Week 13: Marketing and Promotion in NGOs

Transcription

1 Week 13: Marketing and Promotion in NGOs Marketing is essential and integral to NGOs. We have to assume that every interaction with a client, patron, donor, funder, community member, or politician-even those that you are totally unaware of, have an impact on some part of your organization: a decision to come to you for services, a decision to refer someone else to you, a decision to donate, or a decision to fund. And, it is also important that everyone understand that their role in the entire enterprise is essential, and part of your team marketing effort. I. Marketing Basics Although NGOs are not in sales, we need to attend to our markets and find out what clients want, and give it to them within the limits of your resources. Define and redefine the market What does the market want? Shape and reshape product or service Evaluate Promote the product or service Set a sensible price Fig. 1 The basic marketing flowchart which can be applied in NGOs. (Brinckerhoff, 2000) From Brinckerhoff s marketing flowchart, we can see the entire process starts not with developing a product or service and then trying to sell it, but instead with choosing the target markets. Then, we will discuss what we can do for the programs in the NGOs. 1

2 II. The process of marketing and promotion of programs 1. Identify target market The NGOs are the industry which best customer is the group or groups that send you the most money (Brinckerhoff, 2000). The staff and board need to start thinking of the largest funders as our best customers, and then start treating them that way. We need our service markets to be happy and satisfied, otherwise we are not doing good, high-quality mission (Baier, 2002). We are also competing for each and every one of these markets. 2. Assess the market wants Wants is not needs. Professionals tell people what they need. People buy what they want. With this background, we need to establish ways to find out what all of these markets we've identified want (Weinreich, n.d.). There are two ways to do this. The first way is survey. Surveys need to be focused around a central theme. And, the survey needs to ask the right questions, which will generate the information you need. Because there is a great deal of difference in the responses we will get depending on how we ask the question. Furthermore, the survey needs to be short enough to have people fill them in. To make the whole exercise worth it, we have to survey enough people to have a representative sample. Surveys are excellent information gathering tools, but don't do just one. Do them regularly, and compare and analyze the data we receive, and then we can develop our NGO sustainable. The second way is focus groups. Focus groups do not generate the kind of objective data that surveys do, the subjective information gathered on feelings, 2

3 reactions, impressions, and opinions is invaluable. The great benefit of a focus group is that a talented facilitator can follow up on ideas and answers generated by the group, investigating leads that we could never expand on a formal survey. We also need to hold separate groups for separate issues, even though it is more time consuming and costly. 3. Develop and redeveloping the product or service After we know who our markets are and what our markets want, we can modify our service array or develop a new service. But we need to try to match our services to our markets and their wants as closely as possible. Often, a program that is wildly successful in one community catches the eye of a funder who wants to have it replicated elsewhere. The success was a result of a confluence of events in that initial community a key staff person or volunteer, a community event that precipitated demand for the program and not because of the fundamental attractiveness of the program itself. In marketing terms, if people didn't want it to happen enough to work for it, and the organization will take funds to try to replicate a program before there is a demand for the program. We must also make sure that we have listened, and that all of the staff is on board and prepared for the changes the market wants. 4. Price the service Pricing is both an art and a science. Price development is fluid, not static. It exists in a world where there are many dynamics occurring. Knowing what your costs are and which programs are making money, which are losing money, 3

4 and which are breaking even is a key component of any plan for financial empowerment. Pricing is comprised of four components: First id fixed cost. Technically, they are the costs that are fixed whether "sales" rise or fall. The center of charging a fixed cost component is the issue of how quickly we want to recover these costs: over how many sales. But if we add too low a charge for the fixed-cost component, and don't sell enough, we lose money on our fixed costs. The second is variable costs. These are the costs that vary as the sales vary. For example, in the school, they would be the costs directly associated with each student: food, supplies, linens, and differing energy costs (for a residential school). As the enrollment increases, these costs increase. The third is profit. In NGOs, the profit you make will help you pay off debt and put money aside. We need a profit, and the component of price attributable to the profit will depend on how quickly you want to recover your initial investment and how much the market will bear. The last component is competition and market conditions. The competition has much to do with what your price is. Don't fall into the trap of assuming that you can just under price everyone and that will make people come to your organization. If you just keep cutting prices, and have prices less than your costs, you will soon be out of business unless you have very deep pockets and can outlast your competition. 5. Promote the service There are dozens of ways to promote our services: word of mouth, referrals, advertising personal contact, and presentations to community. How 4

5 you promote your service will depend on your budget, your service, and the people you are trying to inform that you are there. Promotion must never sell the program. Rather, it must attempt to solve the customer's problem. Remember the number 1 rule of sales: Don't sell the product-solve the customer's problem. We need to let the potential users of our service, the potential funders, staff, and board (in other words, all of our many markets) knows what benefit they will gain from using our services or donating us money. Don't just tell them, who you are, or what you do; make the connection between what we do and how it will help them. The other major flaw in most NGOs' promotion comes from falling into the "census trap". Organizations that wrongly assume that their market is the entire population often also assume that the entire population needs to know about their organization and waste a great deal of time and money trying to achieve that goal. 6. Provide the service Once we have developed the service, we need to provide it. Here we have lots of choices, and are probably doing an excellent job in being flexible. The key parameters of service provision to meet a market wants are who, what, when, where, and why. Who. We cannot just have someone who is knowledgeable in the service area, we need someone who can connect with the service recipient. What. We need to establish what service is provided 5

6 Where. Our clientele need easy access to the extent possible. Is the place you provide service convenient? Is there adequate parking, sufficient security? When. The flexible when is a key component of market sensitivity in today. Be convenient and you will increase both market share and market satisfaction. Why. Why is this particular service being provided? To educate, to prevent, to entertain, to cure. to soothe, to enlighten? The wiry becomes a key component of the provision mix, and should always be close at hand. 7. Evaluate the marketing effort As mentioned earlier, we need to know how we are doing. Getting baseline information is a good start, but steady and consistent asking is essential (Weinreich, n.d.). Are our staffs happier than they were last year? Are we getting better quorums than we were two years ago? Is attendance or occupancy up or down? Are more people responding to advertising or to referrals? We need to ask, regularly and consistently. Also, be cognizant of the fact that the wants and needs of the markets are constantly changing. Thus, we may need to change with them. The only way to accurately assess the changes is by asking and tracking the answers over time. Reference Baier, A. (2002). Sustainability marketing? An NGO perspective. Oikos Virtual Campus, Brinckerhoff, P. C. (2000). Developing a bias for marketing. In Mission-based 6

7 management (pp.152). N.Y.: John Wiley & Sons, INC. Weinreich, N. K. (n.d.). Building social marketing into your program. available: [2002]. 7