Powershift Marketing: Special Edition - Shift Your Nonprofit Marketing Into High Gear

POWERSHIFT MARKETING FOR NONPROFITS

When I was learning how to drive a manual shift car, my dad (who raced Model A’s while growing up in Arizona) explained to me the advantages of PowerShifting. As my dad explained it, in full-throttle shifting you don’t let your foot off the gas and only briefly depress the clutch as you shift from gear to gear. This helps the car accelerate faster and gives you a competitive advantage over other cars that let off the gas and use the clutch.

The word PowerShifting perfectly summarizes my approach to small business marketing. Simply stated, regardless of the size of a company, the firms that have the most success marketing their goods and services don’t take their foot off the gas. They always keep moving ahead. While I have made my living working mostly for for-profit firms, nonprofits can easily apply the principles of POWERSHIFT MARKETING. So, let’s start with the basics.

POWERSHIFT MARKETING

requires a nonprofit to embrace change, understand where their customers are heading, and respond to these needs immediately.

Nonprofits have customers. Throughout this book you will see the term customers. While most nonprofits are more comfortable talking about clients, donors, volunteers, board members and staff, the reality is that all of these groups are your customers. If you can be the first to recognize where your customers are going and respond before your competition does, you’ll be a marketing winner. While understanding that you have customers that you need to influence is not an earth-shattering observation in the business world, it is often a new concept for nonprofits. Therefore, few nonprofits focus on creating a customer-centered culture, which is a core principle of PowerShift Marketing.

Nonprofits have competitors, too. Many nonprofits also don’t see themselves in competition with other nonprofits. But nonprofits do compete with other nonprofits for attention, participation and money of their clients, and they often compete for the same donor dollars.

The fundamental idea behind my POWERSHIFTING approach is that small actions, taken every day, can dramatically improve your marketing. Don’t take your foot off the gas and your marketing will succeed quickly.

MARKETING TIPS FOR THE REAL WORLD

This book was adapted from my small business marketing book, POWERSHIFT MARKETING - 101 Ways to Shift Your Company Into High Gear. I pulled some of the most important marketing tips for nonprofits from my general business book. I also added some insights that I gained from studying several nonprofit marketing books. One of the best is the Basic Guide to Nonprofit Program Design and Marketing by Carter McNamara of Authenticity Consulting, LLC.

By following the tips outlined in this book, I believe you can equip yourself with the basic knowledge needed to get the most out of every dollar you spend on marketing your nonprofit. But don’t stop learning with this book. Keep reading, keep listening to your volunteers, donors, staff, clients (your customers), and keep educating yourself. As I point out later, what you will learn is far more important than what you know now.

1ST GEAR - GETTING OFF THE LINE

THE PRINCIPLES OF POWERSHIFTING

Chapter 1- The Power of Change

"If your customers reach the future before you, they’ll leave you behind."

Faith Popcorn, Futurist and Author

The above quote from futurist Faith Popcorn has been one of my favorites for years. It sums up what I’ve observed in working with many companies. Here’s another one of my favorite quotes:

"They had been in business for twenty years and had one full year of experience."

Brian Buffini’s Turning Point Seminar

Starting out, most nonprofits have a clear vision of their mission, their programs and services, and how they are going to run their nonprofit. But then a strange spell falls over them. As soon as they have a certain level of success, for some unknown reason, they stop listening to their customers (clients, donors, board members, staff and volunteers). They start believing their own news releases.

The business landscape is filled with examples of firms that have been slow in changing to meet the needs of their current customers. How could Polaroid, whose founder Dr. Land invented instant photography with his pioneering Polaroid Land Camera Model 95 in 1948 ($5 million in sales in its first year), totally miss the emerging world of digital photography?

Still clinging to its outdated product line while rushing to introduce a handful of digital products, the company missed the digital revolution so badly that by 2005 they had to be rescued from financial disaster by the PetersGroup Worldwide.

