A Charities guide to marketing, design, print, websites and social media

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A CHARITIES GUIDE TO

marketing, design, print, websites and social media

CHARITY ADVICE

How to write

A Marketing Strategy Charities are already tight on time and money, and without a marketing strategy, they can end up losing more than they have. This is why it is essential for non-profit organisations to think about their goals for the year so that it focuses their efforts and they can decide on where the budget needs to be spent.

To propel your charity forward, to reach more people and generate more income, here is everything you need to know about writing a marketing strategy.

Think about your goals Before starting any strategy, you need to think about what your goals will be for the year. If you have an idea of where you want to go and how you are going to get there, it will be much easier for you to start planning your strategy and it will give it more direction. Even if your goals end up changing when you’re planning, at least you would have started putting it into motion.

Look at your current situation Before starting your marketing strategy, it’s always useful to take a look at the position of your charity right now by doing some market research. How is your market looking? What are the main challenges and factors affecting it right now? Are there any opportunities or risks that you can see? What factors are affecting your charity? What are your main challenges right now?

Once you have done this and have these in mind, you can be sure that you’ll address them while planning your marketing strategy.

Set your objectives With your goals in mind, you then need to decide what you want your charity to achieve through its marketing. Whether that’s a fundraising target, to rebrand or grow your social engagement on your social channels, you just need to make sure that they are:

SMART Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic Timed to when you want

to achieve them by

Once you have your realistic objectives, you’ll soon find that every decision you make thereafter will move you further towards achieving them.

What will your key messages be?

When you have these first essential steps in place, it’s now time to think about your marketing content. What will your key messages be? What audiences are they aimed at?

When thinking about your key messages, try to be as concise and specific as possible.

That way, you can easily keep all your efforts on message and your audience will easily understand what you’re saying. With so much “digital noise” online, the more punchy and unique you can make your message, the better.

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Prioritise a target audience Even if you have multiple target audiences, that’s okay. You just need to make sure that you’re targeting them individually in different ways.

When thinking about your marketing strategy, focus on one audience at a time.

Do you need to reword your message to appeal to them? What is their preferred method of communication? What social channels (if any) do they use? What time of day and what days do they engage the most? The more specific you can make your strategy, the more directly you can target an audience to get the response that you want.

Measure your success When you’re doing anything that takes up your time, it is important to evaluate whether it is worth continuing as time = money. This is especially important in marketing, as how will you know if a campaign has been successful or not if you haven’t evaluated it?

When creating your marketing strategy, you always have to think how you will measure its success. If your goal is to increase income, track your donations over time. If you want to know if a social campaign was worth it, track the engagement and see how this affected donations.

Remember: By evaluating what went well and what didn’t, you can keep improving your marketing strategy to make sure that your charity is always moving forward.

Now all is left is to put your strategy into practice!

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CHARITY ADVICE

The importance of

Investing In Quality Design Design is an integral part of every organisation, yet it tends to be the unsung hero that always gets taken for granted. Why? Because when resources are limited and you need to make quick decisions and compromises, design often falls down on the list of priorities.

What many people don’t realise is that design is actually a lot more than just making things look pretty. After all, looks are subjective, so it is easy to underestimate it’s importance. However, in reality, design is everything from the look of your business, to your brand, your message and even your products, therefore it is vital to invest the necessary energy and resources into establishing a consistent image.

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like.

Design is how it works - Steve Jobs A mistake that many organisations make, is having all of their marketing materials in place but not knowing how to use them. This is where professional designers come in. They ensure you have the whole package, from providing professional aesthetics and consistent branding to creating polished landing pages and the best user experience possible.

To show you that your design shouldn’t be something that you compromise on, here are the main benefits of quality design as well as some tips to take your look and feel to the next level.

The Benefits of High Quality Design

A Great First Impression - think of your design like your store front, where whenever you meet a new potential client, you want to make the best first impression possible. Your design is the face of your organisation when you’re not there, so it needs to reflect you and your organisation in the best light possible, otherwise you may lose potential supporters.

You Stand Out from Your Competitors - professional design, whether that is your website, marketing materials or your product, will allow you to challenge your competition and establish yourself as the expert in your industry. By building a dominant online presence through both design and content, you can be sure that you will stay at the top of your market.

A Strong and Consistent Brand Identity - a good designer will think of the big picture, creating a solid brand that reflects your organisation’s message. This includes everything from colour scheme and fonts to your logo and use of images, and they ensure that your visual language is consistent across all of your marketing materials. The benefit of this is that it makes your organisation much more memorable!

