Gain National Media Exposure with a Small Social Following with Laura Beck from LottoLove

Reading Time: 4 minutes

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This episode is presented by Feathr – Nonprofits of all shapes and sizes use Feathr’s digital marketing tools to increase awareness, engage donors, promote events, and hit fundraising goals. Feathr provides a central place to manage digital advertising, email marketing, and peer-to-peer campaigns, as well as build ads, landing pages, and more. Click here to learn more.

How does a small startup business get featured on Ellen, The Today Show, PopSugar, and Real Simple Magazine? Laura Beck from LottoLove has brought the fun into gifting and giving back with charity scratch-off tickets.

During this episode, you’ll learn that a vanity social media following does not resonate with your success, how to pitch the media and create a PR blitz about your brand (no matter the size of your organization), and y’all, it’s really about powerful storytelling!

How LottoLove has gamified charitable giving 

LottoLove is the first and ONLY company offering a scratch-off ticket with a social mission. 

Laura Beck’s upbringing inspired and motivated her to do something bigger in life. Her Dad worked in the medical field and devoted his life to being of service, eventually building an orphanage in Central America where he provided much needed medical care in a remote village. Laura would often join her family on these annual visits. Seeing extreme poverty like that drove her towards a career path that was not only fulfilling, but was in service to others.

Her company, LottoLove, has made charitable giving even more fun, waaay beyond the typical process of going to a website and making a donation, only to have the excitement end there. 

The best part? 

Every single scratch ticket has a prize, and Laura handles the fulfillment of those donations on her end. These make perfect gifts for any occasion and corporations have also bought in as they fulfill those needs for employees and clients.

As Laura sought the right partners for her brand, she considered smaller charities that might not have as big of a following and paid close attention to their mission. The charities LottoLove works with cover the spectrum of everything from clean water, solar energy, literacy tools, and mentorship for girls.

Creating a PR blitz for your brand 

Laura has created an impressively powerful movement around her brand, and guess what? She doesn’t have millions of followers. She has less than 2,000!

So how did Laura amass incredible PR opportunities like getting on The Ellen Show, PopSugar, Forbes, and others?

While having higher follower counts on social media has the power to make you feel more credible, people want to talk about the new and the innovative. And all it takes is just ONE heavy hitting press feature to create that domino effect.

The first big press hit they got was a feature in Real Simple Magazine, which came about on a whim when Laura met a small business owner in New York who was connected with their editor. This was how LottoLove then got a feature on The Today Show, when one of their contributors reached out to her directly.

Over time, these press features created a ripple and Laura saw those traffic spikes on her website along the way. 

If you’re thinking about reaching out to the press to build your own PR movement, remember that the press are human just like you. They receive hundreds, if not thousands of emails per day. Laura suggests looking into gift guides and reaching out to the authors of those posts, as they yield a ton of traffic.

The balance of being product and customer-focused 

Laura inspires us to be both product and customer-focused and not focus solely on scaling.

Get your product as perfect as it can possibly be, because it’s the heart of your business.

I resonated so much with this point, as I personally give to three different organizations monthly. I ended up canceling one of my monthly gifts recently because I wasn’t really hearing anything from the organization.

So keeping that donor journey’s experience personalized is so important. It’s so much easier to keep an existing donor than it is to go out and acquire a new one!

As Laura keeps her customer at the forefront, she shares about their exciting future expansion into digital. This transition will open the door for more corporate giving options for adding more personalization and customization to the scratch tickets. They’ll also launch a much larger gift catalog so they can support even more charities.

The future is so bright for LottoLove.

Laura’s Ask

“Because we’re going to be launching our digital version, if there’s any developers in the digital space, I’d love to hear from you and connect with anyone that might be part of your community. And if anyone has any advice on how to spread the word and keep the movement going, I’m all ears.”

Connect with Laura at laura@givelottolove.com. 

Notable Quotes from Laura

“The thing that is most important about press is understanding that at the end of the day, it’s relationships. We’re all human. Treat it like every other relationship in your life, because I think so many people look at editors and journalists as not really human and they don’t approach their press outreach in that way. If you’re a good, authentic person and you have a brand that people like, people are going to want to share it.

“Be product focused. Be customer focused, because I think if you’re solely focused on scaling your business, then that can be detrimental. Once you scale, everything you knew about your business is gone. It’s a completely different beast.”

Resources & Links

This episode is presented by Feathr – Expand your reach, further your mission. Use Feathr’s digital marketing tools to increase awareness, boost online donations, promote events, recruit volunteers, and ultimately do more good. Learn More. 

Check out LottoLove on their website or Instagram (@lottolove) and reach out to Laura directly at laura@givelottolove.com if you’d like to be considered as a charity partner when they go digital!

If you’re ready to get the press and publicity you deserve, Laura highly recommends the course Press for Success.

Laura suggests following @patricepoltzer on Instagram who is a mastermind at storytelling and helps founders tell their story.

Check out my NEW $27 mini course, Visible Reach In A Week. In 30 minutes, you’ll learn how to create a $3 a day ad campaign that will drive brand awareness with your supporters.

Want to make Missions to Movements even better? Take a screenshot of this episode and share it on Instagram. Be sure to tag @positivequation so I can connect with you.