5 Reasons Your Not-for-Profit Marketing May Be Failing
Marketing of not-for-profit causes and organisations is the challenge of a lifetime. Many people expect that, because they’re promoting something incredibly worthwhile and rewarding, they simply need to get the message out and tens of thousands of supporters will materialise overnight. But as anybody who’s actually tried it can attest, that’s very rarely the case. Why?
In an increasingly socially conscious generation, many organisations are competing for the attention of your target audience. Numerous causes are asking donors to contribute funds out of the generosity of their heart, but with no direct economic benefit being offered in exchange, and the public is becoming increasingly discerning in their selection of organisations to support.
Here are five of the most common areas, in my experience, that marketing of NFP’s fall short:
1. Lack of Knowledge
Effective marketing strategies require market knowledge, product knowledge, company knowledge, and a strong working knowledge of the marketing mediums in which you’re going to promote.
I frequently see enthusiastic marketers throwing themselves directly into marketing campaigns based on a host of assumptions, many of which are inaccurate or unclear.
People often don’t know what they don’t know. Often, some basic market research would improve their focus, saving a lot of wasted energy on unproductive activities, and uncovering key motivators for their audience.
Likewise, when it comes to social media and online marketing opportunities, many marketers are struggling to keep up with a rapidly evolving landscape which changes the dynamics of marketing significantly. Where historically marketers ‘advertised’ their wares and controlled what was said, now consumers have the power and it is up to marketers to win their loyalty, support, and recommendations.
It is critical that marketers dedicate a suitable portion of their time to meeting with their peers, attending seminars, listening to the counsel of experts in their field, and generally ensuring that they are exposed to the successes of leaders in these new fields. (Our Marketing Essentials Seminar in September 2011 is one such venue to enhance their practical knowledge and skills in areas of Market Research, Internet Marketing, and Social Media).
2. Lack of Resources
I’ve seen a lot of campaigns launch and flop that were reasonably well devised, but failed predominantly because the organisation underestimated the resources necessary to achieve the stated goals.
A well researched and targeted message, with a compelling proposition, still needs to be heard by enough people. And the results are not linear. As you reach a certain level of public awareness, the message can take on a life of its own and this has a multiplying effect.
Therefore, radio advertising on a community radio station for a short period (e.g. a couple of weeks) may have little or no impact, and yet it’s inaccurate to assume that multiplying the radio budget by a factor of 10 would yield similarly poor results.
Using the same message, but increasing the repetition over a longer period of time and to a larger audience, may well generate great results, particularly when conducted as part of an integrated strategy with email marketing, social media, blogs, and so on.
Not-for-profit organisations need to understand that the old adage ‘you need to spend money to make money’ is (unfortunately) still essentially true.
Whilst you may be able to find clever ways to get free exposure, it’s very rare that an organisation can effectively promote themselves without dedicating the necessary human resources and budget to their marketing.
3. Lack of Differentiation
If you’ve researched the market, devoted sufficient resources, and got the message out to the right audience, the question still remains – “so what?”, “Why should I get involved with your organisation?”
Most of us are overwhelmed by a never-ending stream of requests from thousands of organisations all asking us to pitch in and help their ostensibly worthy cause. How does an individual decide who he’s going to commit his limited time or money to?
It’s a sad reality that the majority of the world lives in poverty, and there are tens of thousands of organisations trying to feed and educate starving and malnourished children, provide sanitary drinking water supplies, eradicate malaria and AIDS, and so on. Whilst your goals are noble, so are the goals of the last 10 requests the consumer was confronted with.
The key is differentiation. How you ‘position’ and differentiate yourself is a critical element of your marketing strategy.
4. Lack of Relationship
As more and more organisations go online to find and connect with their ‘audience’ and stakeholders, some are still thinking in the mindset of traditional advertising – that is, present a carefully crafted message for the masses, and trust that a sufficient percentage will respond favourably.
Social media marketing requires an adjustment of mindset. Whilst there are still opportunities to present advertisements and offers, the real power of social media lies in engaging the public (in particular your target audience) so that they participate in discussions, share your ideas with their own social networks, and give you suggestions, feedback, and even criticism.
Social media marketing is about relationship.
5. Lack of Sustainability
Perhaps the greatest challenge for many not-for-profit organisations, particularly those involved in international development and poverty alleviation, is leveraging the donations of financial supporters so that current marketing activities reap longer term rewards.