It’s Easy for Your Customers - With internet access being available almost everywhere, your website needs to be incredibly easy to use so that people can quickly find your contact details. As well as user experience, you could also let your design speak for you so that visitors can learn what you do and what you can offer them in seconds.

More Potential Supporters and Customers - when people enjoy something, they are more likely to share it with others. We have all enjoyed a meal or service so much that we’ve recommended it to our family or friends, so create this feeling with your design. By pairing great design with easy site navigation and quality customer service, you could reap the rewards of the power of word of mouth! Organic reach doesn’t stop there either. High quality design and content will ensure that your website ranks higher on google and is therefore easier to find while searching.

Easy Tips to Find the Right Designer

of the best ecially when these ways to find great colleagues, esp how these people people can give you an insight into ended designers work. However, although recomm have a chat with them are a great bet, make sure you g, as what works for about your needs first before hirin one might not work for you.

Ask Around - recommendation is still one

gs like it in ing see and furniture online without going in a feel get to k wor t person first, so always ask for pas having uss disc n eve ld for your new designer. You cou team a as k wor you a trial period together to see how k. and if you’re happy with their wor

Look Before You Buy - you wouldn’t buy thin

Trust Your Instinct - the best designers will

complement along side you to your organisation and will work Therefore, finding the develop your brand as you do.

If your first impression right designer for you is crucial. like certain designs, be is not a good one and you don’t won’t tell you what you vocal about it. A good designer t will work best and should like, they will tell you wha mising on designs work around your tastes. Compro your designer in will end up frustrating you and ey, time the long run, costing you both mon to trust d nee you so s, ines and potential bus to say so if your instinct and don’t be afraid . it’s not working

With so many benefits offered by high quality design, it makes economic sense to invest in this aspect of your organisation. From providing you with professional and memorable aesthetics to creating an excellent overall customer experience, any time and money you invest into your design will be worthwhile.

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CHARITY ADVICE

The importance of

Investing in Quality Print With all the advances in digital technology and more people living and working online than ever before, it would be really easy to believe that print is on the decline. In fact, many organisations even choose to assume this, focusing all of their marketing efforts online and abandoning more traditional methods. While this would be easy to believe, it simply isn’t true.

Print is still very much alive and actually outperforms other forms of marketing with certain audiences.

The key, as with every form of marketing, is to use it right.

It’s not good enough for an organisation to make up some slapdash flyers or business cards just to have some printing materials that they can distribute in bulk.

Print marketing needs to be

TARGETED UNIQUE and most importantly,

HIGH QUALITY

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If print marketing is used right and in combination with other media avenues, it actually has the potential to significantly increase your response rates. As well as results, it also offers many other benefits.

To help you make the most of your print, we’ve put together a list of the main advantages as well as tips of how to improve the quality of print that you have.

The Benefits of High Quality Print 1.

Print is More Engaging & Memorable - the

2.

Credibility - offering your audience

3.

Brand Consistency - print helps to establish your organisation

4.

Print Targets a Wider Audience - it’s so easy for people to unplug

key with print marketing is due to how our brains capture and process information on paper. Reading is slower, deeper and more-focused, which allows our brains to comprehend what we’ve read and remember it. People tend to engage more with print as there are less distractions.

They are also less likely to skim read text on print, so are more likely to digest the whole message.

high quality and reliable print content consistently will develop credibility and therefore trust in your brand. A massive audience still doesn’t ‘trust’ the online world, so print is an alternative tool to drive these people to your website or to contact you direct.

in the offline world, therefore, this builds credibility of your digital outlets and an instant recollection of your organisation by association. Two very essential things to building a loyal audience!

their digital devices, but print remains front of mind. What’s really great about printing materials as well is that you can target very specific markets, plus they are in circulation for longer instead of the 5 or so minutes you get on twitter.

5.

Sets You Apart from Competitors - as many

6.

Print Ads Drive Action - it has been found that

organisations think that print doesn’t have a place in marketing, there is a whole audience that aren’t being targeted by them. By running effective print marketing campaigns, you’ll stand out from your competitors and reap the rewards!

print marketing makes products and cause more desirable and therefore drives more sales and support. Why? Because print is tangible and engages the senses. Multi sensory connections make it easier for readers to visualise doing, feeling and experiencing, therefore it increases the demand for them. It has also been said that print ads appeal to “influentials” more than digital ads, these are consumers who have the ability to sway other consumers.

Remember: Print has the potential to build brand awareness and generate return on investment, however, like all forms of marketing, the most effective method is using them all in combination. It’s not enough to just set up each platform and leave it ‘do it’s job,’ each element of marketing needs time and money invested in each.

