Chapter 4
Marketing Your Social Initiative
Overcommunication is the name of the game when it comes to marketing.
For-profit companies get this. They understand that if you aren’t making sales, you won’t have a business for much longer. They come up with elaborate marketing strategies and spend copious amounts of time and dollars in figuring out how to do this well.
The nonprofit and social enterprise world has always had a very different culture. It is a culture of considering itself not a business and perhaps the thought that “we don’t need to sell” or “we shouldn’t be selling.” It is time to break out from that mindset! In today’s world with the changes in the marketplace, it is no time to be timid. There is a lot to be learned from the for-profit sector. This is especially true when considering communications and marketing.
For nonprofit and social enterprise organizations, communication is important as there are multiple messages to be delivered and even more stakeholders who are involved. A for-profit only needs to consider its customers and shareholders in its communications. They care about the government and society to some degree, but mostly in relation to how those communications will impact their customer and their shareholders. For nonprofit and social enterprises, communications need to be managed for the clients that it serves, potentially there are multiple types of clients. It has donors, funders through grants, potentially also investors, volunteers, the government potentially is a funder making it a critical stakeholder. Managing all of these relationships and communication strategies is complex.
This chapter will focus on how to do this well and how to nuance a nonprofit or social enterprise’s marketing strategy.
1. Marketing Mix (The 4 Ps of Marketing)
Marketing is everything that an organization does in order to get its offering to the customer to create an action (usually a purchase). The marketing mix that achieves this includes the 4 Ps of marketing:
• Product: What are you offering or making available? This is the offering which is typically a product or service that is designed to meet the customer’s needs.
• Price: What will be charged for the offering? There are pricing strategies that can come into play to maximize profit or to maximize the volume or market share that an organization has.
• Place: Where can people get this? This is the distribution network and supply chain that is associated with making the offering available.
• Promotion: How will people find out about this and be interested in it? Promotion is what people typically assume is marketing, but the entire strategy needs to work together.
Together these four pieces of the puzzle add value to the customer and ensure that the right offering is at the right price, in the right time and place, and the customer will be aware of it.
Table 1: Marketing Mix Comparison
2. How Is Marketing Different for a Social Initiative?
Typically there is a marketing mix that is designed for each customer type to which an organization is trying to appeal. With nonprofits and social enterprises having so many audiences in comparison to a for-profit, this means that more work and attention needs to be paid to this area. However, in each area of the marketing mix there are nuances as well:
• Product: Social initiatives have a wider range of offerings available to them and that continue to be explored including programs, memberships, and events.
• Price: Unlike a for-profit, a social initiative also is responsible for creating as large of a social impact as possible. In fact, this takes priority over the financial returns. But sustainability is always needed.
• Place: For-profits have been established with existing scale and infrastructure for their supply chains and distribution models. Social initiatives are often relatively new, exploring how to scale and if this is even viable, and are building their infrastructure which creates limitations on existing distribution capabilities. Another point is that social initiatives often serve geographical areas that are not financially attractive to for-profits, indicating that the infrastructure to serve those areas is at a higher cost with lower financial returns. Another supply chain that is not established is reverse logistics, which is the returns, defects, and recycling of products that have gone through or have gone through the supply chain. Social initiatives are involved in this part of the supply chain as it has an ecological impact as well as having a lower price point. A good example would be produce from a farm that does not meet the visual standards of a grocery store; it could be used at a soup kitchen in its soup. The concept of reverse logistics has evolved over the last two decades.
• Promotion: There are simply more groups to communicate with when it comes to social enterprises. For-profits need to focus on customers and shareholders with everyone else being secondary. For nonprofits and social enterprises, there is a lot more at stake with the secondary audiences. Governments and other organizations might be funders or volunteers. Potential donors and volunteers are a much larger audience than just investors to be concerned with (which social initiatives also care about). Social initiatives have to communicate to clients, investors, governments, charities, sponsors, donors, volunteers, and anyone who is a potential to be any of these in the future.
With all of these differences, it would initially appear that this is too much of an uphill battle to consider. A huge advantage in all of this work is that there is a keen sense of the need to partner between the social enterprises themselves and with government.
2.1 Marketing Partnerships for Social Enterprises
Partnerships are a key part of the marketing strategy that allow social enterprises to be competitive. For-profits also partner in their marketing for a strategic advantage, but never is it a point of necessity.
For social enterprises, leveraging partnerships throughout the entire marketing mix can have a significant advantage. It is a good idea to actively be thinking about what types of partnerships are needed and how to create these partnerships.
• Product: A social enterprise can partner with another social enterprise so that the collective offering is more appealing.
• Price: A social enterprise can partner with a corporation through a corporate social responsibility initiative, or with a foundation/donor base to make an offering affordable through a subsidy or full sponsorship.
• Place: Social enterprises need to work together to build supply chains that allow them to scale. They need to work together when they jointly serve an area that is underserved or less accessible.