This is potentially the single most important question not-for-profit organisations can ask themselves. It’s a much bigger question than just “how do we advertise what we do”, it actually requires that you continually review your core operations and be prepared to enhance and adapt them to maximise the impact of the funding your receive.
I believe that it’s time for a lot of organisations to ask some tough questions about their whole operational model and consider new opportunities such as ‘creative capitalism‘, micro-lending, capacity building, and other commercial endeavours that, with the assistance of seed capital to launch, will over time become self-sustaining. (The book ‘Out of Poverty‘ by Paul Polak illustrates this brilliantly and may provide some inspiration. Also check out kiva.org)
If you could market your not-for-profit organisation with the promise of multiplying rewards, and potentially even some small returns to ‘investors’ (as opposed to donors) you would open the door to a vast new audience who, under current models, may be completely unreachable.
Should we have a Facebook page for our business?
The owner of a groovy café near our office asked me this week whether it’s possible to delete posts on a Facebook page. I explained that it is, and then he went on to explain that this was a significant consideration for him in deciding whether or not to set up a Facebook page for his café.
His real concern was that, if he created a Facebook page, anybody with a grudge could slander his café directly on their own Facebook page. I pointed out that they already can.
Just by ‘checking in’ with Facebook Places, people already ‘create’ (or more accurately, trigger) a page that represents your business. A Places check-in with a comment attached will be visible for any visitors to read. The only question really is whether you want to get involved and play a positive role, or whether you’re content to turn a blind eye while the world talks about you!
My advice, naturally enough, was to play a proactive role – take ownership of his café’s page, add professional touches to it such as their masthead, logo, colours, menu, correct address, business hours, telephone number, and any other information about the café that he deemed was appropriate, and allow the comments on the page to serve as valuable feedback. I also suggested that, unless a comment was totally unwarranted and defamatory, it’s probably worth keeping the less than flattering ones as well, because in the social media space readers appreciate authenticity and balance. Given that his café really is a great place, I assured him that the positive comments would substantially outweigh the occasional negative, and if he really couldn’t bear to see a comment stay on the page he had the discretion to delete it.
The key issue to understand when deciding whether or not to create a Facebook page for your business is to realise that you can’t prevent negative online comments about your business simply by ‘opting out’ and not having an online presence – it’s going to proceed with or without you, therefore you’re better being informed and involved.
Facebook Places vs. Foursquare – what’s the difference?
Image via CrunchBase
I’ve been using Foursquare for a few months now, and the more I use it the more it fascinates me – both personally, and as a marketing tool.
So when Facebook launched Places (initially in the US) I was curious (and concerned) about how it would compare with Foursquare. Now that it’s launched in Australia (yesterday) I’ve been able to explore it personally and assess it’s strengths and weaknesses.
Facebook clearly has an advantage when it comes to user numbers and adoption – with 500 million active users, it’s pretty safe to call it ‘ubiquitous’. And that’s the main reason why Facebook is a threat to Foursquare.
It’s also, of course, part of your existing Facebook app on your iPhone – so there’s no extra installation/download required to get up and running.
There’s one other neat thing that Facebook Places does – it allows you to tag which friends are with you when you check in. So even if they’re not using Places, you can let the world know that you’re at a venue together. (And if somebody DOESN’T want to be included in such check-ins, there’s a privacy setting they can set to make sure that other people can’t tag them at Places.)
But in my opinion, those are really the only advantages that Facebook has. In every other regard, Foursquare is a far more powerful location-based social networking site.
Foursquare does the basic check-in like Facebook Places. It doesn’t let you check your friends in, but if they check themselves in it identifies that you’re there together. And then it does a whole range of other great things:
- Leave tips: if there’s something you found outstanding about your experience at a venue (restaurant, cafe, theatre, gym,…?), you can share a tip with other people who might be considering going there – this builds a wealth of insights to help the user determine where they might like to go, and of course it builds the public visibility of the tipster.
- Find a venue’s address and locate it on the map: If you’re looking for a particular shop or facility and don’t know quite where to find it, you can type in the name on your phone’s Foursquare app and it will find a list of matches. You then click on the correct entry, and you’ll actually see the address of the venue. By contrast, Facebook Places never mentions the address but just has a pin on the map.
