RMMC Update 2017
(By RMMC Team) Back in 2011, Rama students donated $103,500 to the Rama’s Materials Marketing Campaign (RMMC), and the Frederick P. Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism matched that amount (up to $100K) for a total of $203,500. Over the past seven years, the RMMC Fund has been directed towards many awesome projects to get the word out about Rama’s teachings. The funds are managed by the Lenz Foundation and use of the funds are overseen by a group of Rama students involved in raising the funds.
Updates on RMMC activities have been posted from time to time on the RMS Site. The money spent to date is as follows:
Beginning Balance = $203,500.00
Additional donations Received = $6,000
Expenditures = $177,769.23
Current Balance = $31,730.77
| Graphics for ads, promotional events & websites | $4,282.85 |
| Marketing | $10,056.00 |
| Music distribution | $909.94 |
| Product development | $4,827.13 |
| Promotional Events | $24,910.71 |
| Search Engine Optimization | $1,000.00 |
| Targeted paid advertising | $45, 982.60 |
| Website build consultant | $14,000.00 |
| Website builds | $71,800.00 |
We will be raising (and matching) funds to replenish the RMMC campaign in the Fall of 2018. Stay tuned for updates!!!
Some recent examples of the use of these funds:
- Performing a detailed analysis of search engine optimization of over a dozen key Rama related sites to improve the results of searching for Rama’s name online.
- Creation of ten short videos with excerpts from Rama’s talks on a host of subjects. These now reside on YouTube, are accessible through the Integrated Meditation website and are posted on the RMS Site.
- Creation of intros and outros and use of the new Lenz Foundation creative commons license for all Rama videos. This was done with great results. See the dedicated Rama – Dr. Frederick Lenz DVD Channel on YouTube.
- Hackathon Sponsorship for Yale hackathon at which over 400 copies of Snowboarding to Nirvana were distributed. A meditation room, how to meditate handouts and meditation instruction was also provided to hackathon participants. At Prior Hackathon, we handed out about 1,200 copies of Surfing the Himalayas.
- Regular advertising in Tricycle Magazine online. Our results are at the top of Tricycle’s ad stats. For example, from Dec 2016 through May 2017 there were 1,776,098 total impressions, 1,902 total clicks, .11% CTR.
- Online Advertising on Lionsroar.com – which has the largest worldwide Buddhist audience of any online publication. From May-Oct, 2017, our ad was always in the first to third-ranked ads. Total impressions = 645,233 Total Clicks = 1,177 Click-thru rate =0.18%.
- Sponsoring the Premieres of the film,” Higher,” by snowboarding great Jeremy Jones in New York, Boston and Santa Monica. We handed out about 1,440 copies of Surfing the Himalayas directly to young audiences of avid snowboarders and had an amazing time doing it!
- Online advertising of Surfing the Himalayas in major snowboarding magazines.