Mission-Based Marketing: Positioning Your Nonprofit in an Increasingly Competitive World

1. Mission-Based Marketing:Positioning Your Nonprofit in an IncreasinglyCompetitiveWorld Based on the book by: Peter Brinckerhoff 26 February, 2014

2. Your Speaker • Peter Brinckerhoff • peter@missionbased.com • +1-217-341-3836 • www.missionbased.com

3. What Works? Nonprofits that succeed… • A bias for marketing • Financially Empowered • A Vision for where you are going • Tight Controls • All of these characteristics work together • A viable mission statement • Ethical, accountable and transparent • A businesslike board • Strong, well-educated staff • Embrace technology for mission. • Social Entrepreneurs

4. Marketing realities • Good marketers meet wants, not needs. • Every one of your markets deserves to be treated like a valued customer. • Everything everyone in your organisation does every day is marketing. • It’s about wants....not only about needs.

5. Marketing: The Edge – in excellence, in mission, in competition • If you want to provide better services, be a better steward of your resources, have more satisfied customers of all kinds, marketing is crucial. • Good marketers meet wants, not needs. • Competitive organizations must market aggressively. • Every one of your markets deserves to be treated like a valued customer. • Everything every one in your organization does every day is marketing. 8

6. The characteristics of a market-driven, mission-based disability organisation: • Knows their markets • Treats everyone like a customer • Has everyone on the marketing team • Asks, asks, asks, and then listens • Innovates constantly • Doesn’t fear the competition 9

7. Marketing is a always a team effort • Everyone in your organization has to participate. • Everyone has to believe that they are critical to the marketing effort. • Train, train, train and lead your staff and board in this crucial area. 10

8. The results of being market-driven: • You will provide mission more effectively. • You will have happier markets. • You will have a better community image. • You will retain current markets. • You will have new sources of revenue. • You will be more financially stable. 11

9. Shape & reshape your product or service. Evaluate Promote the product or service. Distribute the product or service. Define & redefine your market. What does your market want? Set a sensible price. The Marketing Cycle of a Disability Nonprofit

10. Who are your markets? • Is it people with disabilities? • Is it government? • Is it families? • Is it donors? • Is it outside contractors? • Yes, yes, yes, and much more…. 14

11. Your Markets-what do they want? • Service A • Client Type One • Client Type Two • Service B • Service C • Referrers • Internal • Board & Staff • Payer • Government • Foundation • Donors • User Fees • Contracts

12. An exercise for when you get home:How many markets do you have? • Do this with your staff as a group: • List your Payer Markets. • List your Service Markets. • By Service. • By Constituency. • Ask the staff: “What are the wants of these markets?” • Then ask them: “How do we know?” • Which markets are your priority, your targets? 16

13. What will your organization be? • Product-driven? • Market-driven? • Solve customers’ problems!

14. Time for Tea! • Please return in 15 minutes

15. Market Segmenting • Each market can be broken down into smaller groups, more focused recipients. • By segmenting, you can choose the markets you want, the ones you can serve well, the ones that make the most mission sense. • You want to find markets who want what you do well: Your core competencies. • You don’t want to take money from just anyone for just anything.... 17

16. Targeting Your Marketing Efforts • There are more markets than you can research, focus on and, in general serve well. You only have so much money and so much time. So, how do you focus? • Two Tools: • 80-20 • Strategic Plan 20

17. Asking Your Markets • You can’t know (enough of) what a market wants until you ask. • You need to ask regularly and consistently. • You need to develop a “culture of asking”. • You can ask through surveys, focus groups, and informal asking. • Let’s look at each.

18. Surveys • Surveys allow you to ask consistent questions and get statistically defendable data. • They provide quantitative information. • They are (usually) less expensive than focus groups. • They allow for trend analysis.

19. Survey Rules • Have instructions • Be Brief • Be Focused • Don’t ask too often • Ask questions in the correct sequence and wording • Get help • Limit your identifiers. • For trend data, be consistent. • Include closing instructions. • Say thank you.

20. More on surveys • Make sure your survey medium (paper, in person, online) is appropriate to the audience. • Make sure you coordinate your asking throughout the organization. • Use SurveyMonkey or other online tools for quicker responses and real time analysis.

21. Focus groups • Focus groups allow you to get qualitative information: emotions, reactions. • Focus groups are usually more expensive than surveys. • Focus groups allow you to be flexible in your asking and your pursuit of answers.

22. Focus Group Rules • Get a facilitator. • Have a homogenous group. • Focus your questions. • Don’t wear the group out. • Compensate the group.

23. Asking mistakes • Not expecting criticism. • Not listening. • Not responding. • Close the loop.

24. Other asking issues… • Share your information. • Collect information from informal asking. • Review your asking program every 12 months…to avoid pestering your valued customers!

25. Tech and asking • Email surveys only work if linked to HTML • There are online services for this: • http://www.surveymonkey.com • Go to www.techsoup.org and look and their ideas on using web 2.0 to get constant user feedback through comments, blogs and other online tools.

26. Some current realities:Customization rules • www.kiva.org • www.globalgiving.org • www.donorschoose.org • www.sparked.com

27. More Reality • To an increasing number of customers, family members, volunteers, community members, social media is THE way they will find you and find out about you. • “For me (and my friends) as potential employees, if you’re not on Facebook, you don’t exist.” • 27-year-old employee of a disability nonprofit in Michigan

28. Let’s think more about competition • First, you want competition. Why? • Because if you don’t have any--your idea is probably really bad..... • OR, you’ll have competition in a heartbeat • AND, competition makes us better at what we do. It’s hard, but ultimately benefits the people we serve.

29. Being better than your competition. • Can you? Sure! • Give your customers value-as defined by the customer. To do that you need to ask. • Welfare agency example. • Learn from your competition, but don’t copy them without thinking. • Focus on what you do well. • Do you have to compete head on?

30. The competition… • What services do they provide? • What clientele (market segment) are they seeking? • What value do they give to their customer? • Can you find out about prices? • Use your network: board, staff, volunteers, funders, and vendors.

31. Focus on your core competencies • Review the markets and their wants. • Evaluate the competition’s ability to meet those wants. • Look at your core competencies, and match with the markets’ wants. • Move toward those competencies.

32. Remember... • Marketing is your competitive edge. • Everyone needs to be on your team. • It’s all about wants, not about needs.

33. Final check: What’s your big takeaway? • Let’s make one last list......

34. Books • Mission-Based Marketing, 3rd Edition, by Peter C. Brinckerhoff • 101 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits, by Melanie Mathos • Guerrilla Marketing For Nonprofits, by Jay Levinson