Category Archives for "Marketing"

1 Finding Your Why

Last Monday I asked, Why Do I Do What I Do? Today, I shall explain how I arrived at the answer I offered last time. Why? Because through using my business as a worked example, I will show how anyone can plan their business or community venture. Following my journey may help you with finding your why.

Here is the answer I offered last time: Why do I do what I do?

You will see there is a difference! It’s not that I’ve abandoned this earlier version; indeed both offer a  perspective on what I do. This earlier version focuses on my offer. The later version on my values. The later version does not explain what I do and the earlier does not explain why I do it!

I have doubts about the second bullet in the earlier version because I need to explain how I help clients when the responsibility for their site is theirs.  I need to be clear about what I am seeking in a client. If they really do not understand my perspective on web design I may find it difficult to work with them. However the key is building trust and for many clients, if I start by working with them on their objectives, they are happy to follow when we get onto a website, whatever their understanding of web designers.  The problems are usually where they have a long-standing relationship with an old-school designer.

Conclusion

So, I am a community development worker who offers support to organisations planning online campaigns fully integrated with their offline activities.

This does not necessarily mean working on a website. One of my clients is unlikely to work on their website with me; their aim is to find partners who can help promote their resources.  A few years ago, this would have been a developmental role but today there are many online strands to their work as there are offline.

This insight has emerged from writing this post and I shall make some changes to my website as a result of it. The work of marketing is continuous and incremental. Mastering the circuit questionnaire and constantly reviewing it is helpful to any business.

1 Why You Do What You Do

On Friday I told the story of my recent hardware meltdown.  For this reason I’ve delayed the fifth element of the circuit questionnaire, in the hope I can recover the draft.  So, this post is the first in a new series about branding and asks: why you do what you do.

You may have followed my overview of the five elements of marketing found in the circuit questionnaire:

Your Response

Now, this may or may not appeal to you. If it does, sign up to my e-book, details below. It is free and you will also receive a weekly update of my blog posts, so you can follow what I’m doing. Apart from five introductory emails, I rarely send broadcast emails and so I will not clutter your inbox with loads of unwanted emails.

If it doesn’t appeal to you, why are you still reading? Maybe because you’re following what I’m saying about branding and you’re not distracted by my particular brand. That’s good. You can perhaps see you don’t need to agree with me. Your brand might be opposite of mine. If you think you can sell it, good luck with that. I’m using my business as a worked example throughout these posts. If you find the posts helpful, then you don’t need to be sympathetic to my brand. So, please consider signing up below. You don’t have to read the e-book and you will receive a weekly reminder about these posts and the other topics on my blog.

That’ll do for today. Next time I’ll explore why I do what I do in more depth.

1 Five Elements for Your Marketing Campaign: Problem

Last time I introduced the third element of the Open Source Marketing Circuit Questionnaire, Proposition and showed how causes can function as either a proposition or a commodity. This time the focus is on the problem your proposition solves.

The circuit covers five elements and aims to analyse each element at a very deep level. The order in which you think about each element depends on the nature of your work. This order is the order in the circuit questionnaire and follows a logical sequence. However, many people may find a different order works for them.

The pattern I’m using is to describe the element in the circuit questionnaire, show how it can be used in marketing a cause and then use my business as an example. I may use examples from other sources where they seem relevant.

Marketing Problems

This element takes a hard look at the nature of the problem your product, service or cause addresses. Of course, your offer may solve several problems and so it is important to know what your proposition is. For example, if you are selling home insulation, your proposition may be the promise of lower fuel bills. Alternatively it may appeal to a concern about climate change. The focus on the former would be about how heat is lost through poorly insulated homes and the savings made by insulating them properly. With the latter, the focus will be on the impact of climate change and the contribution poorly insulated homes make to the overall carbon footprint.  Both are true; the question is which argument appeals to which market?

But, you may be thinking, don’t most people decide on several factors? Well yes, but the most effective arguments will depend on the market. The market is the fifth and final element but you can see how all five elements interact. Using insulation as an example: essentially the same product can be marketed to two groups, those who wish to cut household expenditure and those concerned about climate change. Even though someone concerned about cutting household expenditure may welcome the impact of their purchase on climate change and someone concerned about climate change may welcome the savings in household costs, the problem they wish to solve captures their attention.

