Alliance Conference Part III Marketing

From Various Marketing Sessions at the Alliance for Nonprofit Management 2004 Annual Conference:

You need research! (from Debbie Mason, "The Marketing Plan.")
Marketing for nonprofits needs to be based on a knowledge of the market. This should include statisticly valid market research. If you can not afford statiscally valid research, understand that you are working with limited knowledge. While focus groups are a favorite tool for nonprofits, remember that you are only getting the opinions of the few people in the focus group and that the group is likely a biased sample (they were the ones that took the time to attend).

This may sound like basic marketing 101 but it is amazing how may nonprofits base their marketing and communications strategies on just the opinion of the executive director or the marketing committee of the board. This can be a waste of money but is partially explained by the drive to keep administrative costs down (see previous post) .

Great summary: (from Sally Patterson, Radiant Communications, " Constructing a Message Platform")
"It’s not about what we do, it’s about what we can do for you."

Listen: (from Compumentor's session on Blogs)
One great idea from the blogs session that doesn't rely on blogs is to make it easy for people to tell you what they think of you. Oceana even makes these comments (possitive and negative) public on their blogs.

sheldon