It might be that print is not the best method for your organisation, but without trying it first, you could be missing out on reaching your audience and impacting your target market. Print is a cornerstone component of marketing that will help you drive results, so be sure to give it your full efforts and test it in multiple ways like digital campaigns to find what works for you.

Easy Tips to Improve Your Print Quality 1.

Identify Target Audience - spend some time identifying your ea

2.

Choose Quality Material - a quality finish can make all the

3.

Be Creative - the more you can stand out the better! Cons

4.

Stimulate as Many Senses as Possible - The more senses

5.

Less is More - when it comes to content on your printing

6.

Know What Constitutes Success & Measure it - print

you to creat target audience or audiences. This will allow vates them more, message and design that engages and capti ultimately driving more results. on you and your difference. Your printing materials reflect remember you organisation, therefore you want people to than being r for your quality and professionalism rathe associated as ‘cheap.’ ider

as a velvet experimenting with different textures, such shape of your the in finish, die-cutting shapes, such as flyers unique will you s make service, or even smells. Anything that ensure that you’ll be hard to forget! will make. We you can engage, the more of an impact you sense to utilise s make it so es, associate memories with sens le! orab mem n this and make your organisatio least materials, try to convey your message in the in conta that rials Mate ible. amount of words as poss le peop as read be to likely less information are more . tance resis least naturally take the path of

l marketing, marketing is completely different to digita to be almost going are nt geme enga so metrics such as that says success ic metr a on e Decid ure. impossible to meas and measure to you, whether that is sales or referrals etc, understand the this over a period of time. Only when you if it is effective! goal and purpose of your print can you know

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CHARITY ADVICE

The importance of Investing In A High Quality Website Spending a lot of money on a website doesn’t guarantee that it will be a high quality one. You can actually create a professional website very affordably, so long as you choose the right person for the job, one that works with you and invests time into it.

But is investing money into a new website or redesign really worth it?

In short, yes. A high quality website can mean the difference between a person sticking around long enough to be converted into a client, which is the goal of the website in the first place. Also, building a high quality site will improve your rankings perspective too, so that soon enough, people will be finding you organically through a google search!

In simple terms, a website is of little benefit to your business if people come to it and the first impression they get is that it looks cheap and is difficult to use. They won’t stick around enough to look for the information they need and you would have lost a potential client. So what can you do? Invest some time and money into it.

If you’re a small business, non-profit or charity and budgets are tight, it is still just as important for you to make the best that you can of your online marketing materials. To show you how beneficial putting money into your site is, here are a few of the top benefits and tips on how to make the most of your longterm investment.

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The Seven Benefits of a High Quality Website 1.

Consistent Brand Identity - organisations that have a consistent

2.

Distinction from Competitors - with so many organisations and

3.

A Professional Look - a high quality look isn’t just something that

4.

More Visitors Who Stay on the Page -

visual brand make more of a memorable impression than others.

Working with a professional designer, you can create a brand that is on message, clearly shows what you do and builds trust with your audience.

similar websites, it’s not good enough anymore to have an average website. You need to show your audience what makes you different and why they should go with you. A high quality site with the right visual message can do just that whilst reinforcing everything you’ve said in the text.

is visually pleasing, it’s a completely polished look where small details make a massive difference. Professional designers know the best way to present your message, down to the little details of font choice, text spacing and contrast. These things, that many of us wouldn’t think is important, play a major role in the end result of the site.

this is important for growing a loyal audience! Most people will leave after one glimpse at your site unless they see something special that makes them stay, e.g an interesting video or a stimulating blog, so you need to make an impression.

5.

More Customers - a high quality website can

6.

A Longterm Investment - a good quality

7.

A Solid Foundation - once you have a high quality website set up, this

easily convert visitors into leads and sales at a rate of x100 compared to a low quality site.

You just need to provide them with the opportunities with easy calls to action.

website is not something you can get on a ‘bargain;’ quality comes at a price. Rather than having to get a designer to re-do your website later on, get it done properly the first time.

provides you with an excellent base for any future developments you may want to make. Whether that’s a new product or service, or even a completely new direction for your brand, you will have a strong foundation to build on which could lead to new opportunities.

Remember: With so many benefits provided by a high quality website, it makes economic sense to invest in improving the quality of your business’s site. However, with that being said, quality isn’t just the look, but rather the overall experience of the site as well as the content that you put on it.

Easy Tips to Improve Your Website Quality 1.

Produce High Quality Content - to grow a loyal audience and

2.

Make Your Message Clear - website design is a great way

3.

Match Your Design with Your Brand & Message - don’t use letely

4.

Communicate with People - you need to be giving your visito email

5.

