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Tag Archives: 413Assign4
Morals of Nonprofit Marketing
“Forward-looking nonprofit leaders, however, will recognize what their counterparts in the for-profit sector understood long ago: marketing is essential.” – David Williamson, Marketing & Communications in Nonprofit OrganizationsTo further exp… Continue Reading
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Lets Win This (3 Keys to Success)
No team continues to win without holding true to key values and morals. David Williamson in Marketing & Communications in Nonprofit Organizations lists 3 key morals to success. During this blog post we will Examine the keys to team success in … Continue Reading
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A Minute for Morals
David Williamson, managing director of non-profit consulting firm Bernuth & Williamson, discussed nine critical “morals” of non-profit marketing and communications. I gained a deeper understanding of the importance of marketing in non-profits, the differences between marketing and communications, and how to successfully market for a non-profit after reading his article “Marketing &Communications in Nonprofit Organizations”. I chose the three morals that stood out the most to me, and here they are:
Lesson 1 – Fundraising the right way
Williamson’s moral: Fundraising is often a core component of marketing and communications, but not all fundraising collateral translates into more money raised.
Translation please: Send the right message to your donors: don’t focus solely on glossy brochures, DVDs, and high-tech websites if they aren’t consistent with your mission, won’t reach the right audience, or be beneficial in the long-run.
The age of technology has resulted in some pretty high-tech fundraising collateral and tactics. Take Children’s Miracle Network’s DonorDrive website they use – every CMN fundraising event conducts its registration and fundraising via this website. It has a long “shelf-life”, it effectively reaches the audience of donors and participants in fundraisers, and is cost-effective, as the platform can be used for as many events as necessary.
While it is important to remain cost-effective with your fundraising materials, non-profits should not cut corners. It is vital to ensure your fundraising techniques are long-term and consistent with your story. I also think it’s important to use your fundraising materials to build relationships with potential donors so that you can raise money in the long run.
Lesson 2 – Marketing vs. Communication
Williamson’s moral: Don’t just communicate. Market.
Translation please: There is a difference between shoving informational materials at people and drawing them in. Obviously communicate your cause, but use emotional appeal to brand and promote yourself.
| MS Research Content |
Williamson gives the example of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) – MADD uses effective ad campaigns to market itself, but also communicates its cause through position papers, voter’s guides, etc. It is so important to advocate for your cause so that your current supporters (and others) can stay informed, but to also market to potential supporters and keep supporters passionate about your cause.
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| MS Marketing Initiative |
An example I found is the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, which has launched an online ad campaign in which it airs short commercials in which people with MS discuss their daily lives dealing with the disease. These commercials have been airing before YouTube videos. I usually skip over these ads, but some of them have actually drawn me in and caused me to continue watching. To supplement its marketing campaign, the National MS Society has an extensive section of its website dedicated to research materials. This is an excellent example of a non-profit which communicates and markets.
Lesson 3 – The Brand.
Williamson’s moral: Your brand defines your organization to the outside world. Take the initiative and define yourself, before one of your enemies tries to define you.
Translation please: Pretty self explanatory: know who you are and own it. Make sure everyone else knows what you stand for just as well as you, and give them a recognizable brand to connect with your cause.
For example, when I see a pink ribbon I know it’s Komen for the Cure. In fact, as you can see in the title, the organization no longer needs to even include the words “breast cancer” in its title. This is a result of great branding. As I mentioned in my last post, however, Komen for the Cure has had some difficulties recently owning and staying consistent with its brand.
People often said the organization created “pink washing” with its pink ribbons everywhere, partnered with brands that have no relation to breast cancer or women, including multiple yogurt brands and pet food. Not only that, but the organization lost several partners as a result of its outlandish partnerships and overly aggressive branding. It will be interesting to see how Komen can turn around its plight and get back to its original message through positive branding.
