Conscientious marketing as an NGO
- 16. July 2018
Strategic marketing for non-profit organizations: A clear conscience as a product?
Does this sound familiar? You have a great idea how to promote your organization or project through a better image, higher donation income or a closer donor relationship. But there is concern among colleagues and management that the idea is too much of an advertisement. And advertising and marketing, as these colleagues well know, manipulates people into doing things they don’t want to do.
Now how can you convince your colleagues that marketing per se is not misleading mankind? And how do you do it anyway – marketing for a good cause – without damaging your reputation and harassing people? With strategic marketing for non-profit organizations.
First of all it makes sense to take off the NGO/NPO glasses. Yes, they do valuable things and are certainly do-gooders. However, this attitude often collides with strategic management and marketing for non-profit organizations. This can lead, not in all but in many cases, to inefficiency and waste of internal resources. To save these scarce resources – time, money, personnel and nerves – and to actually achieve a goal, the approach of strategic marketing for non-profit organizations can help.
So what can be the product of NGOs/NPOs? Here it is useful to ask the question why a person supports an organization or donates for it. Three answers come immediately to mind:
- The person can identify well with the vision of an organisation and wants to support it actively, through cooperation or passively, through donations.
- The person would like to make the world a little bit better in general and hopes that this will happen with his/her cooperation or donation.
- The person wants to feel better after the donation because he/she knows that he/she has done something good.
These are some products of the NGO/NPO industry. But how do you manage to sell this identification, attitude or feeling? This is where strategic marketing for NGOs comes in.
What’s the goal?
The question of what is to be achieved at, needs to be answered before going public. Should the image of the organization be strengthened, supporters be won for a campaign, or donations be acquired? By when is this to be achieved and by which key figures do you know that the goal has been achieved? Only if you know where the ship is to go will it reach its destination. In addition, a clearly defined goal can also be used to identify whether it has been achieved in the end. The SMART formula provides assistance in defining the target. The goal should be specific, measurable, accepted, realistic and terminable. If, for example, you and your organisation want to find supporters for your campaign for more climate protection, the formula would be as follows:
Specific: Supporters for climate protection campaign
Measurable: 10,000 signatures in the online petition, 5,000 Facebook fans, 2 volunteers, 20,000 Euro donation
Accepted: Does everyone in the team agree with the goal and the measurable variables?
Realistic: The following questions need to be answered: Is it realistic to generate 10,000 signatures? Can we assume that the signatories will each donate 2 euros to the campaign? Do we have enough marketing budget to promote the petition and the Facebook Fan Page? Will two months be enough to achieve the goals?
Time-Bound: The measurable goals should be achieved within two months from the start of the campaign.
Who do you want to reach?
In addition to the goal, it is essential to have a clearly defined target group. Who do you want to address with your message? Once you have figured this out, it is important to find the needs of the target group and to create interfaces with the one message. For example, it is certainly only of limited use to address supporters of fossil fuels for a climate protection campaign.
If the needs of the target group are met, the relevance for the target group will be higher. The higher the relevance, the less the risk of being harassed by marketing activities.
Especially if you mainly communicate online, you should be aware that the target group will become an interaction group. This means that your message does not only go in one direction, but your target group can also communicate back. The best way to do this is to consider beforehand how you deal with positive but also critical reactions. Sometimes it is necessary to react, sometimes it’s not.
What are the market conditions? What are the opportunities and risks involved?
Yes, you read that correctly. NGOs/NPOs also live in a market economy. It is therefore necessary to look closely at whether potential competitors exist and how they move in the market. If, for example, there are already three other organisations that deal with the topic of climate protection in a similar way, the market is small and highly competitive. However, if you decide to enter this market, you need to find out what makes your action different from the others. Carefully weigh opportunities and risks against each other and develop countermeasures to counteract any risks before you start your campaign.
Which channels should be used for communication?
Once the goal and the target group with their needs have been determined, it very quickly becomes clear which channels should be used to communicate in order to reach them. It is important not only to think in terms of measures, but to proceed strategically. Is the message predominantly found on the own website? Is it also possible to make a donation there? Can the website be found via search engines? What does a person look for if he wants to support a climate protection campaign? Where are the points of contact where my target group comes into contact with my message? Do social media channels suit the target group, or do traditional channels have to be used and print advertising has to be used? A Facebook fan page can be successful, but if it is only this single measure and the fan page is not maintained properly, the effort of setting it up can be saved. Not every channel is suitable for every target group…
Time and money and personnel?
…not every channel is free of charge and almost all channels mean intensive time support and expertise. If time, money and personnel are not available, the goal may not be SMART, as achieving the goal with little time, budget and personnel is not realistic.
Who does what and when must therefore be clear before the start to save nerves and ensure good communication.
Establish Kick-Offs and Follow Up Meetings!
How and when can these tasks be distributed? It makes sense to establish kick-off meetings, i.e. meetings that take place before the start of an important project. In these meetings the project with its goal and target group is communicated to all important stakeholders, also within the organization. For you this is the opportunity to pick up your sceptical colleagues and win them over. The meetings offer everyone the opportunity to point out pitfalls and express concerns that may not have been considered by the core project group. This is where the schedule can be discussed, responsibilities can be assigned and substitution arrangements can be made. Regular follow-up meetings are useful to check that everything is going according to plan, or that it cannot be adhered to due to external or internal circumstances, e.g. by dismissals of important persons. In addition to the current project status, interim results can also be communicated here.
Has the goal been achieved?
How can it now be determined whether the goal has been achieved? Measure, measure, measure. Especially online, you can use a, in part, free keyboard of measuring and tracking tools. eTracker, Google Analytics, Piwik provide data about website visitors in real time. For example, if the goal of the campaign is a monetary donation target, the so-called e-commerce tracking can be used to determine which marketing measure has been used to collect how many euros of the total donation sum. Here, the data protection guidelines of the Federal Data Protection Act must be observed.
Non-financial KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) can also be made measurable through online analysis tools: How many signatures were given for my campaign? How many new newsletter subscribers have I gained? How long was the average holding time on my main landing page? The prior definition of the target makes it easier to check whether it has been reached.
Conclusion
Communicate with your supporters. What motivation do they have to support you? Find out what your product is and make sure that your supporters actually receive it.
Involve your sceptical colleagues and show them that professionalisation and marketing do not hurt, but create better knowledge about what and with whom you are actually dealing. It is not easy, but helpful. Try it too. I am looking forward to your feedback.
This article was first published on tbd.community