• Promotion: Social enterprises can partner together to reach any of their mutual audiences. As there are so many audiences to reach, partnering allows them to pool their marketing resources for joint advertising, promotion, or events. Corporate social responsibility is a good way to leverage a corporation’s support and skills.
If marketing is critical to a social enterprise’s success, and partnerships are critical to a social enterprise’s marketing mix, it is fair to say that partnerships are critical for social enterprises.
2.2 Product: Social initiative offerings
What we already know:
• A product is the offering or what you are making available. In for-profits, an offering is typically a product or service that is designed to meet the customer’s needs.
• Social enterprises have a wider range of offerings available to them and that continue to be explored including products, services, programs, memberships, and events.
• A social enterprise can partner with another social enterprise so that the collective offering is more appealing.
Offerings are above and beyond the normal fundraising and grants that a nonprofit might utilize. These are the new options that are available and being explored.
Creating a product or service that is for sale is the most commonly thought of business model. This can be used by a social enterprise.
But what makes it a social enterprise if the organization is simply selling a product?
For it to be a social initiative, the main focus of the organization needs to be making a social impact while creating a financial return. So when selling a product, it would have to adjust the business model to ensure a social impact was being made. Some ways to do this would include the following:
• Creating opportunities for employment for marginalized individuals or people who would otherwise not have employment.
• Having a pricing model so that customers paying a market price were subsidizing the clients who could not afford it.
• Focusing on the way that the product is manufactured or the service is delivered, by it being fair trade or decreasing the ecological impact that the product or service has on the environment.
• The organization is a nonprofit and the sale of a product or service is simply a fundraiser to support the other part of the organization.
Raw Carrot
Raw Carrot is a manufacturer of healthy soups that hires marginalized individuals in a rural community who would otherwise not be provided with skills training or a living wage. The ingredients for the soups are sourced locally and in partnership with the farmers in the region. The soups are sold through community groups, at fairs, and even through healthcare systems as they are organic and healthy.
Furniture Bank
Furniture Bank is an organization that picks up used furniture for a fee and then makes this used furniture available to people who cannot afford to furnish their homes after paying for their food and shelter. The clients are able to come to a large warehouse and select furniture at no cost, unless they require delivery. Furniture Bank is financially sustainable through the income from the deliveries and is able to provide a significant social impact acting as a furniture brokerage.
These examples are not exhaustive and social enterprises are continuing to experiment as to how social outcomes can be achieved creatively.
The key to creating a product or service as a social enterprise is to clearly understand how your offering is different from other nonprofits and social enterprises, but for-profit entities cannot be overlooked. In fact, it is a good idea to do a positioning chart to compare quality and price to the competition.
2.3 Programs
Programs are a creative way to connect to for-profit organizations’ existing operations, while providing a social impact elsewhere.
Mealshare
Mealshare is a program where restaurants can identify a menu item that will provide a complimentary meal to a person in need. The price of the menu item takes into account the social impact and Mealshare connects with the organizations that deliver the meal. Mealshare doesn’t directly perform a product or service, but instead has created a program that is financially sustainable and allows for the social impact to happen.
2.4 Memberships/subscriptions
Memberships and subscriptions are not the sole territory of social enterprises, but they are something that is used extensively due to the importance of engaging with people who care about a specific cause.
There are a few advantages to considering a membership or subscription model:
• By having a membership or subscription, people are able to actively indicate that they care and are contributing to this cause. This increases the chance that they would be willing to donate or volunteer for the cause.
• By being connected, you are able to regularly communicate with this audience through emails, mailouts, or during face-to-face activities. This helps to keep the cause and your organization top of mind.
The key is to build the community and to be able to provide consistent value to grow the membership and ensure that there is retention. The most common model for this is a Chamber of Commerce or an association, but new memberships and subscriptions continue to pop up.
Resource Church
A faith community had grown to a size where they had multiple ministers and were gathering a tremendous number of resources for services on Sunday mornings. They realized that some faith communities were not able to afford a full-time minister, yet wanted access to quality services. They made their resources available and provided monthly coaching on how to implement them on a monthly subscription.
2.5 Events
Events are utilized by for-profits often for brand awareness marketing, whereas nonprofits and social enterprises are able to use them for marketing, revenue generation, and volunteer recruitment.
Open Mic Showcase
A social enterprise was providing youth with skills training and providing a space to do Open Mic once a month. In order to support the programming that was involved, it asked the youth if they’d be interested in doing an Open Mic Showcase for the community. The youth were immediately excited about the opportunity to learn how to run an event, and a local event company volunteered its time to help with the process. Tickets were sold to the Showcase which would allow for the program to run throughout the rest of the year.
3. Price: Social Enterprise Revenue Generation Sources
What we already know about price:
• The price is what will be charged for the offering. There are pricing strategies that can come into play to maximize profit or to maximize the volume or market share that an organization has.
• Unlike a for-profit, a social enterprise also is responsible for creating as large of a social impact as possible. In fact, this takes priority over the financial returns.