Ensure the User Experience is as Easy and Enjoyable as Possible - people always take the path of least

you need to be therefore increase your sale conversions, have high quality you Once . providing content that is of value start to market then can you larly, content being published regu . pitch and drop in the occasional sales to show

can be with this people what you do and the more clear you al designer ssion profe a with ion ersat the better! Have a conv fits and how bene your do, you what about how you can show can do they how ised surpr be l you’l people can support you, this through design.

r be comp templates or generic designs! These will neve ssional look profe that you give t won’ they relevant to you and g for a theme or a that you’re aiming for. It is always worth payin much quicker too! designer to set one up for you, plus it’s so rs

is having opportunities to communicate. Whether that ant blogs or sign up boxes, directing them to other relev the goal is having a call to action to call you after a blog, nsive. to get people talking and for you to be respo

easy to use resistance, so your website needs to be as tions, then as possible! If you’re calls to action are dona a lot of have make the donations process simple. If you h function searc the information on your website, then make as easy to navigate!

6.

e users

Make Your Website Mobile Friendly - the majority of onlin

sure your website access the internet via their mobiles, so make simple as this as thing is compatible to mobile viewing. Some ers! can lose you a lot of potential follow

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CHARITY ADVICE

Top tips for Charity

Fundraising on Social Media Many charities don’t know how to use their social media channels to fundraise; they spend a lot of time and effort putting information out there and don’t get much in return. This is a shame as social media can be a very valuable tool in an organisation’s marketing kit and you don’t even have to be a complete social whizz to utilise them correctly and get the results you want. All you have to do is a few key things.

To help charities make more of an impact with their fundraising on social media (and to save them time and resources!), these top tips are easy and simple to implement.

Be authentic and personal on Facebook Today, there is too much information being thrown at people so the way to break through this ‘digital noise’ is to be personable. Supporters will engage more with accounts that are ran by real people with real personalities, so communicate directly with them by saying things like “Check out our video…” or “We’d love to see you all at our fundraising event next…”

Get creative with your content Supporters respond most warmly to creative and fun messages, so think outside the box and make your posts fun. The best content is a mixture of informative messages, inspirational stories, images or videos, and call to actions such as donating or attending fundraisers. You can even make these campaigns fun though by coming up with unique ideas, and these are often the ones to go viral. Take the “ice bucket challenge” and the Guide Dog’s “Winks” campaigns as great examples.

Encourage and train your employees to interact on social networks Many charities and non-profit organisations have many employees so utilise them to help generate interest with your social posts. By simply liking and sharing, your employees can really help to increase your brand awareness and get more people interacting with your online efforts. They can even set up their own social channels, dedicated to sharing charity posts and reaching out to their own supporters. Again this method is much more personable and will receive much more engagement, so let them know how they can help and encourage them to do so.

Build a social calendar each month The mistake a lot of charities tend to make is to think of social media as this big thing looming over them, a method that needs loads of content and they don’t know where to start. If you break it down by month and make a simple calendar, you can organise your whole social media posts in one sitting. Not only does this give you peace of mind, but it ensures that you’re posting consistently and that you post different types of content.

6

5

Separate everyday interactions from fundraising campaigns To generate the most interest and engagement with fundraising campaigns, you need to highlight that they are different to your everyday posts. You can simply have a series of posts to do this: one announcing that a campaign will be coming soon, a couple of posts to countdown and generate interest, a couple of posts about the campaign, what is involved and why people should get involved, and then a final one to thank people for their support and to highlight the success of the campaign.

4

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Get your supporters to vouch for you Supporter’s testimonies are equivalent to restaurant or hotel reviews: people value and trust them so they give your organisation credibility. This is also a great way for charities to broadcast their success in a positive way.

By simply reaching out to supporters for their feedback about a fundraising event, volunteering position or training programme, you then have numerous pieces of content that are valuable to share on your social channels.

Always think how you can solve problems Do you have common questions that supporters or donors want to know about? Great social posts are ones that solve problems or inform people of something before they even ask the question, so how about making a list of what people tend to ask and generate a couple of creative and unique posts to provide your followers with valuable information? You can be sure that the response will be very positive.

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got questions?

Want to chat more about how we can help your organisation increase it’s impact? Get in touch:

01792 68 77 07 matt@gingerandtall.co.uk

want more?

You can find regular ideas and inspiration by checking our blog:

www.gingerandtall.co.uk/blog Or, keep up to date on social media:

@gingerandtall

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Want to know more about the ways Ginger & Tall can help you communicate with your supporters?

Call us today on 01792 68 77 07 or email matt@gingerandtall.co.uk

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