For example, if they are searching online, one might search for “how do I cut my fuel bills?” and another for “how do I cut my contribution to climate change?” The same company might have two landing pages for these markets and they might lead to the same product. The customer might see both pages in their exploration of the site and the other page might even clinch the deal for them.

You need to start where the customer is, with the problem they perceive and then lead them to consider all the advantages of using your solution. If you are interested in how this works in-depth, see my post about the awareness ladder. This shows how you need to start at the level of awareness of the customer and lead them to a point where they are ready to respond to your offer by making a purchase or otherwise supporting your cause.

For products and services, it is hard to move someone to a purchase if they are not aware of their problem. For example, some overweight people may not be aware they have a problem, so they are not going to click on a link that reads: “Are you overweight?” To engage their attention you may need to make them aware they have a problem. They might click on a link that reads: “Find out the biggest threat to your health today”, for example.

For causes though, it is likely most people are not aware of the problem. Climate change is an example of something that potentially will affect everyone but it is not an immediate problem. Most people campaigning about climate change will readily admit it is hard to build a sense of urgency. It is even harder if the issue is remote from the lives of those who can do something about it. Issues based a long way from where charity supporters live, for example. There are issues that affect one group but need the support of unaffected others for resolution. Same sex marriage is a good example of this. It directly affects a particular section of community but needed more general support to bring about the desired change.

We can all think of many causes that have caught the public mood and brought about significant change. These causes often do not include a direct appeal to self-interest but somehow capture the public’s imagination.

The Problem my Business Addresses

Here is my one sentence description of the problem my business addresses. I wrote this a few months ago and I’m reading it critically for the first time since I wrote it:

“The pressures to keep your business or organisation solvent, address internal and external conflict whilst maintaining a reasonable work life balance mean you rarely have time for strategic thinking about your vision.”

Overall I think this is pretty good! Two points about it. First, it lists three pressures that could each be a problem. Everyone involved in running a business or a community organisation will recognise they are forever fire-fighting. They will be familiar with the occasional shudder when they remember they are losing sight of their overall purpose.

The second point is your problem statement should make you feel it is incomplete. There is a slight lurch as you read to the end – oh yes I recognise that feeling that I’m rudderless in a stormy sea! If I feel that way, I’m more likely to read on …

The problem should help a prospective customer recognise, “this is someone who understands my problem”.  Often it is not only a good solution that counts but also a degree of empathy.  So the problem you address can be central to your brand.  As we head deeper into this topic we shall explore these connections in-depth.

3 Five Elements for Your Marketing Campaign: Proposition

Last Monday I introduced the second element of the Open Source Marketing Circuit Questionnaire, Products and Services, extending it to included Causes. This time the focus is on your proposition, the thing you actually sell.

The circuit questionnaire includes five elements and the aim is to explore each element at a very deep level. The order below is the order in the circuit questionnaire and follows a logical sequence. However, many people may find a different order works for them.

The pattern I’m using to describe the elements in the circuit questionnaire, is to show how each can be used in marketing a cause and then use my business as an example.

Proposition

You may remember a couple of posts ago, I mentioned you sell yourself or your brand and last time I suggested some businesses use a cause to sell their product or service. A cause can function in two ways.  It can be something you market in its own right, where you seek some action from the person who responds to the cause. I’ll call this the cause as commodity.  The other function is cause as a proposition, where the cause is a reason to purchase something else. So, for example, concern for the environment may be a reason to purchase an environmental soap powder.

Not all propositions are causes. For example, a proposition may appeal directly to self–interest so you are purchasing health, a career, wealth, friendship or whatever. It is important to understand self-interest as an ethical approach to marketing and indeed it is a principle underpinning mutual businesses as well as many conventional businesses.  The retail co-operatives were primarily an appeal to self-interest and they always had an ethical dimension.

In this table I illustrate the relationships between cause as commodity and cause as proposition.