Comparing and Contrasting
The Non Profit Times, a leading non-profit management publication, lists seven lessons that it finds important. The brand takes up two of those lessons: develop a strong brand and promote the brand utilizing multiple strategies. Another point is to determine the perceived value in the community. I think this ties into both marketing and fundraising points Williamson raised. A donor and a supporter will donate or advocate for an organization depending on how he or she perceives the brand and its value. People want something in return for their support and that’s where value is so important.
Wrapping Up
I chose to discuss fundraising, branding, and marketing in this post because they are such important elements of a non-profit, and are interconnected. To sum it all up, not all fundraising has to translate into immediate funds raised, a non-profit must market as well as communicate and inform, and a non-profit must own and sell its brand.
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Inspirations from Dave
Due to the sickness, I was not able to attend class last Wednesday. In lieu of my illness, I read David Williamson: Marketing & Communications In Nonprofit Organizations. He seems to have a great understanding of how to keep his writing simple and to the point. I especially love his “moral” at the end of every section. His insights reminded me of 3 key fundamentals of life.
If you want to find a fish, buy a boat. If you want to find a bird, buy a plane.
In 1995, The Richard’s Group found it moronic for a cannibalistic chicken to hold a bucket of deep-fried family members in commercials for restaurants selling chicken. Therefore, they came up with the slogan “eat mor chikin” as the main slogan for Chick-fil-a. Now, illiterate cows protest the consumption of beef and act as the mascot by encouraging people to eat at Chick-fil-A to save them.
Genius. Almost 20 years later it is the #2 highest grossing fast-food chicken restaurant. How? It found the right vehicle. It wanted to reach the fish, so it used a boat not a plane or car. In Dave’s (short for David) section About Messengers and Vehicles, he explains that an organization can have the perfect message directed to the perfect target market, but the vehicle through which you deliver the message can either enhance or decrease your performance. This is the case, particularly in non-profits. No one can deny your message and intentions are great, so why does your brand not resonating in everyone it is relevant to? Dave suggests that if you cannot find that vehicle yourself, than use the audience to reach the audience. If that makes any sense. Using Social networking, blogging, websites, etc. your audience can simply tell you how to be effective.
Precision can be more effective than accuracy.
When trying to build market share many companies, especially Nonprofits, turn to the demographic of Caucasian, females between the ages of 21 and 65. While your target market may be accurately portrayed somewhere in this market of people, would it be more effective to be more precise and find that specific segment you need. In his About Audiences, Dave says that Nonprofits should be ruthless in their attempts to narrow their target audiences, especially given the lack of resources that nonprofits have. He explains “the more general and broad the audience, the more difficult it is to tailor and deliver a powerful, compelling message that will resonate with that audience.”
A great entertainer has the right audience, powerful punch line, and a strong delivery.
‘Once when I was lost I saw a policeman and asked him to help me find my parents. I said to him, “Do you think we’ll ever find them?” He said, “I don’t know kid. There are so many places they can hide.”’
This is my favorite joke by one of my favorite comedians of all time is Rodney Dangerfield and no matter what joke he always fulfilled 3 criteria: audience awareness, powerful punch line, and a strong delivery. As a marketer, you must have the same approach.
Audience: The individuals or institutions you need to reach to achieve your programmatic objective
Message (punchline): motivates each of your target audiences to take the required actions
Vehicle (delivery): the best means of delivering the message to the target audience.
In Developing Successful Marketing and Communications Strategies, Dave explains that companies need discipline and use the “Holy Trinity of Audience.Message.Vehicle.”
Great Example of the Holy Trinity
http://youtu.be/COPOEOnRnNk
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Marketing for a Good Mission
Many nonprofit organizations make the same mistake: Thinking their good cause and mission will speak for itself and donations will come pouring in with little effort put into marketing and communications. But like i’ve said before:A world of choices me… Continue Reading
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Strategies in Not-for-Profit Marketing
The past few weeks, we have been doing extensive research into the Not for Profit world. Our work with ABAN requires a deep understanding of the industry if we want to achieve our goals. Marketing strategies differ between different industries and sect… Continue Reading
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The Morals of the (NonProfit-Marketing) Story
Ever hear some good advice, then when something actually impacts your life relevant to the advice, you don’t take it? There’s something about humans that makes them think that their own advice or experiences make them the most expert in opinion. Well, David Morrison is an actual expert when it comes to marketing and communications for nonprofit organization, so much so he wrote an informative article, focused on giving the best advice about it. Here I’ll discuss a few of his “morals” and why they shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Moral 1: Marketing is the only job shared by everyone in the organization. An elevator speech makes sure your people have a compelling story, they stick to it and it sticks with their audience.