• A social enterprise can partner with a corporation through a corporate social responsibility initiative or with a foundation/donor base to make an offering affordable.
Social enterprises are becoming more and more commonplace. That also means that we have more and more social innovators coming up with creative ways to generate revenue.
The old ideals of being 100 percent grant funded, or self-sufficient through donations, is gone. With government funding constantly being cut, disposable income declining, and the cost of doing business rising, social enterprises and nonprofits have to be more competitive and revenue seeking than ever before.
What are some pricing ideas? How can a nonprofit organization or social enterprise start to achieve revenue from multiple sources?
3.1 Fee for service (or product)
This is one of the simplest and best understood ways to generate revenue. It is providing a product or service to your customers that they are willing to pay for, or for which someone is willing to subsidize the fees or sponsor the service.
The fee for service model appears easy, but for many social enterprises and nonprofit organizations this can be a challenge as —
• the customers may be willing to pay, but unable to pay;
• the amount that the customers are able to pay does not pay for the cost of delivering the product or service; or
• it could be that beginning to charge for something that was historically free is difficult (for both the customers and also the staff of the organization).
Ideally if you are able to provide something for a price, and if that price is more than how much it costs to deliver, it is a sustainable revenue model.
Foodshare
The overall Foodshare model is to provide quality, local food, at a fair or low price to people. It bundles up food from farmers around urban areas, creates a bag of food that is at a fair or low price, and delivers to a pickup center to save on the distribution costs. Families pick up their bags of fruit and vegetables once a week and pay a fee for this service. This service can be operated on a subscription basis so no inventory is required as purchases match sales.
3.2 Cooperative/membership
One of the oldest forms of social enterprise is a cooperative model: either a for-profit or nonprofit organization owned by its members. Great examples include a farmers’ cooperative, but even Costco acts as a cooperative with membership fees being a significant portion of their income. All Chambers of Commerce, associations, and Boards of Trade leverage membership fees to generate income.
The main challenge here is to ensure that your members get value out of being a member of your organization. With a farmers’ cooperative, it should sell more produce or be able to get food at a lower price. For a Chamber of Commerce, it should have more business or learn something.
NewScoop YYZ
NewScoop YYZ is a cooperative that has been designed to bring together likeminded people to gather social justice stories and promote the sector, while providing content to the entire collective. It charges a membership fee and offers regular access to its content. It formed as a cooperative as it is all about everyone being together and caring about the same things.
3.3 Cross-compensation (partially/fully subsidized models)
This is where the profits from one target market allow the organization to subsidize another target market to make it possible to serve them. Having two target markets is something that most organizations handle, but it can often be more challenging as the two target markets are potentially even more diverse including a different location, different needs, and different expectations.
You will need to ask yourself:
• Do both target markets need the same thing?
• Do the same things matter to them?
• Will different expectations be outlined?
• Will communication and marketing be different?
• Are there other ways your organization will need to adapt to having two distinct target markets?
Lytton Park Summer Camps
Lytton Park Summer Camps provides sports training and activities for children from 5 to 14 years of age. Often the facilities are located in affluent neighborhoods where tennis courts, soccer fields, and other amenities are widely available. Many of the facilities are at private schools. One target market is the affluent families in these neighborhoods and the children who go to the private schools for summer support. However, from the start it was recognized that many families in the neighborhood could not afford the camps and often had two working parents. The founders decided to provide space for these children and subsidize their spots.
3.4 Skills development
Skills development social enterprises act exactly like any other organization in its chosen industry, except that it specifically hires marginalized individuals who are having a difficult time getting jobs skills.
Examples of organizations that do this are in all sectors from restaurants, to manufacturing, to transportation and logistics, to services.
Gozie’s Bread
Gozie’s Bread is a bakery that hires ex-convicts and helps them get food preparation experience and certification for future employment opportunities. The location is away from the neighborhood where they would have previously been in trouble, and the training is both therapeutic and helpful in getting future employment.
3.5 Market intermediary/broker
A market intermediary/broker is where the social enterprise allows access to a new market through additional marketing, administration, distribution networks, or relationships.
3.6 Marketing
If an organization goes out of its way to market a product or service, it reduces the overhead and overall costs for the providing organization. These marketing expenses can allow for volume discounts for the marketing organization and a huge benefit for the organizations to which this is marketed. Buying groups are an example of this.
Buying United
The United Church realized, with thousands of churches buying similar products and services, that there was an advantage of having a single organization that negotiated pricing, performed due diligence, and then promoted these offerings in the language of the churches. It was quickly able to provide discounts on printing, supplies, and technology, and allow the church budgets to go further.
3.7 Administration
Performing the administration for another organization is common in the for-profit world with bookkeepers, accountants, consultants, virtual assistants, and other professional services being widely available. Doing this on a social enterprise basis is also possible and is beneficial when considering the governance and administrative differences of nonprofits and social enterprises.
