Getting Out The Message

Marketing sometimes gets a bad rap.  It gets associated with hype and exaggerated claims of a the performance of products and services.  That is unfortunate.  The practice of marketing at its core is all about clearly defining and communicating your message to a target constituency.  Clearly defining the brand and accompanying messaging strategy are critical to growing small conservation organizations.  The national and global organizations like Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club and others do a pretty good job in this area, but local and regional organizations could benefit from some focus on brand development and marketing.  This was brought home recently in a conversation I had with the president of a local conservation group.  His organization has been around for over 20 years and their membership has been flat for the past three plus years.  Local and regional non-profits start off very program driven, and rightly so.  It should be all about doing the work to drive the mission.  One of the keys to growing the organization and doing more of the good work that it does must be to tell its story to more people and to get more people excited about the work that it does.  It starts with clearly defining the "Brand" of the organization.  What does it stand for?  (Core values & core mission).  From there you move to defining the "Core Message" (may have multiple related sub-themes) which will be derived from and validate the brand.  All communications should reinforce the Core Message.  The Marketing Plan then creates the tactical execution framework for getting the message out to the community and to specific targeted segments with a story that resonates with them and links their wants, needs or desires to the mission of the organization.  The other key here is effective listening.  One must listen to not only the existing membership, but to the broader targeted audience to assure understanding of their wants, needs and desires.   If you do not make an effort to communicate beyond your core group of supporters your organization will reach a certain size or capacity and plateau at best or stagnate and decline at worst.  Effective marketing will expand membership, increase volunteers, make large gift solicitation easier, and improve partnerships with other organizations and government agencies.