Effective marketing is one of the many challenges faced by those working in the VCSE sector. In this guest post, Sarah Steinhoefel of The Hive Mind Company offers 5 tips to help you along the way.
Marketing isn’t easy, there I said it… No really, it’s not.
Before I launch into my five tips for the VCSE sector, I wanted to get that out in the open.
Marketing as a discipline can be split down into further subcategories, and the chances are, if you’re in the VCSE sector, you’re trying to do all of the marketing tasks with a really small budget, not to mention a small team!
So, now we’ve got that out of the way, shall we crack on with the tips?
What do you actually need to do?
One of the things that we often lose sight of, is what we actually need to do. For example, if you’re a charity and your target audience is people over 50, do you really need to be on Tik Tok? Probably not! Trends come and go, and marketing is no different, but what can make it feel even harder is trying to adopt these trends when someone has sown the seed!
OK, there may be times when you might want to be on Tik Tok, but you have to think about what you want to do rather than what you should do.
The trick here is to make a list.
Make a list of all the things that you’re doing to market what you do, then walk away. Leave it be for a while.
When you come back to the list with fresh eyes, how do these things make you feel? Is there something on that list that really shouldn’t be there? Is there something that you find just brings you nothing yet you put in a disproportionate amount of effort?
Be ruthless with the list, and get rid of the things you really don’t need to be doing.
Are you using the right tools?
This might seem obvious, but again, it’s one to think about. There is so much choice now in terms of tools you can use in marketing. There are CRM systems to manage your leads/prospects, there are email tools, website tools. It feels like we have a tool for everything!
But that doesn’t always make it right!
So for example, if you’re using a CRM system and it feels clunky to everyone except the IT person that suggested it; perhaps it’s time for a review.
Is it clunky because you’ve not had the right training? Are you using it correctly? Or even is it not fit for purpose?
This is not an exercise in encouraging you to spend money, far from it.
This is about being radically honest about if something is really working and worth the cost. If something works well for you, then you’ll find that the marketing tasks it supports you with are so much easier to do!
Are you proactive or reactive with your content?
For some people, me included, long term planning is not a thing that I can cope with. I prefer to think in smaller blocks of time; and if you’re a small team wearing multiple hats, the chances are you’re not really taking enough time out to plan your marketing content.
If you’re posting reactively, rather than in a thought out way, then you could find creating the content you need really hard.
I am afraid it’s another brain-dump answer again, but this one works so well!
So, I would encourage you to think about all the things you need to talk about. What do you need to tell potential service users about? What do supporters want to know? What events will you be attending?
Get really clear on all the information that needs to be shared, be that through social channels, emails or perhaps blogs.
These become your content buckets.
Once you have a few buckets, then it becomes so much easier to plan content.
For example, there may be things that are evergreen, so these are things that never change and can be shared with little to no changes to any copy or images. These are great to slot in your content plan. They’re the no-brainers. So for me and my business, it might be a ‘Introducing me’ kind of post. You know the one, where you welcome new followers and talk a bit about how you can help people.
Once you have a few of these, plus important dates, then you can really get on top of what you need to share with the world.
Oh, and if you’re not using a social media scheduler, they are worth their weight in gold! Because you can quickly share an old post again without too much faff… Genius!
Who is your audience, really?
If we take the example of wanting to reach older people, are they really the only people you want to work with?
Say for example, if you’re a charity that supports older people with a certain health condition. Whilst they are most definitely your service users, are they the only people you need to reach?
The chances are the answer is no. You might want to reach their families, that could be children, partners or anyone else who may be close to them.
In marketing we make a lot of assumptions about people, and for those of you who know me, you’ll know I am not a fan of demographics at all! If you take me, I am a 51 year old woman. I might be the ‘over-50’s life insurance plan’ marketers dream.
Except am I?
Most of the ads for these products show people who are not like me at all! Yes, I might have a smattering of grey hair, but I am most definitely not your average 51 year old woman (think buzz cut, piercings and tattoos and you’re there!) So a lot of their marketing is a complete turn off for me. I don’t identify with what they think I am.
Which leads me on to my last tip
Dare to be brave!
Go on, I dare you.
Dare to dream, try something innovative or new. Think of what you’d love to do which seems a little bit mad right now. One thing I know, and I know well, is that our brains love to find ways to make things happen.
So, my final tip is to dream big. If you want to be on a billboard in the centre of Manchester, or you want to look at world domination (or at least your project going global); go for it! Have that dream.
Make it colourful and so bloody massive you can see it in front of you. The chances are you’re in this sector because you’re passionate. Let that passion shine, because I promise you, it’s marketing gold and also incredibly infectious!
