Nonprofit organizations of all sizes and across all niche sectors typically grapple with a clear and concise message that is effective at telling their story, making a connection, attracting donors and engaging with potential volunteers and other supporters.
Here are six steps that are essential building blocks for any nonprofit’s marketing plan.
1. Insights: What do you actually know about your customers?
Identifying your customers’ emotions, feelings and behavioral patterns that motivate their decision-making process is key. How you connect their feelings to your brand’s products and services will be a major factor when considering a purchase.
2. Differentiation: What makes your brand stand out amongst the competition?
Recognition is important when repositioning a brand based on emotion. Positioning can make or break your brand. Is your brand’s position supporting your core values and creating a culture of authenticity? Can you tell someone what makes your brand better, cheaper, faster, more luxurious, etc. than the competition in less than 10 seconds? If you can’t, you have a positioning problem.
3. Storytelling: How authentic and relevant is your story?
Stories are processed through an entirely different cognitive system – people tend to be intrigued and like a good story. An impactful emotional story can be a key factor in motivating customer decision making. You must paint the picture you want your customers to see and hear. This can be done through transparency and authentic storytelling. Creating that story takes time, vision and planning. It’s all about building something that people care about.
4. Images/video: Video and Images evoke curiosity and attention. What about text?
Research shows that people are able to process images a thousand times faster than text. This means that Images/videos are more effective, compared to text, in evoking curiosity and responses. Emotions drive motivation, which in turn, energizes behavior – which is one of the reasons why TV and video is so effective in influencing consumer purchase behavior. Expressing a brand’s essence through unexpected and powerful visuals attract greater interest and attention.
5. Ideas: What type of ideas are memorable?
Brands that think differently and outside the box – original, creative, and emotional ideas are the ones that typically stand out. The best ideas make customers feel, think, remember and share. Brands should focus on ideation and creating shareable moments.
6. Data: How can you use data to emotionally track a customer?
It’s 2021 and data is essential in learning from your consumers and how they connect emotionally with your brand. The customer journey is about understanding how and where to connect. With so many different digital platforms available now, it is important to know the when, where and why when it comes to your customers. It’s not just about collecting data anymore but understanding what to do with it. At Attention Trading we go beyond the data and dashboards to create the authentic stories your customers want to hear on the platforms where their attention is.
Any questions? Please email Max@AttentionTrading.com | AttentionTrading.com
