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Marketing Magic on a Duct Tape Budget
by John Jantsch
When it comes to marketing on a shoestring, throw out the textbooks.
Guess what? Your marketing budget is going to get cut again next year. Oh, you never had a marketing budget to begin with. But hey, they didn’t give you that title of director of marketing for nothing did they? You’ve still got to develop the membership, grow the donor base and support the volunteers.
So, you have a couple of choices here: You can dutifully draw up the same old tired marketing plan you created to shuffle in front of the board last year or you can begin to change the way you think about marketing or business development. I have to warn you though that your more traditional committee and board members may find some of your new tactics a bit “untextbook.”
So tell me, how has the textbook approach been working for you so far? Effective marketing - marketing that gets results - can be creative, seemingly radical, surprisingly simple and most important, inexpensive.
Why so brash? Look, at this point either you’ve tuned out and moved on, or you’re intrigued and ready to start your journey down a new marketing path. If you’re still reading, you have past the prequalification step. Big marketing budgets are an easy thing to waste and a convenient place to hide. Getting results with little or no budget requires a willingness to step out and take some risks. Ready, Fire, Aim is still better than, “I know there’s a gun around here somewhere.”
For the rest of this article, I plan to pepper you with marketing strategies and field tested tactics that I hope can expand your thinking about what’s possible. I can’t teach you everything you need to know in this space, but I can introduce you to some approaches that will start your marketing mind in a forward motion. One new idea, brilliantly applied, can change the world (or at least your world).
Narrow your marketing focus
Stop trying to sell, recruit, and solicit the entire world. I know you have profile of the perfect member or the perfect donor, but I also know that on a limited budget you must be able to narrow your focus as much as possible. 80/20 applies here. Look at your best clients. What do they have in common? I’ll bet they refer, contribute, and join committees at a very high level. Figure out what makes them tick and find more of them. Don’t waste your precious resources on people who don’t or won’t get it.
Find an enemy
Your cause, your disease, your association exists to beat something. To rid the world, to teach, to help people grow, to share experiences…that’s why people are attracted. Everything that stands in the way of your accomplishing your goals is the competition. That’s the enemy.
Your marketing message must be rooted in a cause or reason for being as well. What are people going to lose if they don’t join you? How will the world suffer if your staff can’t reach its membership goal? What’s the game, how do you win, who’s the enemy?
A marketing battle cry might be: We exist and won’t rest until every member recruits a member. Everyone on our staff works in the marketing department. No one should have to pay a fee to join this organization (I’ll explain that one in a minute)
Pour on the benefits
Find out why people joined or supported your organization; find out what makes you unique; find out why they stay; find out why they leave; find out what other organizations do that keeps them connected; and find out what more you could do that your target market would see as valuable.
Bring a group of your best members together and ask them the questions above. It is amazing how often we as marketers are wrong about what people value. Simple things are usually more important than the grand, far reaching vision statements that we want to profess. Marketing is about expectations. If people get what they expect, they will stay. If they get more than they expect they will stay and tell others.
You must be able to over deliver your marketing message. You can’t do that until you fully understand what people are really buying.
Sell Your Internal Clients
You remember that marketing message and enemy we just discussed. Everyone in your organization must be trained to understand, communicate and deliver the marketing message. Anyone who comes into contact with a potential member, donor, or volunteer in your association’s name is performing a marketing function. Marketing is everyone’s job. Creating this belief is your first sales job.
Do I know you?
In the hunt for new blood, it is easy to overlook how you got to where you are. Focus a great deal of your marketing attention of keeping your current members and donors happy, appreciated and included. Properly fed and watered, they can and should be your sales force. Give them the tools and attention they need to make it happen.
Create a marketing board
Put together a marketing board of directors that is made up of current members, professionals, community leaders and prospects. Get the board together once a quarter to give advice and comment on your current and proposed marketing, fundraising and communication efforts. Many times the impact of this type of strategy is multi pronged. You will undoubtedly get some good advice but your will also create a team of cheerleaders as well.
Pay for leads after the sale
Here’s a radical approach. How would you like to get a 100% refund on your membership dues for this year? Simply pass out these specially personalized membership applications and for each new member you recruit, we will send you a check for 20% of your membership dues up to 100%.
Okay, we’re talking about referrals and referral incentives, but the marketing message of winning the game by joining the 100% club is so much more powerful that everyone wants to play. You can become known as the 100% Refund Association. Membership is free. Oh, and everyone who comes to you by way of this form of recruitment will already be primed to join the game. I can see a wall of photos in the board room featuring the 100% refund club members.
Teach your partners well
Everyone knows the strategy where a business donates a portion of the proceeds from a promotion or sale to a deserving charity right. Why not go to your members, volunteers, donors, and supporters and propose the idea to them. Create all of the tools they need, create the marketing, create the materials, and even show them how to administer the program. Heck, you might even get some new volunteers out of the deal. If you can find something that works with one, it is likely that you can take the success to others and show them how to play.
Win-win-win workshop
Get two business partners or members and propose to host a workshop of some value for their constituents and clients. For example, go to a bank and an accounting firm and propose to host a marketing seminar for their small business clients. You can find a dozen very talented marketing consultants just dieing to provide this for you. (Members only, of course)
Here is what makes this work. The bank and the accounting firm will benefit from the nice bit of customer service they offer to their clients but they will also immediately see the opportunity to meet new potential clients. You, as the gracious host will have an opportunity to present your mission and message to a prime audience and show a benefit to your members.
With a little creativity this could become an ongoing series that would create tremendous exposure and generate new leads on an ongoing basis.
Each and everyone of the ideas presented in this article contains the spark of a brand new way of marketing. The common thread is change. Much of what you do now in the name of marketing could benefit from this fresh approach. In some cases, all that is needed is a new package, in others, it may be your delivery that is holding you back. But, lack of a budget, now that’s just an excuse.
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