Remember that good management advice you heard in business school, “you’re only as good as the employees you hire”? Don’t turn a deaf ear, because if you hire an employee that doesn’t fit in with your organization’s culture and passion, that employee might just be Tweeting horrible things about your company, or even created a whole Twitter account about it. The last thing you want is a Trending Topic to be horror stories about your company, like McDonald’s recent experience. Morrison’s main highlight from this moral is educating your employees on being able to give a two minute “elevator speech” about who they are, what’s the organization about, who your program helps, what social issue your program addresses, how your program differentiates itself, and why who you’re talking to should care. Obviously the circumstances in which your employee is telling someone, and who that someone is, changes, so multiple answers should be memorized.
Storytelling is the ultimate weapon when it comes to your nonprofit because humans thrive off of stories and human interaction.
“The audience accepts the story because, for a human, a good story always seems like a gift. But the story is actually just a delivery system for the teller’s agenda. A story is a trick for sneaking a message into the fortified citadel of the human mind.”
If your employees or others in the organization can deliver a two minute story that can encompass what Morrison said, then the moral of your story (your organization’s message) will spread. Raving employees make raving fans. However, when trying to find a nonprofit with raving employees, I kept finding a common theme, there seems to be more unhappiness in the nonprofit sector by employees than happiness. Nonprofit employees are stressed by the little monetary income they get from the hard work they put in because the main reason they stay with the organization is the message, but an empty wallet and an empty belly challenge that. Appalachian Voices is an organization focused on ending mountain top removal. I went to a seminar put on by Periclean Scholars about this issue, and the speaker said that if he could inspire one person that day then he had done his job because one person inspires another person. He said that his message is what sells because it’s the story that’s gripping, so it has to be a good one.
Moral 2: There is no such thing as the general public. Find the audience that matters most to your mission, and focus on them like a laser beam.
It’s irritating to me every time someone says a generic target market, because “the general public” might as well be a target market too if “boomer white women” is a target market. It is extremely important to find a home-base, a segment of people that is CRAZY about your organization. Those are the people that will spread information and light a fire under other organizations and companies to do something about your social issue or even better yet, have the power to create a direct change and bettering outcome.
Morrison gives us the example of how in the reality of saving desert tortoises, there were exactly 9 board members they needed to influence to give desert tortoises land to live on before they became extinct. Then when it really came down to it, they only needed to influence two of those members because 3 were for and 3 were against. By lazering in on those two people, they were able to create proposals for them to connect with so that they’d agree to give the tortoises land. While I know that it can be difficult to narrow down a target market because we want EVERYONE to contribute to our cause, but in the reality maybe just making one or two people change their minds or get informed is what really matters because it’s impossible to be all things for everyone.
This website in fact is devoted to making fun of and harshly critiquing poor ads for nonprofits. http://www.futurefundraisingnow.com/future-fundraising/stupid-nonprofit-ads.html
An ad in particular that I thought, while quirky and fun, does not target a specific audience, but tries to be something for everyone is this:
To me this ad is calling to any and every person that cares about the environment and animals. Well, isn’t that everyone to a certain degree? It definitely isn’t a specific target market, there’s no “niche” factor to it. Morrison said to lazer in on them, not throw a bucket of water and hit a bunch of random anyones.
Moral 3: Put the right message in the right messenger and let it FLY!
Order something on Etsy from Thailand…how’s it going to get to your house? A very detailed and organized system of airplanes and trucks is going to get that product to you in a week. Now THAT is the right messenger. Just imagine all your messages are getting to your target market segment that efficiently and pain-free. It’s possible. You just have to choose the best thing to say, send it at the most relevant time, and when you send it, send it the right way.
