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By Tiffany Meyer, president, Numa Marketing
In July of 2008, I embarked on one of the biggest adventures of my life — 27 days backpacking in the trail less, pristine wilderness of the Yukon territory as a student with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). That’s right, this area is so untapped and rugged that our route required the use of a compass and topographic map, the right gear and supplies, and of course a clear idea of our goal destination.
Would you ever enter such territory without a map and compass? Of course not. Yet each year nonprofits and small businesses stumble through the highly competitive wilderness of marketing and fundraising without a clear picture of where they want to go, who they need to target, and what tools are most likely to get that target’s attention. Here’s your guide to surpass their most common reasons.
Confession - my compass skills are a little rusty too. But hey, that’s why I took a course with NOLS rather than embarking on this trip all by my lonesome.
Help is out there. Hire us for one-on-one consulting support. Or buy my book, Writing a Results-Driven Marketing Plan, and you’ll be walked step-by-step to create a simple, realistic plan that gets you where you want to go. Marketing plans can be intimidating, so take them one step at a time.
If you’re still tentative, consider hiring Numa Marketing to develop the marketing plan for you. Hiring a consultant helps bring an objective, yet experienced perspective to the table. Our approach ensures optimal buy-in from administrators and board members right from the beginning. We believe in leaving our clients empowered rather than dependent on our firm. So, you’ll find that once the marketing planning process is complete, you’ll be armed with a wealth of know-how and confidence to tackle the job on your own next year.
What happens if half your team wants to summit the hill, two others want to get to the waterfall, and you just want to go home?
Marketing is one place where the phrase “it’s all about the journey” doesn’t ring true. Without buy-in and agreement on your measurable marketing objectives from the onset — where you want to go — you’ll typically find yourself in re-active mode for the rest of the year. And, you’ll likely find that your marketing progress reports are simply a list of tactics you’ve checked off rather than measurable results you’ve achieved.
If you’re struggling coming to agreement on your objectives, here are a couple of suggestions. Bring in a consultant in to offer an objective perspective on your industry, the market, or the long-term impacts that each conflicting direction may provide. Equally important, they can also help facilitate agreement.
Or, ask administrators to vote as a group on their top 2-3 objectives for the year and to come to agreement that this is the direction you’ll focus on for the coming year. Remind them that while you’ll stay flexible, continually changing direction will dilute your impact and likely waste precious resources.
With about 10 years of backpacking under my belt, like many, I’ve learned the hard way what you really need (and don’t) in the backcountry. It comes down to this — minimize, get creative and maximize the use of every item you have.
Let’s say like most small businesses and nonprofits, managing your marketing program is just one of the many hats you wear. If you only have 10 hours a week to devote to marketing, don’t you want to know that the tools or tactics you’ve selected are going to get you where you want to go? That you’ve selected your “gear” wisely? That you’re making the most of the specific skills you have, or are working to acquire the skills you don’t have but really need? And that you’ve maximized overlap potential to meet your marketing, public relations and fundraising goals at the same time?
A well-written marketing plan can help you do just that.
Me too. The beauty of wilderness camping is that you don’t always have to stick with designated campsites. If I find a potentially better campsite that’s a mile or so out of our way, but guaranteed to present an incredible show by sunset, why not go for it?
A sound marketing plan will leave room for flexibility. But without a plan in place — without knowing what your measurable objectives are — you may run the risk of changing routes for the sake of a perceived “opportunity” or “great new idea”.
When you know where you want to go — what your measurable objectives are — you can take each new idea and ask, “will this help us get where we want to go?” And if so, “will spending time on this new idea take time away from a potentially even more fruitful tactic we’d already agreed to implement?”
Over the last year alone, I’ve had clients battle hurricane force winds on the Oregon coast, California wildfires that have engulfed entire towns, and just this month, apocalyptic flooding in the Midwest. As unusual as these weather phenomena’s have been, they go to show that you never know what might happen and the best-laid plans need wiggle room.
An overly complex marketing plan — like an overly complicated route — can make redirecting your course difficult. The key is to keep your focus on where you want to go, rather than how you want to get there.
If an unexpected crisis comes your way, you likely will need to re-examine your marketing tactics to determine what you can realistically do now and still achieve the results you want. The key is to keep your plan simple so you don’t have to bail out entirely. Instead, you can pull a campaign off the list, simplify a strategy, or identify a tactic that takes far less resources to keep you relatively on schedule.
While the route has shifted, you can still stay confident that you’ll get to roughly the same spot you intended.
© 2008 Numa Communications, LLC
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