Top tips for charity marketing

With squeezed budgets and complicated stakeholder needs, I sometimes wonder: If marketing for a charity is 'to achieve organisational objectives and to bring the appropriate number of people from the agreed groups to engage and respond in a way that mutually satisfies both parties', it’s surprising how few know their own organisational objectives, an obvious starting point for effective marketing.

Fortunately, more know their own objectives and how these support the charity vision.

For today’s charities, innovation is important and effective, standout marketing. How to leverage digital touch points and to build long-term corporate partnerships with a solid shared strategic core, are also day-to-day worries.

Charity comms departments change names at a dizzying speed; from marcomms, supporter engagement to marketing, fundraising as stand-alone to a merged super unit around a common digital belief!  

65 years on and James 'marketing mix' Culliton will be turning in his grave. He described the combination of elements involved in making any marketing decision; more commonly called the 4 Ps of marketing (product, promotion, place and price). The Ps have stood the test of time and more recently three more P's have been added:  People, Physical evidence and Process. It’s worth revisiting some of our vast history of marketing to see how you fit in.

Charities deliver a staggering amount for very little resource but sometimes lack focus. Multi-million pound corporate campaigns tend to work to a much tighter bandwidth, such as changing sales by 5% with a specific audience segment.

NGOs tend to know their brands better than their audiences. Segmenting audiences is a critical part to improving supporter understanding, identifying the most receptive moments to engage with people and mapping out user journeys, would improve charities’ focus.

We're delighted that four of the ten most effective UK charities cited in the recent ‘Passionate About Collaboration’ report, which identified the UK’s most effective NGOs, are our clients, based on responses from over 100 NGO chief executives. Our approach chimes with the report’s main conclusions, which is to be more effective with your reach and impact.

We are lucky enough to have worked with some of the very best marketing teams in the charity world from Fairtrade to Buglife; this quality we believe comes from their love of the organisation and a belief in what they can do.

Read more from Giles in our Clubhouse.