Ethical Marketing

So, let’s say your cause is an alternative to high sugar foods. At (1) you appeal to people’s values to respond to your campaign for signatures, donations or some other action. They may do this because they object to corporations adding high concentrations of sugar to foods; damaging the health of the population for profit.   At (2) you could use the appeal to the same values to buy food guaranteed low in sugar. At (3) you appeal to people’s self-interest, for example the effect of adulterated food on your health or your family’s health. Many people may respond out of self-interest and see the ethical power of adding their voice to many others. At (4), you may sell the product because it is healthier.

All of these are ethical approaches to marketing. They can be combined, eg a campaign about high sugar in food might combine values and self-interest in its proposition. Equally a low sugar food could use both ethical and self-interest arguments: “You can eat this to protect your health and not support businesses that add too much sugar to foodstuffs.” The approach you use will depend on your overall marketing strategy.

My Proposition

So, here is the proposition for my business, written a few months ago:

“Here’s an opportunity for you to make substantial progress with your business or organisation’s strategy, whilst you integrate your online and real-life activities, with someone who understands the problems you’re likely to encounter.“

Reading it now it seems somewhat stilted and has no cause as proposition, it is an appeal solely to self-interest. Now, this is not necessarily a problem but it does not resonate with the material about the local economy on my website.  Here’s an alternative:

“If you find your plans to transform society through your business or organisation frustrated, here is an opportunity to build your strategy, integrating your online and real-life activities, accompanied by someone who understands the problems you’re likely to encounter.”

This makes it clear I am seeking clients who want to change things beyond their economic or community activities. Note also I am marketing myself! This combines a problem with the means to find a solution. Next time we’ll take a closer look at problems.

2 Five Elements for Your Marketing Campaign: Causes, Products and Services

Last time I introduced the first of five elements in the Open Source Marketing Circuit Questionnaire, You and Your Brand. In these posts, I’ll show how to adapt the circuit questionnaire to marketing a cause. Most organisations market a cause, often obscured by a focus on products and services. In each of these five posts, I introduce the element and show how to use it to market a cause and use my business as an example. This second post covers the full range of offers you can make, covering causes, products and services.

The circuit includes five elements …

… and this post is about the second: Products and Services. You will note the title of this post includes causes as well as products and services.

Marketing a Cause

The circuit questionnaire aims to help businesses find commercial opportunities. My interest is in organisations marketing a cause. Their priority is to find support for their cause. Their cause may be accompanied by products or services or it can stand alone.

Just as third sector organisations promoting causes can offer products and / or services, so a local business may find their products or services support a cause. For example, home insulation can be promoted as an environmental cause or to cut household bills (or both!).

I suspect more product and service promotions benefit from a cause than may seem likely. Next time I’ll show how a cause can work as a proposition to market a product or service.  I have no problem with businesses who discover a cause researching their marketing, so long as the cause is genuine. If there is a genuine cause, you may become aware of it as you work on your branding in-depth.

Causes, Products and Services

This section of the circuit questionnaire covers what the business or organisation delivers and is not to be confused with what it sells. For example, a sweatshirt is clearly a product. With a screen-print or embroidered motif, it could be sold in support of a cause. The motif may increase sales of sweatshirts and indeed may be the reason for the sweatshirt.  With or without a motif the sweatshirt is a product.

So, a cause is a commitment that leads to a transaction where the benefit is directly or indirectly to the cause.  The transaction may involve money but not always.  This may be frustrating to the purist but I don’t want to rule out the small business, for example, set up at its owners risk to sell products or services associated with a cause.  No-one would object to sales of home insulation, for example, benefiting the business that promotes and sells it.  Avoid implying direct third-party benefit where finance raised goes solely to the business.

Transactions that don’t include money might be: signatures on a petition or action in support of the cause, eg writing to an MP, joining a demonstration, attending a meeting. Online such transactions might include joining an email list and participating in an online forum. Commercial marketing campaigns use some of these activities, eg joining an email list.

Financial transactions that benefit a third-party include donations to charities, political parties and the like.

Example from My Business in June 2015

So here’s my single sentence description of my service:

“I offer 3 and 6 month non-directive consultancy packages to leaders who want traction between their online and real-life presence, need to address real-life and online problems and to maintain a work / life balance whilst focusing on their vision for local marketplace regeneration.”

