Has your organization struggled to connect with new prospective donors, trustees, advocates, and other key stakeholders this past year despite genuine efforts to highlight your value proposition? Has your team, product, or service been consistently overlooked, underfunded, and sidelined in favor of other "trending" areas? And has your marketing and communications strategy failed to deliver the results envisioned at the start of the year?
If your answer is “Yes” to any of the above, then this article was penned just for you... So please, keep on reading.
From a pure business standpoint, there are a few common threads among the most effective and impactful programs within the development, development cooperation and humanitarian spaces - which include but are not limited to:
A compelling nameplate;
Clarity on their corporate and brand identity (who they are, what they offer, what they stand for, and the value they bring to eventual beneficiaries, clients and/or other end-users);
Clear and consistent messaging; and
A commensurate investment into the channels, touch-points, operations and other resources required for effecting a desired change or response.
Having spent the better part of the last twelve years serving simultaneously in substantive communications and thematic roles, I can say with some certainty that from a business standpoint, there are a few inherent gaps and weaknesses that tend to create inefficiencies in conversion (cost and time) within the non-profit space, and in some instances may inhibit change altogether.
The caveat here is that until the value proposition of your product, service, message or idea is fully embedded into the psyche of your desired audience – whether internal or external – the likelihood of effecting a desired change or response remains very low.
The good news? There are many proven methods for improving your program and/or organisation’s rates of conversion and retention across various audience segments (improving engagement and buy-in for greater impact) – including for those traditionally obscure areas of work, where though essential, they remain under-resourced and deprioritised internally while lacking traction externally.
The Business-case
For starters, I think we can all agree that “awareness” is just the tip of the iceberg – it is simply not enough for stakeholders to merely know about your initiative, program or organisation. The end-goal should always be conversion – buy-in, retention, and creating advocates out of prospects.
That being said, it would be incredibly remiss of me to suggest that any organisation not seeing the desired returns on their marketing and communications investments, should even remotely consider discarding their existing strategies, work plans, campaigns, segments, channels and/or touch-points without a structured audit or situational analysis.
I have personally witnessed instances where engagement and rates of conversion improved dramatically with minor adjustments to search engine optimisation (SEO) and the establishment of more seamless linkages between digital and physical touch-points (e.g., Industry events being marketed more aggressively via an official website, social media pages, mobile apps, partner-led promotional/ precursor events, etc.).
Ideally, a complete marketing audit/ situational analysis would cover:
Your Business Model – e.g., what you do; the engine that makes the business run; and your proposition per client/ prospect – the customisation of your ideas, products and/or services);
Your Clients/ Prospects – understanding the utilitarian, economic, social, and symbolic needs fulfilled by your ideas, products and/or services;
The Operational Context – understanding the external environment as it impacts your core business (e.g., demographics, economic, political, technological, environmental, and socio-cultural);
Competitors – understanding the business models, competitive strategies, competitive advantages and marketing-communications strategies of your competitors (e.g., Multi-lateral Financial Institutions, development cooperation actors, UN system partners, the private sector, etc.); and
Collaborators and Complementers – which strategic relationships should be leveraged for conversion gains (e.g., strategic and implementing partners; mainstream and ‘New’ media; champions in government and public policy; development cooperation actors; grassroots leaders; etc.).
The findings of the above should help immensely in better defining your corporate identity, your prospects’ journey (from first contact to conversion – including the blogs, op eds, social media campaigns, workshops, conferences, conference presentations, high-level meetings, policy dialogues, live streams, etc. required for transmitting key programmatic messages), the MEAL systems/ data and analytics required for customisation, and continued product/ service development.
A SWOT and competitive forces analysis can offer further insights into key internal and external conditions and trends that influence your core business, and will help immensely in framing your organisation’s response and strategy for differentiation and eventual buy-in.
Captured above is a simple but useful guide for improving engagement, buy-in and retention of stakeholders with respect to your organization’s core business – yes, “Business.” Regardless of the configuration of your organization – for-profit or not-for-profit – it takes a business orientation to break through the competive forces and organizational demands bearing down on your overall proposition.
With this in mind, your mission is to take your prospects (whether customers, clients, donors, beneficiaries, or other key stakeholders) on a journey from an initial point of engagement to eventual conversion. The inputs required for that change process are the pillars of your core business – not the least of which is your marketing and communications portfolio.
It is therefore fair to conclude that non-profits are as constrained as profit-based enterprises to be systematic and methodical about their marketing and communications – taking full advantage of the various frameworks, tools, technologies, channels and approaches that underpin success in the marketplace.
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