Tides
Tides is an organization that provides a shared platform. This means that organizations don’t have to register their own organizations, but can use the legal envelope of Tides until it has proven that it is something that is a going concern or is financially sustainable. The additional services include administration, management support, insurance, bookkeeping, and many others. Tides asks for a fixed percentage of the total revenue of the organizations in order to perform this role.
3.8 Distribution networks
Distribution is a huge cost for any organization needing to get its offering to its customers. If an organization is able to have access or streamline this, a huge value is provided. This could include a fulfillment center where the organization manages the products for multiple nonprofits or social enterprises or it could facilitate logistics shipments through a warehouse or direct to the customers (drop shipping).
Techsoup
Techsoup advocates for donated or substantially discounted software products from some of the largest software providers. These donated software products are then provided to nonprofit organizations that are considered eligible by the software providers. Techsoup charges an administrative fee to nonprofit organizations to account for it managing this process. This allows for a significant impact to the nonprofits while allowing Techsoup to grow and remain financially sustainable.
3.9 Relationships
Tapping into existing networks and relationships doesn’t seem like a natural way to build a social enterprise, but relationships are the most valuable thing to have. Connecting people who need something to people who have something is critical. Social enterprises continue to look for ways to tap into this.
MAS Consulting
MAS Consulting offers pro bono consulting services to nonprofit organizations that need executive coaching, technology consulting, HR consulting, or a wide variety of other services. It actively seeks retired consultants that wish to give to the sector and then promote their services with nonprofit organizations. Although there is no fixed fee and the services are technically pro bono, organizations are asked to donate something to the administration of the organization in order to continue this work.>
3.10 Sponsorship or corporate social responsibility
Are there opportunities to work with organizations or a volunteer base that provides value to your organization by being involved with your social enterprise or nonprofit organization? For example:
• Is there a team-building opportunity to volunteer time?
• Is donating to your cause something that the other organization could speak about in their marketing to customers?
• Is donating to your cause something that they could speak to their employees about?
• Is there another benefit that you could provide to them?
KPMG Consulting
KPMG, a consulting organization, volunteers its staff time to help nonprofits in their consulting or financial projects. This allows the consulting firm to give back, but also motivates the employees as they are part of making a positive difference.
3.11 Blended models
Finally, there are the blended models. For example, you don’t have to only do sponsorships or sell products. You could find a sponsor to subsidize some of the products that you sell.
With grants, donations, and various revenue streams available, most social enterprises no longer rely on simply one source of income in order to remain viable. In fact, most will incorporate as many income streams as possible.
Depending on the sector and geographical location, there will be a tendency towards one source of income or another.
For example, in the United States, the healthcare system is private with nonprofit healthcare facilities applying for grants, seeking donations, but also charging fees for service. In Canada, the majority of the healthcare facilities receive a large percentage of their income from government grants, but they still actively apply for grants, seek donations, and charge for additional services including private rooms.
Another example is the difference between a farmers’ market that is primarily a fee-for-service organization with some grant money, and an arts center which is run with a larger percentage of grants, donations, and sales.
Relying on only one source of income exposes an organization to risk. Nowadays and moving forward, diversified income streams for social enterprises are and will be the norm.
4. Place: Social Enterprise Distribution Models
What we already know about distribution models and social enterprise:
• Place is where people can get whatever you are offering. This is the distribution network and supply chain that is associated with making the offering available.
• For-profits have been established, often, with existing scale and infrastructure for their supply chains and distribution models. Social enterprises are relatively new, exploring how to scale and if this is even viable, and are building their infrastructure which creates limitations on existing distribution capabilities.
• Social enterprises often serve geographic areas that are not financially attractive to for-profits, indicating that the infrastructure to serve those areas is likely at a higher cost with lower financial return.
• Social enterprises need to work together to build supply chains that allow them to scale. They need to work together when they jointly serve an area that is underserved or less accessible.
• Distribution is all about supply chains. A supply chain is all of the steps to deliver a product or service to a customer from sourcing from suppliers to getting it to the customers at the right time and right place. Social enterprises need to be building new supply chains, collaborative distribution models, and to explore new ways of delivery. Supply chain and distribution are some of the largest barriers to the growth of the social enterprise sector.
• Distribution can include different ways to get it to the customer including:
• Traditional retail or consignment
• Fulfillment center
• Drop shipping
• Online stores
• Commission or referral fees
There is a large movement to consider social procurement, the process of purchasing from socially responsible organizations. This is especially prevalent amongst governments and large nonprofit organizations. Although the demand is there for social procurement, there are few social enterprises that have the scale and capability to deliver on some of these large procurement contracts that are being made available.
Distribution networks are one of the critical factors to helping the supply side grow.
4.1 Direct to client
Social enterprises often sell directly to clients. That is where the social enterprise is the direct or main point of contact interacting with the end client of the offering.
This makes a lot of sense for social enterprises, as they have created their offering in order to make a social or ecological impact. Why wouldn’t they want to see their impact firsthand?