It’s a few months since I wrote this it seems a bit long. More important it barely touches on my cause. When I completed this I was focusing on questions about my service and so that is what I have described. Many organisations and businesses have several product / service descriptions. So, here’s one for my cause:

“I’m inviting people to join an online community who share experiences, insights and ideas about regeneration of their local economy in neighbourhood, city or region.”

This does not replace the first sentence but together they offer a better description of my business activities. This element in the circuit questionnaire asks the question: what are you selling?  The next helps clarify: why are you selling it?

Do you market a cause when selling products or services?  What are the benefits and pitfalls?

2 Five Elements for Your Marketing Campaign: Branding

Last Monday I introduced the Open Source Marketing Circuit Questionnaire and  in this and future Monday posts I shall show how it can be adapted to marketing a cause. Many organisations market a cause although often their focus is on products or services and so their cause is not so obvious.

The circuit questionnaire includes five elements and the aim is to think about each element at a deep level.

The analogy is to an electrical circuit.  Get all five right and power will flow.  I’ve used the order in the circuit questionnaire as it follows a logical sequence. However, many people may find a different order works for them.  Some people work through completing what they can and then return to the beginning and find elements that were difficult are now easier.

I shall review the five elements first, before looking at specific questions.  I shall describe the issue covered by an element or question in the circuit questionnaire, suggest how it can be used to market a cause and then use my business and perhaps others as an example. I’ll work through the five elements in this and the next four Monday posts, taking them in the order they appear for ease of reference.  After that I shall return to the beginning and work through some of the questions.  The overview of the five elements will provide context to the more detailed questions.  So, onto today’s topic …

You and Your Brand

Most people believe they are marketing a product, a service or a cause. Actually, for small businesses and organisations, they are marketing themselves. It is really important to understand this. You will make a sale where there is a trusted relationship. Your product, service or cause might be brilliant and you might be able to convey to potential customers its fantastic properties but you need to speak to their hearts. People do not respond solely to logic.

Think of a general election. Many people do not pay a great deal of attention to the parties’ policies. When they enter the ballot box they decide which candidate they trust to run the country. This is not always understood by political activists, especially on the left.

Now you can see an immediate problem. Most organisations, including political parties, are big. There is no one person who is solely responsible for the relationship with the customer or voter. So, most organisations depend upon branding. Sometimes they associate their brand with an individual, perhaps the founder or maybe a patron, party leader or a celebrity. Still, they convey their brand in many ways such as a logo, advertisements, testimonials, stories in the public domain and so on.

Voluntary and community organisations often fail to engage with branding, perhaps because they don’t trust insights from marketers. But how do they convey their cause if they have no figurehead and lack a compelling story to engage potential followers or subscribers?

One challenge is to tell your story in a couple of lines, ideally one sentence. Here is my first attempt for my business:

“A community development worker for over 30 years, I’m committed to local regeneration and bringing community development support to online as well as real life activities.”

I wrote this a couple of months ago. Looking at it now I think it doesn’t really tell a story. It feels a little distant and I’m not happy with the words “I’m committed to” – he would say that wouldn’t he? Here’s my revision:

“My experience of over 30 years as a community development worker informs my support for local regeneration and my offer of support for online and real life activities.”

Which of these two versions do you prefer? How would you improve them?  You can see a more detailed version of my story on my about me page.

Note the aim is to find something about your activities that is unique. Do you think either of my sentences achieves this? Or my longer story?  How could what is distinct about my offer be sharpened further?

7 Introduction to the Circuit Questionnaire

Towards the end of last year I wrote a few posts about needs assessments. My assessment questionnaire, reviewed in those posts, was helpful. I’ve found a better approach that can take someone who has a cause, product or service into a deeper understanding of making their work better known.

Third sector organisations often do not appreciate the Internet is essentially a marketing platform. That is what it is and objections to marketing on ethical grounds somewhat miss the point. If you really don’t want to market, then don’t use the Internet.

