Brett is delivering Marketing Savvy 101 workshops to volunteers from the CFA at the moment. This has got him thinking: nonprofits should target specific groups with a specific marketing initiative, more often.
Brett's preparation is legendary.
For example when investigating likely audiences worth targeting as prospective CFA volunteers, the workshop came up with a strong list: shift workers, under 30s, stay- at-home mothers. All groups were seen as likely volunteers and audiences that were able to be targeted effectively, as they tend to gather together. This was good news as marketers love audiences that gather, as it makes them easier to reach.
Shift workers gather at certain factories and businesses, youth are to be found at secondary schools, TAFEs, sports clubs and bars; mothers might be found via schools and women-only gyms. It doesn’t matter if the ‘gathering’ is physical, online or via some media outlet – if they gather, they can be targeted.
However the CFA brigades represented could not recall designing a specific marketing initiative aimed at a specific audience. For example no postcard / flyer had been designed to target women and distributed in a way to reach them – say at women-heavy workplaces. No event aimed squarely at young people had been created and marketed accordingly and no outreach to factory workers had been undertaken.
When marketing resources are tight it is easy to try a scattergun approach hoping to connect to as many people as possible in one fell swoop. This is not marketing orthodoxy.
It may be worth making one important audience your be all and end all means that everything is orientated to one audience – the choice of marketing option, the creative, the copy and the distribution.
If you’ve tried this tell us how it went.