There are some major advantages of being direct to client for a social enterprise:
• The direct knowledge the impact occurred.
• The immediate feedback from the end client.
• The ability to better tell the story for donations and volunteers based on the direct impact.
Bereavement Centre
A church in a suburb of Montreal gathered together partners in palliative care and a funeral home in order to support the people in the neighborhood going through the grieving process. This type of work is extremely emotional and takes a personal approach. Being direct with the clients allows it to make a huge impact and be as supportive as possible.
4.2 Resellers/channel partners
Resellers and channel partners are organizations that make your offering available to their clients. They are a way to reach a larger client base and take advantage of their local presence.
Some advantages of having resellers/channel partners include:
• The organization is present over a much larger geographic area.
• The organization is able to reach and help a larger number of people.
• The organization is able to keep its infrastructure and fixed costs lower which helps with financial sustainability and resilience.
4.3 Overseas partnerships
Although there are a lot of social causes that need addressing in North America, there are even more overseas in developing countries where the standard of living, on average, is dramatically lower. There are a larger number of people living in poverty as there is a huge income gap and there are other challenges including human rights and war ravaged areas.
There are many organizations that wish to make a difference overseas, but realize that it doesn’t make sense for them to have operations internationally as they don’t know the language, culture, or have the connections to make it successful. In these cases, it makes sense to partner with organizations that are already established in these countries and simply need support in order to make a bigger impact.
Red Cross
Red Cross has partnership organizations in every single country in the world. It needs to as it is designed to react to any large scale emergency from a natural disaster to a terrorist attack. It doesn’t make logistical sense for Red Cross to have an office in each country, but it does make sense to build relationships in each country to mobilize existing infrastructure when needed.
4.4 Online store/direct access using technology
Technology continues to change the world in unexpected and new ways. In supply chain and distribution networks, it allows organizations to connect with their end clients more easily without a physical presence.
Technology also allows for things to be delivered in new ways including some of these examples:
• People can access a nurse via a 1-800 number to determine if they need to go to a doctor or hospital.
• People can purchase handcrafted items from Africa to support people in those communities.
• People can access support for mental illness or abuse via helplines.
As technology continues to advance and is more accessible to people, the ways in which social enterprise can tap into these opportunities will help to scale the support available.
5. Promotion of a Social Enterprise
What we already know about promotion and social enterprise:
• Promotion is the way in which people will find out about the enterprise and be interested in it.
• Promotion is what people typically assume is marketing, but the entire strategy needs to work together.
• Promotion is only part of marketing.
• Social enterprises have more people to communicate with and engage.
• Social enterprises can partner together to reach their mutual audiences. As there are so many audiences to reach, this allows them to pool their marketing resources.
• Promotion is what happens now that we have our offering, have our pricing, and understand how our offering will get to the customer (the distribution or place). Once all of that is figured out, we need to get awareness of what we are doing out there. This can include the following methods:
• Advertising
• Public relations
• Sales team and channel partner sales
• Promotions of various types
• Marketing, whether direct, online, or guerilla
The remainder of this chapter will be dedicated to digging deeper into these topics.
5.1 Advertising
Advertising is the type of promotion that is most readily apparent to society. When people think of how to get awareness for a product or service, they almost immediately think of mainstream media that they are regularly exposed to including television, radio, newspaper, transit, magazines, online advertising, signage, and the like.
Each type of advertising is designed for different purposes, and social enterprises should be careful in selecting which ones are the best for them. In general it is good to think about the reach of each medium, the target audience the medium will reach, and the response rate based on the information shared and duration of the message.
5.1a Television
Television is one of the widest reaching mediums. There are also local stations and online television options. Television is typically one of the most expensive options due to its reach, but for social enterprises this is not often necessary unless the offering is something that could be taken advantage of on the same scale.
World Vision
World Vision is one of the most commonly remembered nonprofits that leverages television advertising. It has been doing television advertising for decades showing families and children that it supports in developing countries. This medium makes sense for World Vision as people can donate across the country online or by calling. It has set up its organization to use this method of generating awareness.
5.1b Radio
Radio is surprisingly effective and is great for a local market. Unfortunately the audience is dropping as more people prefer to use their own music rather than have to listen to advertising or repetitive music. The cost remains low, although during peak listening hours, there can be premiums. Most radio stations have a lot of information about their listening demographics to help with deciding where the best value might be. If you partner with one of their contests or promotions, you can get even more bang for your buck.
5.1c Newspapers
Newspapers continue to be a popular way to get the latest news with both physical newspapers and online news. However, print advertising rates are decreasing as there is competition with online advertising which also provides live news feeds. This is an increasingly cost effective way to reach a local market.
Canadian Cancer Society
A unique way to leverage advertising is to proactively thank your sponsors and donors. The Canadian Cancer Society and other nonprofits often thank their major sponsors and donors using full-page advertising to recognize those contributors. This is a way to generate awareness with prospective donors while recognizing the existing contributors at the same time.
