The Best Nonprofit Marketing Plans Ignore the General Public
By Kivi Leroux Miller
When I teach nonprofit marketing workshops in person, I often make participants chant this with me in unison so they remember it: There is no such thing as the general public! There is no such thing as the general public!
The general public includes everyone, from newborns to elders, rich and poor, incarcerated and homeless. No matter how much you try, you will not reach everyone. In fact, if that’s what you try to do, odds are good that you will, in fact, reach no one. Instead, you need to focus on specific groups of people and work toward communicating with them in ways that connect with their particular needs and values.
When nonprofit marketing programs fail, organizations too frequently blame the tactics. “We tried an email newsletter, but no one read it.” “We sent out a direct mail fundraising letter, but it didn’t raise much money.” Closer examination of those tactics often reveals that the audience was poorly defined and the message was too generic. If the hammer doesn’t hit the nail on the head, take a look at the skills of the carpenter, not the hammer.
If you want to build something sturdy, you need a plan, whether you are building a house or a marketing program for your organization. Start with what you want people to do. Don’t speak in generalities like “We want them to support our cause” or “We want them to care about these people.”
Instead, visualize what someone is physically doing when they are supporting your cause or caring about people. Are they sitting at a computer with their credit card in hand, donating to your cause through your website? Are they volunteering in your office twice a week? Are they talking to their teenagers about your issue?
As you see this person in your mind’s eye, taking this specific action, who are you seeing? What does that person look like? What do they care about? How do they spend their time and money? What do they love and what do they hate?
Call them your target audiences, target populations, supporters, participants, clients, newsletter readers, website visitors, whatever you like. These are the people who matter most to your success. Your challenge is to define what ties the people in this group together, to learn about and understand what they value, and to figure out how to connect those values to your cause.
That’s how you create a message that will motivate them to follow through on your call to action. That’s also what you use to decide on your communications tactics, offline or online, email or social media, postcard or personal visit.
Define your audience. Create a powerful message that inspires them. Deliver that message to them. It’s the quick and dirty approach to nonprofit marketing, but it’s the heart of every good nonprofit marketing plan, no matter how long it is.
About the book
A nonprofit’s real-world survival guide and nitty-gritty how-to handbook.
This down-to-earth book shows how to hack through the bewildering jungle of marketing options and miles-long to-do lists to clear a marketing path that’s right for your organization, no matter how understaffed or underfunded. You’ll see how to shape a marketing program that starts from where you are now and grows with your organization, using smart and savvy communications techniques, both offline and online. Combining big-picture management and strategic decision-making with reader-friendly tips for implementing a marketing program day in and day out, this book provides a simple yet powerful framework for building support for your organization’s mission and programs.
Includes cost-effective strategies and proven tactics for nonprofits An ideal resource for thriving during challenging times Fast, friendly, and realistic advice to help you navigate the day-by-day demands of any nonprofit
As Featured on the About.com Nonprofit Summer Reading List
“This book is so incredibly useful, from building a basic marketing plan to how to use social media effectively on a small budget, that I wish I could simply reprint it all here.” Joanne Fritz, About.com Guide to Nonprofits
Faculty Bio
Kivi Leroux Miller is president of Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com and EcoScribe Communications, and the author of “The Nonprofit Marketing Guide: High-Impact, Low-Cost Ways to Build Support for Your Good Cause” (available May 2010, Jossey-Bass).
Through training, coaching and consulting, she helps small nonprofits and communications departments of one make a big impression with smart, savvy marketing and communications. She teaches a weekly webinar series and writes a leading blog on nonprofit communications at Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com. She also presents highly rated in-person workshops on a variety of nonprofit marketing topics around the country and through Duke University’s certificate program in nonprofit management. More than 2,000 nonprofits in 50 states, across Canada, and in more than two dozen countries have participated in Kivi’s webinars.
Kivi enjoys writing, hiking, volunteering, vegetarian cooking, and teaching her kids how to bake. After many years in the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington, D.C., she now lives in rural North Carolina with her husband, two young daughters, three cats, a dog and countless backyard wildlife.
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