🔒Nonprofit marketing beyond the charity golf tourney

When it comes to developing a nonprofit marketing strategy, I beg you to think outside the greens. The golf greens.

It's charity golf season and according to CTGolfer.com these events happen almost daily from now through October. And, while I have nothing against this form of entertainment and frustration, my experience in nonprofit marketing tells me they are ineffective when it comes to improving the overall financial health of a nonprofit. They also do little to broaden public understanding of a nonprofit's mission.

So what can a nonprofit do to raise awareness, bring in financial support, build an engaged volunteer force and showcase the issues they stand for?

Here are five tips of developing nonprofit marketing strategies.

Build and preach your brand: Many times when we start working with nonprofits they assume everyone knows who they are and why they should care. I call it the “Big Brown Eyes Syndrome.” It sounds like this: “Our cause is right and just and true and anyone with a heart should care about it.” If the current political season has taught us nothing, let's acknowledge that “right and just and true” isn't resonating. It's a fantasy.

Do not assume everyone knows and loves you. Even your most ardent supporters probably have their own narrow view of who you are. Your brand needs to be more than that. It needs to encompass what's important to the people you serve; the unique value you bring to the universe and the differentiating reason you exist.

So, before investing one moment, one dollar, one brain cell in developing a marketing strategy for your nonprofit, I beg you to know and understand the unique value you bring to those you serve. That's your brand. That's the message that will form the core of your marketing strategy and the key messages you'll deliver.

Identify and understand your target audiences: Each of the groups you need to impact wants and needs different things from you. Your clients may want independence, help, support, understanding or the ability to change. Those who care about them may want the comfort of knowing they aren't alone in providing the best for those they love.

Volunteers want the satisfaction of knowing their time and dedication are making a difference and donors want to know their dollars are being spent well. So how do you create a marketing plan that satisfies these diverse needs? By going back to the essential reason you exist; the one that's embodied by your brand.

Create and disseminate key messages: Now that you know who you are and what your target audiences want from you, it's time to develop key messages that you'll deliver through all of your communication tactics.

Key messages speak to what people want from you and how you can deliver it. No matter how noble the mission, if an organization is not telling its story consistently and strategically, it will fall on deaf ears.

Use earned media — it still works: While social media is the latest shiny object, it's not the answer to all of your communications challenges. It's one answer. Traditional media — TV, radio and print — still have credibility and sway. In a 2014 survey by InkHouse and GMI, social media ranked as the fifth most preferred news sources, after TV, online news, print news and radio.

I would also add that community news, in both print and online (like Patch.com) are terrific ways for nonprofits to get their messages out. People still read their hometown papers.

Make your website your communications hub: Websites and social media give nonprofits the ability to be their own broadcasters. Use them wisely.

Think of your website as your owned-media hub. Driving traffic to it should be the goal of every communications tactic you use. Why? Because that's where you can say what you want, inspire people with what you do and move them to action – as long as you remember what they want from you.

That means putting up content that addresses the reasons people come to your site. If you're an addiction-recovery agency, the person coming to your site is probably there because addiction is causing pain — for them or for those who care about them. Telling them that you were founded in 1982 by a doctor who came over from England doesn't get them any closer to solving their problem through you.

Content that tells your website visitor that your approach is based on understanding their addiction and developing a unique plan to battle it, makes them think, “I've come to the right place.” See the difference? Content in the first example is all about you. Content in the second is all about the person searching on your site.

A key component to drive people to your site is your blog. Here's where you get to show off just how much you know and how much you care.

Once you've posted that blog, push it on your social media with an intriguing tidbit from the post. Choose the social media your target audience participates in. Want to reach Boomers? That's Facebook and LinkedIn. Want to reach Millennials? That's Instagram and Snapchat.

Use social media to engage: Employ social media to involve the people who care about your issues and to inspire them to action. And like the rest of your content, make it about the topic; not about you.

And now back to the greens: The point of this column is that nonprofit marketing must be about building year-round support and understanding for your very-worthy cause. It needs to go beyond a once-a-year golf tournament.

This may be golf-tournament season, but ask yourself, “What's the reason?” Then use all the energy that goes into planning your annual charity golf tournament to create a year-round marketing strategy.

Andrea Obston is president of Andrea Obston Marketing Communications in Bloomfield.