5.1d Magazines
Magazines often have extremely niche readerships and have a long life as they are often passed on. Niche magazines allow the social enterprise to ensure that very specific types of people become aware.
United Church Foundation
The United Church Foundation advertises heavily in the UCObserver Magazine. It recognizes that more than 100,000 people read the monthly magazine and almost all of these people could be interested in a donation to the foundation that makes many of the interesting initiatives possible.
5.1e Billboards and transit advertising
Signage is an extremely local approach that can often generate an immediate response. This is a great medium for neighborhood-based social enterprises that only need people around them to know about them. For transit, this would target people who can’t drive or have decided not to drive including students who might have a car or license. Billboard advertising is often for people who are driving and typically commuting for work.
Colleges
Most urban transit lines have advertising that is specifically geared to students or people who might want to upgrade their résumé with a college degree or diploma.
5.1f Online advertising
Online advertising is taking an increasing amount of most organizations’ marketing budgets as this advertising proves more and more effective. Initially there were banner ads, e-newsletter ads, and some basic placement advertising online. But with big data and an increasing amount of information about online consumer behavior, online advertising is becoming more complex and strategic. Here are some of the basic forms:
• Pay-per-click ads are where you only pay for the advertising once a consumer clicks on the ad that is either on a search engine or within a website. As this advertising is based on interest levels (the consumer has clicked on the ad) it can vary from a few pennies to a few dollars at a time. It is important that the landing pages that these links go to are compelling and have the information that has been indicated in the advertisement to take advantage of this.
• Pop-ups are when the advertisement is in a new window that covers the webpage that the consumer is currently viewing. In order to close the advertisement the consumer must physically click on the ad.
• Placement (specific spots for ads) is still in existence on many websites and e-newsletters, specifically when they are industry related or niche. Most search engines use pay-per-click or cost-per-action.
• Social media advertising is when the advertisement is embedded in a social media tool that the consumer regularly uses such as Facebook or LinkedIn. This can be placement ads or pay-per-click, but is unique in that the social media accounts are able to track usage and other behaviors in order to better customize the advertisements.
In general, what you need to think about when considering your advertising program:
• Is your target client or stakeholder likely to see this medium of advertising?
• How many times would he or she have to see it to make a difference?
• Can you afford this?
• How many people who aren’t your target are you paying to get in front of?
• Will you have a larger benefit to your social enterprise than the cost of doing this form of advertising?
• Is there a better way to get this same result?
Use the online resources on the download kit to answer these questions and create your advertising program.
5.2 Public relations
Public relations is one of the most underrated ways to generate awareness about your organization. Public relations is when the existing news media talks about your organization, as it is newsworthy. Typically the most effective message is the story, in either print, video, or audio. This could be you being talked about in newspaper or magazine articles, or you as a guest speaker on the radio, or you being interviewed on television.
There are a few great reasons to use this rather than advertising:
• It is more credible. People are much more likely to believe the claims of an organization if it is in the news rather than in an advertisement.
• It is free. Other than the time and work to put together a media release and work with the press, there is no other cost.
The main challenges include:
• It isn’t guaranteed. You might do a lot of upfront work trying to generate some press and no media will be interested in your story.
• You lose control of the message. Part of being interviewed by any medium is that they need to put their own slant on it. Often this means digging into the story deeper, telling multiple angles about the story, and that the organization that generates the interest in the story is not able to review it prior to it being live or printed. Sometimes it is just a small part of the interview that is in the medium which could distort the organization’s intended message.
With the advantages and disadvantages of public relations in mind, the following are different approaches to generate the media’s interest.
5.2a Events
Events are a great reason to reach out to the press. You might have a celebrity present or it might be something that the press wants to tell people about in advance. Visuals are usually appealing and there are multiple people for them to interview. Videos with a celebrity and a client are the most impactful.
The main challenge is that events have a finite opportunity of time to capture. If there is an emergency or better story during the same window, the event may not get the visibility you hoped for.
5.2b New information
Is there something new that is happening in your sector that is interesting that you are involved in? The media could look at this as a chance to educate the population, and let them know about something that might not normally be on the radar, or to highlight this change in case it will affect a large portion of the population. This could be a success story or the outcome that has been achieved by the organization.
The main challenge is to still showcase your organization while the media will be more interested in the new information.
5.2c Leveraging a trend
Is there a topic that is already in the news that your organization is doing something about, could get involved in somehow, or has a different viewpoint on? If the media is already featuring a type of story, this is your chance to leverage this. Become known as an expert for the media to reach out to.
The main challenge here is ensuring that the viewpoint that you are taking is in fact different. If there is a lot of news about a particular topic, it is a narrow window before the media stops covering that story.
5.2d Network and build relationships
When all else fails, focus on building your relationships with the media. Understand what types of news they are looking for, understand their scheduling and when stories might be needed, and finally, be patient as building these relationships takes time.