Morrison says the most important message to give your target audience is one that motivates them to go beyond awareness, but to take action. The message should speak directly to their needs, desires and aspirations. Market Research will help figure out who and how to send the message. Morrison gives the example of using Top Chefs as the messenger for the message about the population decline of swordfish.
While there are some really harsh things said about this ad, I don’t agree with everything that the commentator said, but when he starts making bullets, he makes sense.
The writer says:
Anyway, there aren’t going to be many donors to worry about. Because the ads make several serious rookie mistakes:
- Big numbers. The fact that 3.5 million children die each year is not going to motivate giving. It’s going to turn away giving. People give to help solve human-sized, solvable problems.
- Jargon. Guess what? Most people don’t know what “acute malnutrition” is. It’s a medical term with little emotional punch or life connection.
- Abstract imagery. If you want people to donate to help people, you’re going to have to show images of people. Not paper dolls; not miniature pizzas. Donors don’t have time to play your mind games. Just show them what needs to be done. (The creative director at the clueless agency that created the ads explained it with the creative directors’ Trump Card: “cognitive dissonance.” Sorry, cognitive dissonance is a code phrase for “no response.”)
- No coupon. Even a first-year junior copywriter in fundraising who’s barely sober most of the time knows that if you want response, you’ve got to include a coupon. Even though most responses now come via the web or the phone. (Oops! They forgot to include a phone number!)
He shows that the message isn’t written well by using jargon, big numbers and abstract imagery. Morrison says that the message has to be right for the people to understand, and go beyond motivation to take action. This ad shows that there’s a message that makes donors uncomfortable because there seems to be no hope (and the lack of coupon doesn’t help as noted by the writer).
The moral of today’s nonprofit marketing story is that just because you’re a nonprofit, it doesn’t mean that you should treat your potential and loyal customers any differently. Market to them when relevant, give them hope and motivation to take action, and never forget that your employees could be your best advocate.
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Some "Musts" In Non-Profit Marketing
In the article, Marketing and Communications in NonProfit Organizations by David Williamson, several morals and/or lessons are defined concerning the marketing tactics of non-profit businesses. Three of these morals stood out to me in particular, and I… Continue Reading
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The Lowdown on Marketing for NPOs
Many think marketing is a no-brainer; I was guilty of this thought before I started college. I mean you just make eye-catching advertisements and stick ‘em where people will see them, and people will automatically do what you want them to, right? WRONG. So, so wrong. There are so many factors to consider when writing a marketing plan, both internal and external. For example, some internal factors are what kind of organization you are marketing, and what their mission is. In keeping with the theme of my Integrated Marketing Communications class, we will look at some marketing tips or “morals” to keep in mind when working with nonprofit organizations, as detailed by David Williamson, Managing Director of the consulting firm Bernuth & Williamson, in his essay, Marketing & Communications in Nonprofit Organizations.
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| Source: http://lafetraconsulting.com/blog/ |
The first of these morals relates to my very misconstrued first impression of marketing: Show marketing some respect. Marketing is assumed to be extremely easy, but many don’t see all of the work and planning that goes into each marketing strategy. And because of this, when a company’s budget needs to be cut, marketing is one of the first areas to be trimmed—especially in nonprofits, when the leaders believe the money would be better spent elsewhere. But this is really just a misunderstanding of what marketing can really do for an organization. Without marketing, how would the public know about the organization in the first place? If the cause behind the NPO doesn’t catch the public’s eye, the only audience it will attract are those directly affected by the cause, but those are not the people they should be trying to reach! They need to be expanding their audience, so that more people will know, learn to care, and take action—that is what marketing can do for an NPO.
