.
Since Facebook Events is a fully
featured page, much like a group, that
includes a wall, discussion, photos,
videos, and links, Operation Smile for
can add as much media they can. They
can invite all of their friends and fans
to the event and with Facebook Events,
it’s easy to get the word out to
hundreds of people, manage the guest
list, and build a community around
Operation Smile’s upcoming events
Figure 6 This is how sharing a post on Facbook would look like. (Pattison, 2009). Moreover, with the
Facebook Share application, the
Operation Smile 10

14. organization will be able to promote any Group, Event, Photo, Link, or Application that
is relevant to the organization. By posting on its page, it can direct the consumers’ clicks
to the shared item that will help the consumers understand more the organization’s
mission.
Furthermore, Operation Smile should use Facebook Ads, which can give the
organization the option to pay on a CPC or CPM basis, whichever they prefer. Facebook
Ads are very cheap and offer very powerful targeting capabilities: when an ad is created,
for example, one has the option to limit who sees your ad by age, sex, location,
keywords, education level, workplaces, political views, and relationship status (Pattison,
2009). With this, Operation Smile will be provided with real time feedback on the size of
the target audience and the suggested bid range to achieve impressions. Moreover,
Facebook Ads offers placements in the News Feed, thus getting much better click
through.
Lastly, participation through comments, posts and likes is key. Operation Smile’s
page can grow exponentially by word of mouth especially since an average Facebook
user has 130 friends on the site (Pattison, 2009). It’s all about delivery – giving the target
audience a choice about where, when and how to consume the organization’s content.
The Delicious Campaign
Delicious, as it was mentioned before, is a useful tool for bookmarking.
Operation Smile can make use of such tool in expanding the visibility of the webpages
that involve the organization.
For the campaign, the group has decided to create a Delicious account for
Operation Smile with “Operation Smile 2011” as our username and a password that
only we know. We have prepared 4 URLs that directs to Operation Smile. People
looking for keywords such as charity, donation, surgery, children, and smile will now
able to find our links and stacks
Operation Smile 11

15. Figure 7 Operation Smile's Delicious account
For example, upon the keying in of “children surgery” in Delicious’ search
toolbar, some results will definitely appear on the page. These are called “stacks”. One
stack contains some links related to the stack subject.
Figure 8 Stacks in Operation Smile's Delicious account
With an account for Operation Smile ready, it will be in the first stacks. By
clicking on our stack, the user will now discover the 4 links related to the association.
Then the association is now more visible for the users.
Operation Smile 12

16. Figure 9 Sample links in Operation Smile's Delicious account
With the Delicious website, users looking for keywords such as charity, or
donation, will now directly find our Operation Smile stack. Since all links are stacked
together, it will be more convenient for both Operation Smile and its users. When
looking for the association video campaign or for the association website to make a
donation, for example, you just have to navigate easily between the different websites.
The Foursquare Campaign
Since the aim of this campaign is to gather together people interested in the
Operation Smile Project, a page for Operation Smile needs to be created first. With this,
every time a follower is doing something related to Operation Smile, they can signal it to
their relatives on Foursquare.
Step 1: Attract people to our page
To generate more traffic on our page, it is important to be visible on other
foursquare pages of similar nature. On the Red Cross’ page, for example, or on the pages
of the French Doctors.
Operation Smile 13

17. Step 2: Find new medical volunteers
One of the objectives of our campaign is to increase the number of volunteers all
around the world. For that, we can use hospital check-in points that would make our
programs visible through the comments. When a doctor checks-in at the hospital, upon
looking at these comments, there will be a link to our webpage about volunteering in its
country or area. Even if he is not directly concerned, he could at least spread the world
to his colleagues.
Step 3: Rise Donations
The motivational aspect of Foursquare is mainly to raise “badges” according to
your check-in actions. By providing an Operation Smile’s partner badge, every person
that makes a donation or volunteers to the association will get this particular badge. In
order to make it more attractive as possible, we should be associated to a brand that will
provide special offers to people that have earned this special badge. Because of the
exclusivity of such offer, it will hopefully be very attractive.
Step 4: Keep informed of recent activities
Our third objective is to keep followers informed of our different activities, likes
operations, talks. Through the foursquare page, which is linked to the twitter account,
we can inform in real time what is currently happening thanks to the organization, and
furthermore localize it.
Conclusion and Recommendations
The Internet offers a wide range of tools that can be used for the benefit of all
sorts of businesses including non-profit organizations such as Operation Smile. With the
right strategy and the right timing, numerous online marketing campaigns can be
launched and maintained successfully, thereby attaining Operation Smile’s objectives
and reaching out to more children that are in need.
Operation Smile 14

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Operation Smile 15