Even Kodak, a name synonymous with photography since 1888 when George Eastman placed the first camera in the hands of consumers, dragged their feet into digital photography. While they are credited with creating the first digital camera, they couldn’t let go of the past. Now they are fighting bankruptcy by selling off almost everything in a last ditch effort to become a totally different company. Yes, they are embracing change, but it may be too late.

POWERSHIFT PRINCIPLES

The four core principles of POWERSHIFT MARKETING are straightforward:

1. Embrace Change - Change is the only constant in this world. Your nonprofit’s ability to be successful is directly related to your skill at recognizing change.

2. Focus on Customers - You must know where your customers (clients, donors, volunteers, staff, and board of directors) are going in order to respond quickly, so you can use all your resources to meet their needs first.

3. Leverage Every Dollar - Since advertising costs the same ─ whether or not it works well ─ the best way to generate more return on your investment (ROI) is to create more powerful marketing and advertising.

4. Take Action Daily - You can’t afford to stay in one place in a constantly changing world. You can stay ahead of your customers and your competition by taking small actions every day. Most nonprofits and companies (or people) don’t fail or succeed because they do one thing right or wrong. They succeed because they do dozens of things right, every day.

POWERSHIFT TIP 1

TAKE ACTION EVERY DAY.

If every day you do just one thing that impacts your marketing, in only a few months, you will have made dozens of changes that will have a positive impact on your business.

Chapter 2 - The Power of Your Beliefs

It is no surprise that people’s beliefs shape their behavior. What is surprising is that most people don’t work at changing beliefs that hold them back. For your nonprofit to shift your marketing into high gear, you need to eliminate three old beliefs that I believe hold most nonprofits back.

ELIMINATE THESE OLD BELIEFS:

"We don’t market, we educate."

‘We need to change the public’s opinion."

"We don’t have customers, why do we need marketing?"

Throughout this book I will address why these beliefs have to change. My POWERSHIFT MARKETING approach and tips are based on four core beliefs:

1. Your past does NOT define your future.

2. Only FEAR stops your success.

3. Working HARD is not enough.

4. WRITE it down, to get it done.

YOUR PAST DOESN’T DEFINE YOU

If you’ve read Napoleon Hill’s Think & Grow Rich, the original self-help book of the 50s, listened to Tony Robbins’ motivational programs, including his original Personal Power tapes, or read the book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) by Steven Covey, this won’t be a new concept to you.

Why do we hire people based on past performance (resumes)? Why do we start strategic planning sessions by reviewing our past? It’s because we believe our past reveals future success. Wrong.

LIFE LESSON - I did well in college and when I headed for the U.S. Navy Officer Candidate School, I thought I would continue this same success. The moment they handed a journalism graduate a slide rule, however, I knew I was in trouble. I finished close to the bottom of my class. Over the next two years I was a terrible naval officer. I was the classic square peg in a round hole. With my self-esteem at an all-time low, my past now gave me a very different script for the future. Fortunately, my first civilian job as head of public relations for the California Credit Union League was successful. Since then I have constantly questioned the idea that past success defines future success.

You should be asking potential employees how comfortable they are learning new things. Start planning sessions by asking about people’s aspirations and dreams. Ask questions like, What would this nonprofit look like if we didn’t have a past?

POWERSHIFT TIP 2

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WHAT YOU KNOW.

Your past does not define you. Don’t ever believe that past success will lead to future success.

Remember, if your marketing was successful in the past, there’s no assurance it will work in the future. If your marketing was unsuccessful in the past, you might be able to tweak an old idea and make it a future winner.

FEAR CAN STOP SUCCESS

Master motivator Tony Robbins believes that fear is one of the core reasons we don’t succeed in life. The fear theme is common in many motivational books. We don’t try a new idea, make a commitment to goals, or change because we fear failure or success. In my workshops I tell attendees that when evaluating ideas you must mind shift away from fear.

POWERSHIFT TIP 3

FEAR STOPS SUCCESS.

Only fear stops you from success. Learn to evaluate marketing ideas as if you didn’t have any fear.