The problem is many people associate marketing with buying and selling. In fact it is more accurately about exchange and exchange does not have to include money. A word some people may be happier with is campaigning. Here the exchange is information for support. I might stand on the streets and hand out leaflets and my hope is those who read the leaflet will support my cause. They might sign a petition, join my organisation, vote for me or my candidate. They might donate to the cause and so campaigning can involve financial transactions and so resemble conventional marketing.

Marketing and Campaigning

Sometimes we talk of a marketing campaign because campaigning and marketing are practically the same activity:

Marketing Causes

I’m interested in the overlap between third and private sectors, helping third sector organisations market their cause and possibly generate income too and helping local businesses market their offer as a cause.

Whatever they are doing, they must understand their marketing / campaigning activities holistically. No-one can be effective if they place their online and real life marketing in different boxes. It is the same message and activity carried out in different modes.

Yes, this is complex! The good news is the technical side of the work is far simpler than it used to be. Many people do not know what is possible online (or off for that matter!) or how easy it is. The problem is choosing the best approach to meet your desired outcomes and then building capacity to carry it out. The technical side may be simpler but maintenance of an online programme within an organisation, where you plan to reach people and build relationships with them, can be very demanding. It can have massive implications for the way you do things.

Most organisations and businesses, especially those who are working or plan to work online, need to think in-depth about their approach to all this complexity. They need an in-depth needs assessment.

Circuit Questionnaire

Ben Hunt and his team over at Open Source Marketing (OSM) have devised the Circuit Questionnaire. (OSM is an online resource of marketing techniques and it is free. If you are familiar with marketing, then you may find the site helpful.)  I’ve contributed to developing the Circuit Questionnaire and in this sequence will show how it can be used to market a cause.

The Circuit Questionnaire is a long and detailed series of questions that takes several hours to complete. My plan is to work through the Circuit Questionnaire, explaining the thinking behind it, showing how it can help market causes and use my business as a worked example.

This way I can illustrate how the approach can be used for causes as well as products and services. I will be using the Circuit Questionnaire in all my consultancy packages and this series of posts will help you understand something of the scope of what is possible.

I offer a free trial consultancy session and the details are below:

0 How to Overcome Low Capacity

Last Tuesday in a post about the strengths of community organisations, I wrote under the heading “Alternatives”:

“But a project that brings people together to a common cause and through which they learn about how to run a project and how to relate to others can lead to new ideas. When one door closes, maybe other doors open.  Failure can inform the growth and development of the next project.

Lifestyle experiments to bring about social and economic change will almost always fail at some point. But we now have the means to record and share our experiments and perhaps by learning from others’ failures we can improve our future projects.

Setbacks can be the grounds for new initiatives that benefit from experience and not lead to dispirited activists who lack the energy to try anything new.”

The Compassionate Company

In this video Pavi Mehta tells the story of a compassionate company, the largest provider of eye-care in the world. Towards the start she explains the ground-rules under which the company grew.  They have no external funding and give away 60% of income.  They work exclusively for people who can’t pay, provide world-class quality, accept no donations and no fund-raising.

This approach will not work for everyone but the point is, under those extraordinary constraints something brilliant has grown. So, lacking capacity is not always a curse, maybe it is an opportunity you cannot see, just yet.

1 The Strengths of Third Sector Organisations

Over several weeks, I have identified some weaknesses in common third sector worldviews. Whilst I generalise, these are real issues we must understand.  In this post, I shall show why it is important to support the strengths of third sector organisations.

Solidarity

At its best a group of concerned citizens can act quickly to support a cause, eg a disadvantaged group. Is the statutory sector better equipped to tackle the problem? Maybe but politicians can take time to name the problem, plan and respond.

There are many issues where the state is unlikely to respond. Climate change is an example. Many vested interests groups lobby politicians.  Concerned citizens, who campaign and experiment, may be the first response before an issue becomes established policy.

For many issues, the self-help group is a good starting point; finding others who share their problem and can share their solutions or experiences. There is no question these have been effective in bringing about real change.

But the problem is the organisational structures available to these groups, especially if they generate significant income, employ staff or occupy premises.