- Badges & Mayors: Foursquare does a great job of encouraging people to visit a range of different venues, and also to visit favourite venues frequently. You become the ‘Mayor’ of a venue if you’re the most frequent visitor in the last 60 days (only 1 check-in per day is counted!), and badges include “Crunked: That’s 4+ stops in one night for you!”, “Supermayor: A special shoutout for holding down 10+ mayorships at once!”, and many more. Not only does this add to the fun for the user, it’s a marketers dream. Foursquare allow venues to promote special offers that may be redeemable by the ‘mayor’, or if somebody checks in with a ‘newbie’ friend, etc…
- Update Twitter, Facebook and anything that’ll take a Twitter feed: Foursquare has the ability to update not only your Facebook profile, but also your Twitter feed – and therein lies a significant strength. Twitter in turn can feed into a whole range of other platforms/environments, and therefore allows you to radically extend your reach from a single check-in. For example, you can have your web site (or blog) display a Twitter feed, you can have your Twitter feed displayed on your LinkedIn profile, on your Yahoo! Pulse, and in a whole range of other contexts too. So by checking in on Foursquare you can, at your discretion, share it in a whole range of other web contexts of your choosing.
Foursquare clearly offers a far more advanced location-based social networking site. Facebook Places, by contrast, is simply a check-in service for existing Facebook users.
But despite the differences, the realities of life are that often the ‘best’ solution is run out of town by the ‘best known’ solution – Foursquare is going to face a serious challenge from Facebook now that the average user can share their location with their friends simply through checking in at Facebook Places. I’ll be watching with bated breath to see what Foursquare can do to increase it’s market share and ensure it’s long-term viability.
Do you really need a social media strategy?
I’m an advocate for approaching marketing (and business generally) in a strategic manner. It takes all your wit and wile to compete in crowded markets, and there’s never enough resources to splash around carelessly, so the smarter our business activities are, the more successful we’ll be. And Diana Huff, editor of Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs, has traditionally made the same argument.
So I was intrigued when I read one of her recent articles entitled “True Confession: I Don’t Have a Social Media Strategy“.
You must have a strategy before you begin social media,” Diana quoted herself as recommending. But she’s changed her mind.
” I’ve been wrong. Yep. Dead wrong.”
If you’re interested in the details of her argument, you can read the post – but a good summation is found in one of Huff’s own sentences:
“…sticking to a social media strategy is stifling. What if you have a terrific insight about something that has nothing to do with [insert your topic here]? Do you post it – or ignore it?”
I find Diana’s outlook helpful in highlighting the need for authenticity and individuality, but I’m going to use the paradoxical “you’re right and you’re wrong” response.
Do you NEED a strategy to engage in social media? No. I agree on this.
And can overly-structured programs stifle the real intent of social media? Absolutely. We continue to be on the same page.
However, is a business going to get some return on their investment of time, energy, and resources without a strategy? I’d argue that some strategic guidelines significantly enhance your prospects of achieving your organisational and marketing goals. Of course, that sentence is typical marketing waffle – what does it mean in the real world?
Many people develop a significant number of followers and achieve remarkable exposure in social media realms simply through sharing what comes naturally, and engaging in authentic dialogue. But businesses who do it really well (usually) take it a step further:
- They have a clear focus on who they wish to dialogue with (a ‘target audience’), and tend to slant the conversations towards topics of interest to them.
- They recognise creative ways to maximise the reach and effectiveness of their interactions, by creatively linking to topical/trending discussions, incorporating some incentives from time to time, seeding conversations in private with other online identities that can endorse and promote them.
- They integrate short-post activities (such as Twitter and Facebook status updates) with more detailed expositories (blogs, web site news updates, articles at other sites, PR/media coverage)
- They consider creative applications of social media technologies to their unique environments, e.g. Fit n Fast Gyms checking members into Foursquare / Twitter as they swipe their membership card on arrival at the gym
In summary, I believe strategic initiatives (as opposed to a stifling, set-in-stone, strategy document) significantly enhance your chances of generating an intentional business outcome. So my advice would be, jump in the water and start to explore the environment – but if you want to maximise your chances of powerful, far-reaching business results, start to then think strategically about how to augment and fine-tune your activities in ways which exponentially increase your reach, impact, and effectiveness.
Successful Marketing must be Measured (correctly)
One of our regular clients has just asked us to take over all elements of their marketing, including Search Engine Optimisation, Email Marketing, and Social Media marketing. Previously we’d provided all the technical backing they needed – web hosting, I.T. infrastructure, domain registrations and management – but they’d turned to the developer of their web site to drive their online promotion forward. What’s prompted this recent change?