Center for Social Innovation
The Center for Social Innovation is both a coworking space as well as a network of social entrepreneurs based in New York City and Toronto. As the buzzword “social innovation” continues to grow in usage, the Center for Social Innovation showcases its new members who had great ideas and it continues to feed information about the social sector to the media. By doing this over time it has become the go-to resource for the media for social innovation or social enterprise quotations and ideas.
5.3 Sales team and channel partner sales
You don’t have to do all of the marketing and awareness yourself. Having a sales team (internal or contracted) and channel partners to help scale up your efforts can be tremendously helpful. In fact, the larger the scale or the fundraising effort, the more important sales becomes in your overall marketing efforts.
For example, if you are fundraising for big gifts, such as more than $10,000, it would make sense to have a personal sales effort that campaigns for those larger donations.
The same applies that personal sales are critical when the sale is more than $2,000 as there is increased risk to the customer or client with the higher price tag. They will have more questions that are specific to their needs and benefits and will need them answered by an individual.
5.3a Sales team
A sales team is personnel who work for your organization or are directly contracted by your organization (as in a sales agency). This gives you more control over the sales force and visibility, but it also increases your overhead as you most likely would have both salaries and commission to pay.
The other alternative is to have volunteers as your salespeople. This is often leveraged in fundraising campaigns. Volunteers also have good contacts as sales leads through their friends, family, and extended networks.
5.3b Channel partner sales
A channel partner is another organization outside of your organization that does the sales or fundraising for you. As they don’t work in your organization you don’t have the additional overhead, however, you will have to share in your profit as a sales commission or a percentage of the margin is retained by the channel partner for generating the sale.
You don’t have as much control over what they communicate and where they spend their time when speaking with customers, which often means that you have to create specific promotions for sales persons to incent them to focus on your organization.
5.4 Promotions of various types
Promotions are any incentive for either salespeople or the end consumers in order to entice activity sooner rather than at a later date.
5.4a Customer promotions
Most customer promotions either add more value to the offering or offer a pricing incentive. Here are some examples:
• Coupons
• Price discounts
• Bundling
• Promotional products
• Trials
5.4b Fundraising promotions
Unlike product- or service-related promotions, fundraising promotions are focused on the customer donating today or a specific amount. Here are some examples:
• Recognition
• Matching funds
• Matching funds after a minimum
• Promotional products
United Way Corporate Matching
United Way works closely with corporations to raise funds during corporation fundraising events for the month of October. Part of the campaign is to ask employees to donate monthly from their paychecks to United Way. The other is to negotiate with the corporations that they will match employee donations if the annual donation is more than $1,000. This incents the employees to hit the minimum matching donation threshold if they are close to it, and allows the corporation to report and discuss the positive social impact they are making.
5.4c Sales promotions
A sales promotion is any incentive that is created for a client to purchase or for a sales person to sell. The most recognizable sales promotions are a sale price, rebates, coupons, or contest for clients to buy. However, sales promotions are often designed for either the sales team or the channel partners to focus on specific messaging that the organization is interested in prioritizing. Here are some examples:
• Trips or other prizing for the best salespeople.
• Additional commissions for selling a specific product or service.
• Recognition of the best salespeople through awards or prizes.
• Certification or thank-you letter to the channel partners.
• Referral discounts to the channel partners.
The important thing to learn in promotions is that they are designed to incent stakeholders that represent your organization and have an impact on your success.
5.5 Other Marketing Strategies
5.5a Direct marketing
Direct marketing is about ensuring that your message is literally delivered to the audience you want to see it. This can be done through:
• Fliers/efliers
• Direct mail
• Newsletters
• Door-to-door sales
• Thank-you letters
All of this can also be referred to as junk mail or spam. It is direct and yet it is often considered ineffective as so many direct messages are discarded by the intended audience.
However, “success” comes when there is a positive benefit for your efforts. In the case of direct marketing, although only a small percentage of direct marketing material is actually viewed, if 2 percent of the audience actually does the action that was intended it might be a success.
In fact, many times it is the direct marketing efforts that convert the sale. Increasingly this is due to email because of the low cost of doing this. But don’t underestimate the power of getting something physical in the mail!
Heart Foundation
Annually, the Heart Foundation sends thank-you letters to all of its donors from the year with an added ask for additional pledge money. This is a tangible thanks, and it is packaged with asking for additional funds. The donors recognize the Heart Foundation, appreciate the recognition, and then a percentage decide to give even more.
5.5b Online marketing
If you aren’t doing online marketing, you are missing out! It is now close to a mandatory part of any business and marketing plan. And it can give your organization a huge boost.
Being found by your audience is the most important thing. But there is so much online, how do you become higher ranked so that people can find you more easily on search engines?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become the art around how to do this. Search engines, such as Google, Bing, YouTube, and Yahoo!, create their own formulas to decipher if a website or webpage is the best on a specific topic. Often it is a combination of using the right words, having a lot of content, and visuals. This formula changes frequently and varies for different search engines, but the end concept is that the search engines want to make sure that the best content for a search is found by their users.