The basic structures of registered charity and company status are hardly fit for purpose.  There are a few new options designed for social enterprises, still a poor fit to the needs of these groups.  Legislators designed them for businesses and so they don’t meet the needs of groups made up of mostly volunteers who are occasionally involved.

Mutuality

Much the same is true about legal structures for mutuals. Industrial and Provident legislation dates back to the nineteenth century and is even more complex than conventional incorporation.

However, values are important and mutuals match the values of the third sector more closely than the values of charitable status or company status. Few organisations practice mutuality and so many forget its features.

There was a time when small groups would naturally form a mutual or friendly society. These self-help groups practiced a range of experiments leading to the social and economic institutions we use today, eg building societies and insurance companies. People need to work together for mutual benefit. Their investments protected and  structures simplified.

I have argued in this blog mutuality is the key to developing new ideas. Once understood, mutuality inspires people to see new possibilities through collaboration. Collaboration can be between organisations too, they don’t have to be mutuals.

Alternatives

Which leads me to the main strength of the third sector, which is the opportunity to experiment with alternative lifestyles and approaches. It is one of my basic observations in community development that “Most things don’t work”.

But the few things that do work can have implications far beyond their first reach. The only way I know to find innovative approaches that work is to try them. These social experiments will mostly fail but it’s worth it for the ones that work out.

But what do we mean by fail? Receiving large grants that lead to mission creep, some success and then loss of the work when the grants run out is a dispiriting failure.  Perhaps creative inspiration will come out of the few groups that refuse grant aid and find ways to work in the economy.  At first sight this may seem impossible but commitment applied to a cause can lead to unexpected developments.

But a project that brings people together to a common cause and through which they learn about how to run a project and how to relate to others can lead to new ideas. When one door closes, maybe other doors open.  Failure can inform the growth and development of the next project.

Lifestyle experiments to bring about social and economic change will almost always fail at some point. But we now have the means to record and share our experiments and perhaps by learning from others’ failures we can improve our future projects.

Setbacks can be the grounds for new initiatives that benefit from experience and do not lead to dispirited activists, who lack the energy to try anything new.

0 Third Sector Ideologies

I’ve reviewed several common tropes in third sector thinking; its anti-capitalism, inclusion agenda and dependence on grants. One underlying theme is an emphasis on ideology.

There are many attractive ideologies in the third sector and they drive the agendas of highly effective organisations. Pragmatism might be a good way to get things done but perhaps a few ideals will keep you going during the difficult times.

The problem is not with any particular ideology so much as a tendency to build on ideologies. Where what you believe becomes more important than what you do, problems are likely to set in.

Ideology and Business

There have been news items about businesses that won’t serve gay couples because they are Christians businesses and genuinely believe it’s wrong to do so. They are allowing a particular ideology to run their business. They may represent themselves as victims of discrimination against Christians even though it is they who are discriminating.  Whilst I don’t doubt they are sincere in their beliefs they are profoundly wrong about Christianity and business.

There are many Christians who have no problem with gay couples.  Business is about building positive relationships and so using it to exercise power sits awkwardly with business objectives.  Whilst a business may be well advised to have a clear image of their target market, it is not an exclusive image.  A Christian business might target Christians as its main customers but this should never exclude them from trading with others.  How else do you find new markets?

The market is essentially inclusive and so an ideologically driven business will be on a hiding to nothing. Ultimately, you have a market and you meet its needs. That’s what businesses are for.  You can specialise in a particular market without discriminating but businesses must be open to all if they wish to grow.  The same applies to third sector organisations.

Third Sector and Ideology

Sublimated power is the core issue where ideologies are at play. The world has to be made to be as your ideology suggests it should be. Participation in a third sector organisation allows people to find a space to exercise power without testing their ideas in the real world.  We’ve all seen the good idea tied to the whim of a single charismatic person, unable to allow their organisation to make its own way.  Exercising this kind of power is no good for the individual or their organisation.

The need to collaborate in business means ideological considerations become something of a luxury. This can of course lead to other issues. It does not mean businesses can do anything they like; a lack of any ethical scruples can be destructive. One way to do this is through regulation, where governments decide the bottom line. That way regulation is something people can vote for. It may be onerous for some businesses but at least they can make their case.