The work they’d commissioned with their (former) provider was undertaken on not much more than a handshake and a ‘sense’ that the provider would deliver results. What exactly those results would be, and how they’d be measured, was not really considered. But after several months of shelling out a monthly retainer without any apparent benefits to their business, they asked for our opinion.
After reviewing the latest report from their former provider I highlighted where I felt things were going wrong.
Firstly, the provider’s entire report for a month consisted of two brief activities they’d undertaken (which should have amounted to 20 minutes work) and two pie charts which indicated that ‘referred traffic’ to the client’s web site had grown by 62%. The provider went on to take credit for this growth, explicitly stating that the increase in ‘referred traffic’ was due to their activities.
When we dug into the figures we uncovered several issues. The ‘referred traffic’ had, on the whole, come from sources which had no connection with the providers work – that is, people had followed links at sites like Yellow Pages, White Pages, Twitter and Facebook to get to client’s web site, and only 2 visits had arrived from sites the provider had worked on – and in fact, these 2 visits were a decline on the traffic the provider generated the previous month.
Furthermore, the provider wasn’t being paid to increase referred traffic (although nobody would complain about referred traffic as a fringe benefit) – they were actually expected to improve the ‘organic search results’ – another category within the statistics, known as ‘(unpaid) search engine traffic’ – this category had experienced a 29% decline in the past month.
I recount the details of this example simply to highlight that:
(a) You must have clear goals in mind, and keep focussed on these – if you don’t know or remember what you’re aiming for, you won’t realise if you miss your target.
(b) Metrics can be misused if they’re treated as an incidental piece of trivia which you can skim over. Goals should always be specific and measurable, so treat those measurements (metrics) as critical and indispensable tools for navigating your marketing course.
Our client is now in the process of reviewing some of their high level business objectives, in consultation with Aktiv Tactics, and next week we will sit down to establish together the marketing objectives. These marketing objectives will be ‘front and center’ as we then go on to do a little research and establish a short term marketing plan to carry us through an interim/transitional phase. Once we’ve immersed ourselves in their business and gathered more data about their target audience, competitors, customer satisfaction, long term plans and budget, we’ll then go on to develop longer term marketing strategies and plans.
All businesses should measure and monitor their marketing activities. However, if you’re a small business in particular, every dollar invested in marketing desperately needs to return a profit to you – it’s unrealistic to expect that this will all be instantaneous, but at the very least you need to make clear plans of where you’re heading, and the milestones along the way, so that you can measure your progress and confirm that you’re tracking as you would anticipate.
Fit n Fast Gyms employs creative social marketing
I like it! Fit n Fast Gyms are a new player serious about making a huge impact in the fitness/gyms marketplace – and I reckon they could have a winning marketing formula.
Using a combination of Facebook, Foursquare, and Twitter, they’re spreading the word through the power of personal social networks on what I imagine is a shoestring budget. Arrive at your gym, and Fit n Fast can automatically check you in to Foursquare as you swipe your membership card – which in turn can automatically broadcast the fact you’re at Fit n Fast (along with their logo embedded in the message) to your Twitter and Facebook. That’s brilliant – every time somebody arrives at a Fit n Fast gym, they’re advertising the gym to their entire online social network!
Fit n Fast have also created a Facebook app so that their Fit n Fast Facebook page actually does something useful, unlike many other corporate Facebook pages. You can get some meaningful info, sign up for a ‘Quickie’ (great light-hearted way of turning gym workouts into an exciting proposition!) , find out about the latest competitions (they even have chocolate as prizes! Talk about getting healthy without sacrificing all the little treats in life!), and discover the jobs they’re currently advertising. Spread that around with a bit of good ‘ol ‘Like’ love, and you’ll set the world on fire!
How many other organisations could benefit from adopting these creative strategies? Foursquare is a great way to spread a brand – it could be used at not-for-profit events, fundraisers, fun runs, professional seminars and workshops, and just about anywhere else people are pre-registered and checking in.
Of course, there’s some privacy considerations to take into account, but these are by no means insurmountable, and I’m sure many participants/clients would be easily persuaded if the networking benefits were highlighted to them – for example, if you’ve just checked in to an event or seminar, the other participants also checking into the same event would be drawn to your attention and easily identified by Foursquare, enabling you to follow up with them more easily afterwards. Challenges exist to help us think creatively!
Much kudos to Sam Mutimer (@sammutimer) from Thinktank Media for her work on this social marketing strategy!