As you explore the tips in this book, try to look at them without fear. If you had no fear, what would you do? Also remember, what you are afraid of is never as bad as what you imagine.

LIFE LESSON - In 1980 I was presenting the frequent flyer idea to a room full of fearful airline executives. Airline deregulation had occurred and we were losing a million dollars a day. We needed a fresh marketing idea. We had one, but executives either feared it would work and we couldn’t afford it, or they feared it wouldn’t work and we would spend millions on a bad idea. My job was to convince them to evaluate the idea on its own merit.

Did it make sense for an airline to reward their best customers, so traditional selection criteria like price and schedule became less important? Of course it did! If fear was removed from the process, I was convinced that these executives could open their minds to the possibility of this new idea.

WORKING HARD IS NOT ENOUGH

Have you ever seen a fly trying to get out of a closed window? It tries the same strategy over and over again. It keeps flying, harder and harder, into the window.

Many nonprofits approach the marketplace the same way. If something isn’t working, the answer is simple - fly harder! We like to think that activity and productivity are equal. They are not. That’s one of the prime tips expressed in Spencer Johnson’s bestseller Who Moved My Cheese? Instead of working harder, as they say, try to work smarter. That means you need the collective power of everyone, all your customers (clients, donors, volunteers and staff).

POWERSHIFT TIP 4

ACTIVITY AND PRODUCTIVITY ARE NOT EQUAL.

Real productivity is driven by everyone in your nonprofit taking ownership of your marketing effort. You must empower everyone to give their best effort for success.

If something isn’t working, the best approach is to empower everyone to find a solution. As the founder of McDonald’s, Ray Kroc, was reported as saying, All of us are better than some of us.

One of the best tools I’ve found for getting everyone focused on a problem and a solution is to hold stand up meetings.

POWERSHIFT TIP 5

USE STAND UP MEETINGS TO KEEP PEOPLE FOCUSED.

Empower everyone to participate in problem solving by having frequent and short meetings.

No chairs means more focus, more action, and less talk. Stand up meetings can be a great tool for focusing your team on results.

LIFE LESSON - When I worked for Western Airlines (which merged with Delta Air Lines in 1987), we were losing a million dollars a day within a few years of airline deregulation. Every day we would all gather in a conference room to document our failures. What did we do wrong yesterday that made us lose money? We almost never spent any time planning our successes. These meetings were pointless. An airline has a perishable product. If you don’t fill a seat to Hawaii on Monday, you can’t add that seat on Tuesday. It’s gone. So, what was the purpose of looking back? I guess it was to make all of us feel totally disheartened.

Eventually we started holding short stand up meetings to explore ways to make money - to plan success, not to document failure. These new meetings worked. Every day these brief meetings (they lasted less than 30 minutes) focused on little things we could do to improve revenue and operations the very next day. Within 90 days we started making money again.

WRITE IT DOWN TO GET IT DONE

In Mark McCormack’s book What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School, he shared the results of a 1979 study of Harvard MBA students. The students were asked, Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?

Only three percent of the graduates said they had, 13% had goals but hadn’t written them down, and a whopping 84% had no specific goals at all. Ten years later, these students were interviewed again. The 13% who had goals, but didn’t write them down, were earning twice as much as the 84% percent who had no goals at all. The three percent who had written goals were earning ten times as much as the other 97% put together. Money isn’t the only score card in life. But it’s clear that having written goals makes a big difference in achieving whatever you call success.

POWERSHIFT TIP 6

HAVE WRITTEN GOALS AND SHARE THEM.

Your goals must be clear, specific and measurable, and be shared with everyone in the organization.

Many nonprofits simply don't have clear, measurable marketing goals. Why? Some don’t realize the importance of goals. Others fear goals because they are afraid they won’t achieve them (the fear factor again). But most simply don't know how to set goals.

Be careful not to set goals that are too general. Your goals must be clear, written, specific, and measurable. Make a habit of daily goal setting and planning, for the rest of your life. Focus on the things you