For-profit organizations can spend a lot of time and money ensuring that they are at the top. They might even do this by paying for advertising. Nonprofits and social enterprises also need to be aware of this, as they can now have people be aware of them internationally and the opportunity to have even more of a reach.
The key thing to consider is giving the search engines what they are looking for: Good content for their users. Consider the following:
• Content to read: Do you have a lot of content? The number changes but you usually want more than 300 words per page as a minimum and that number seems to be increasing.
• Content to see: Are there visuals and are they related to the content?
• Content to watch: Do you have videos, especially stories by end users describing a benefit?
• More content to find: Are you referring the readers to more links that are related to the same content, that are good?
• Quality content: Are people commenting or sharing this on social media as they think others will benefit from it? Are people linking to your content?
• New content: How often is the content on your site changing or being updated?
In general, trying to provide quality content is the best way to move yourself and your organization up the ranks.
Social media is another great way to generate massive awareness online, and an active way to get people to know about you and your social impact.
The main social media platforms are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They have discovered how to integrate with other platforms. They’ve made it easy to update them, they have communities, and they are extremely visual in their medium.
Social media also supports your search engine optimization through commenting and linking back to your web pages, which all helps you get found.
Videos are another way that people communicate online, and this is often the case for millennials. In fact, the second largest search engine in the world is YouTube, a video-hosting platform.
Videos have a way of being able to visualize and vocalize the message that you are trying to get across. This allows for them to go viral, as everyone wants to watch it as it can evoke an emotion. That is why for organizations that make a social impact, videos are a great way to tell clients’ stories of how you have impacted them and get the word out about your offerings.
ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
In 2015, a phenomenon rolled across the world: The Ice Bucket Challenge launched by ALS. Famous people were challenged to dump an ice bucket over their heads, film it, post it online, and then challenge more of their friends to follow.
Within a few weeks almost the entire world’s population had heard about the challenge and many had done it. The idea was that each person would donate money to ALS at the same time or, in some cases, to prevent themselves from having to do the challenge.
Not only did ALS raise a lot of money from this campaign, but the awareness surrounding the campaign and the cause increased dramatically.
5.5c Guerilla marketing
People are inundated with information. They are communicated with at almost every single part of the day. How do you break through the clutter?
Guerilla marketing is the unorthodox way of breaking through the clutter. It is doing things to generate awareness using brand new methods. Some examples of this include:
• Spontaneous dance parties or flash mobs
• Creating a fake advertisement or messaging
• April Fool’s Day jokes
• Any other tactic that is used as a “fun”draiser
Of course, it is impossible to list all of the types of guerilla marketing as the definition of guerilla marketing is unorthodox ways. So there will continue to be guerilla marketing tactics invented.
Events can be unique and have a lot of opportunity to do inspiring things to make an impact. Most events leverage some type of guerilla marketing to get a point across:
• Activities for the event attendees to participate in physically (photo booths, games)
• Lotteries, giveaways, or funny contests
• A surprise speaker or performer or some other surprise
• Any other way that an event attempts to be unique and stick out
NFL Breast Cancer Support
Sporting events are already in place and spend a tremendous amount of money to help entertain the attendees. One creative way that a breast cancer organization generated massive awareness was to partner with the NFL and make one week during October Breast Cancer week. Each team was encouraged to add some pink coloring to their outfits from socks to armbands to face paint. The fields and signage also showed the ribbon. Tapping into an existing event and leveraging it as a third party benefited both parties despite it at first appearing unrelated.
Celebrities are always a good approach to gain attention. You are more likely to have people attend events, get good press, and have general interest when a celebrity is onboard.
Often, celebrities also believe that it is part of their responsibility to take on this role and use their popularity to make a social impact. Large companies also leverage celebrity sponsorships, so this could be a way to connect with large organizations as well. Celebrities and sports stars are committed to sponsors to make a number of appearances during the contract. Ask!
The challenge is in reaching them and then ensuring that they are a good fit with your cause. You definitely don’t want to have a celebrity endorsement from someone who is either not a good fit or someone who doesn’t understand your work.
Grammy Awards Support
Each year the Grammys support a different cause in order to make a social impact. Often any sort of prizing that is given out financially is also to a charity. This national awareness as well as being supported by so many celebrities often propels these charities forward.
Also, word of mouth: Get people talking about it! Anything that you can do that starts people talking about you, especially on social media, is a good thing.
Doing things differently to get people’s attention is important. The second part is thinking about how to get that awareness and turn it into something more. What is that second stage? What else do you have to do to get there?
Kaepernick
In 2016, the famous NFL quarterback, Kaepernick, protested on behalf of Black Lives Matter by remaining seated during the American national anthem.
The following week there was an outrage. People talked about his stance and whether or not it was effective or appropriate. In the end, it was determined that if the end result is getting people to talk about it, then it certainly was successful.
See the download kit included with this book for a template of an advertising plan to get you started on these aspects of your initiative.