But for marketing to effectively work, it needs to match your brand and your brand’s mission. As Williamson puts it, “Your brand defines your organizations to the outside world. Take the initiative and define yourself before one of your enemies tries to define you.” I think a great example of this is Walmart: in recent years, Walmart faced sexual discrimination charges, and while such charges would be substantially damaging, the company worked to counter the negative publicity. Before any of Walmart’s competitors could take this story and plaster it anywhere and anywhere possible in attempts to blacklist Walmart, the company actively worked to reverse the damage. The most prominent effort, I would say, is their Empowering Women Together campaign. Through this campaign, Walmart calls its customers to help the company support women-owned businesses by buying their wares, which Walmart has made widely available through their website.
While the underlying intentions of this campaign are questionable, there is no doubt that Walmart took the initiative and solidly defined themselves as not only a proponent of equal employment opportunity, but as an advocate of female business owners. Rather than letting the competition or the public taint their image, Walmart did what it could to make the company seem better than ever.
The third moral comes from another misconception, one about the audience. It is widely believed that the bigger the target audience, the better. This could not be more wrong! What appeals to a 45 year old housewife does not appeal to a 35 year old bachelor, what interests an 18 year old athlete does not interest a 25 year old business professional, 15 year old boys do not share the same priorities as 15 year old girls, etc. The bigger your target audience is, the more difficult it is to create and deliver a captivating advertisement. By finding a precise audience to appeal to, you won’t have to waste resources on trying get the attention of people who won’t listen.
Let’s recap:
1. Respect marketing.
2. Your brand defines your organization to the world—be the one who sets that definition.
3. Find and focus on the audience that matters most to your mission; not the necessarily the other way around.
There are plenty of other tips to help with your marketing success, but you can never go wrong by implementing these three!
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Lessons to Live By for Non-Profit Marketing
You may not realize it,
But we encounter various forms of marketing everyday; whether it is an advertisement on TV or interviewing for a job position, the way we view and present our environment all ties back to marketing. David Williamson recognizes that people in the corporate world undermine marketing in certain situations, simply because they are ignorant to what an effective marketing campaign can do for their organization. Williamson explains in one of his morals for marketing communications, that you need to respect marketing and utilize it early and not before your organization is in trouble. If your organization is not marketed to the public properly, the public will start to perceive your brand with a negative connotation, and first impressions are always the hardest to forget. An example of an organization that did not utilize their marketing department well and suffered the consequences was Groupon. Once the company went public, their stocks tanked and eventually the company had to restructure and market themselves to the public in a way that showed the benefits of using their service. Because Groupon waited to effectively market to the public their brand suffered the consequences. The company is still not doing great financially and will have to turn things around and market themselves effectively in order to become a successful and viable brand.
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| Photo Credit: http://theatomsrs.files.wordpress.com |
Moving into the world of not for profit organizations, Williamson has a lot to offer when it comes to marketing to an audience whose hearts you first have to capture before capturing their wallets. Williamson explains in another one of his morals that for a non-profit’s marketing campaign to be successful the mission behind the organization is what needs to drive the marketing. The public needs to be aware and understand what your mission is you are trying to accomplish, or else they will feel like they are wasting their time and opt out of investing in your brand. A non-profit that I think has made their message to the public clear is the National Domestic Hotline. In the video clip below the message is clear and concise, and really let the mission behind the organization do the talking.
I believe the most important takeaway from Williamson’s article on Marketing & Communications in Nonprofit Organizations is that everyone in the organization is a marketer. Even if you are not directly involved in marketing, you are still apart of the brand and what that brand promises to deliver. Whatever you say about the brand you work for is going to be taken to heart by people because they see you as a primary resource, so employees need to be educated and know what exactly it is their brand is promising to offer. In Wendy Marx’s article, SAP And The New B2B Marketing And Communications Model the company SAP utilizes all 60,000 of its employees as brand ambassadors.
“It’s not about the seven spokespeople in our PR department but in how we can use our 60,000 employees as communicators, and how many folks within the company can produce content.”
Coming up with an effective and relevant marketing campaign can be a hard pill to sallow, especially for non-profit organizations. While multiple forms of marketing bombards the public, it is easy to ignore messages around us. This is why it is so important to utilize David Williamson’s words and advice about non-profit marketing and make those people listen up and pay up.