Target Audience Assignment
Who are the target audiences of nonprofit’s? There are many of them. Nonprofit’s have the customers or constituents that they serve (i.e. disaster victims, people they are trying to educate, homeless animals). These individuals may also be considered “members” of a nonprofit. Nonprofits have the communities they operate in and the members of those groups, for-profit entities, other nonprofit’s and the general population. There are board members recruited and appointed to lead and guide nonprofit operations. There are vendors that supply nonprofit’s with technology, supplies, and marketing materials. There are the volunteers that run many of the nonprofit’s day-to-day activities. And there are the funding sources; individuals, corporations, government agencies and foundations that nonprofit’s seek revenue from. There may also be customers that buy goods from retail shops (think museum store) or online sales.
All of these target audiences require marketing activities, they need to be reached, they need to be informed, and they need to be moved to action. And all of the aforementioned activities are ongoing, similar to a for-profit looking to sustain ongoing customer relationships and obtain repeat business, nonprofits also need to sustain customer relationships and repeat business (did you renew your zoo, museum or humane society membership?)
As you learned in MRKT 310 or another Principles of Marketing course one of the first steps to better understanding and reaching multiple target audiences is to segment them. Technology is increasingly impacting the variables, detail and extent that we can now segment markets. Market segmentation used to be accomplished by simple demographic variables such as age, income, geographic location. Now software programs enable us to segment further, use multiple variables simultaneously and complete these tasks at a rate far more efficient than laborious research or the manual creation of a spreadsheet.
One of the leaders in providing software and associated services to nonprofits is a company called Blackbaud. As time and costs are always relevant to nonprofit marketing (there is normally a scarcity of both for many nonprofit’s) the advent and use of marketing software, although a capital expenditure on the front-end can be a long-term time and cost saver and provide results that enable the nonprofit to function in a more efficient capacity. An example of market segmentation is using what Blackbaud calls Target Analytics where a large collection of names with a known proclivity for giving is funneled down into targets meaningful to your organization. For example if you are a nonprofit devoted to the arts, the analytics will provide your organization with names interested in the arts, in your geographic locale. There mere fact that this data set collection exists is an amazing merger of technology and data.
One of the target audiences discussed previously that we may be less familiar with are nonprofit boards or board of directors. Responsible for overseeing the mission, strategic direction and finances of nonprofits, boards are one of the first target audiences a nonprofit has to seek, invite and establish as a functioning entity. A resource for understanding nonprofit boards is BoardSource this nonprofit organization (yes) exists to support other nonprofits by producing and sharing knowledge about best board practices. Once again a resource like this is important as it saves time, money and moves a nonprofit further along the learning curve, through established recruiting criteria, training, assessments and ongoing leadership development offerings. It is also an excellent way to connect with other nonprofits and share board experiences. Boards are made up of people, and personalities, opinions, and priorities are bound to differ. Learning how to handles these issues are part of the marketing that goes into recruiting and retaining board members.
Another nonprofit that is an excellent resource for marketing, governance and nonprofit career information is CASE and if we were to segment all nonprofits by education CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education) would be included in a group of organizations dedicated to improving the practices of educational institutions in improving alumni relations, raising funds (called development), marketing communications and promoting the education sector to the general public. The Journal of Nonprofit Marketing & Public Sector Marketing did a study of how the use of online or social media impacts the bottom line for nonprofits in a positive way. More important the study provides a measurable way for other nonprofit organizations (NPO’s) to assess their results. The use of the internet archive Wayback Machine allowed the researchers to view the sites of the studied NPO’s over the last five years. In an excerpt:
The combination of social, political, and economic changes causing
simultaneously decreasing funding and increasing demand
for services is driving nonprofit managers to engage in proactive
marketing in a for-profit model, including the use of online media.
The results of this study confirm the positive relationship
between higher market orientation via online media presence and
improved financial viability for the sampled group of NPOs. This
study provides a simple, actionable, and free measure that NPOs
can use to assess their current and planned online media.
I really like this article from GuideStar regarding Value Proposition in a couple of paragraphs a simple explanation is provided of this important concept. But I would like you to read on Johns Hopkins and Guidestar regarding the alliance of these two nonprofit's conducting a survey of value proposition in the nonprofit sector.
Now that we have discussed value proposition we will round out this discussion topic by asking, what is strategic marketing and how does it relate to nonprofit marketing? Here is an example of how strategic marketing and social media are impacting public service announcements, Getting Strategic With PSA's.
Relevant vocabulary:
Target audience – a group of people identified to receive a specific message or offer.
Reach – the estimated number of individuals that receive a targeted message or offer.
Market segmentation – dividing an overall market into target audience segments that share similar needs and characteristics.
Capital – financial expenditure for the acquisition of a physical property or program, ranging from a new database to a new construction project.
Social media – a form of interactive communication – current examples, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram, Flickr, Vine email, text, blogs, and Websites.
Value proposition – extending an offer and making it a more appealing choice than your competitors.
Strategic marketing – identification of one or more sustainable competitive advantages a nonprofit has in the market it serves and the allocation of resources expended to sustain those advantages.
Nonprofit marketing – communication and activities used by nonprofit's to extend a value proposition towards intended target audiences.
Public service announcement – a message carried free of charge by mass media channels to that is in the public interest.
Respond:
Using the nonprofit you have chosen I would like you to share with us three target markets of your chosen nonprofit and what medium (direct mail, email, Twitter, etc.) you would use to communicate with each market and what the value proposition might be for each of the three markets.
Please revisit the Blackbaud site and share with us one technology, resource or statistic available here that you find most interesting.
Independent research on Topic 3:
Here are a couple of sites that focus writing skills as we approach this first assignment.
From Dartmouth College, very comprehensive, some info here may be helpful for now, some for Graduate School.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/student/ac-paper/what.html
APA Style tutorial, useful now and in the future.
http://www.apastyle.org/learn/tutorials/basics-tutorial.aspx
