Marketing for
not-for-profit organisations
Get expert marketing support to achieve your mission.
Successful marketing for charities, social enterprises and community interest companies (CIC)
Budget matters! When you need to be sure you’re making a difference, you want to be spending on the right things. Creating and following a marketing strategy will steer your organisation into activity that makes the biggest impact for the money available.
Marketing to deliver a mission >>
Do your marketing materials talk to the right audience?
Marketing activity for a charity or social enterprise could be targeting a number of different groups, for a multitude of reasons. It can get a bit confusing. The people you seek to support may be the ultimate benefactors of your service, but it’s possible that they’re not your primary audience, which may seem a strange thing to say. If the priority is to help more people, it might be funders that are top of your hit list to achieve this. Or perhaps the people you support are usually referred by another stakeholder or a family member, in which case they’re the eyes you’ll need on your marketing.
Charities, can you unpack your mission & clarify what your services are?
Most charities or social enterprises are driven by a strong sense of purpose or mission. If you’re asked what you do, it’s easy to respond with, “we do x to help y” … which is the ultimate answer. But the true service you offer is more than a mission.
Unpick your mission statement to explain with clarity what you do and why it matters.
Can you work out when people need to know about your not-for-profit?
Working out when people need to hear from you, steers when and where you push out your marketing. If it’s in the moment that a family hits a crisis point, when is this? If you rely on stakeholder referrals, when does this usually happen? Understanding exactly when your audience need you, means you can tailor your marketing activities. Online, this might be targeted adverts or campaigns on social media. Offline, it could be as simple as a well-placed poster or leaflet in a doctor’s waiting room.
Are you clear to your audience why your not-for-profit service matters?
Finally, all your marketing content should convey why your service matters. The building blocks for this come in the form of key messages. A tight set of statements that can be woven in to everything you do going forward.
Key messages are a systematic way of outlining how your service makes an impact on the people or places you’re working to help. .
A not-for-profit must make sure budget is spent wisely. A strategic approach allows you to target the right people, with the right messages, at the right time.
If you’d like to have an informal conversation about marketing strategy or you need some help writing interesting and engaging marketing content, then please do get in touch.