Is Marketing Important For a Charity? If not, What is?

Is marketing important for a charity? When I was in class I learned that many organizations (particularly nonprofit organizations), marketing department is a prey for annual budget cuts - so no, it's not important...? Many do not have an in-house marketer at all. The mindset is like, anyone can do it or we cannot afford it; and everyone in the organization sort of contribute in a marketing campaign... How many messages would a public receive then?

Out sourcing sounds very tempting, but again, that would incurs big amount of dollar and it won't look good for our annual report. What next? What are the options? How can get public trust and create positive reputation without spending that much? Let's go on social media.

The Art Of Marketing, 2014

Social media in my opinion, are awesome tools... "tools". I said this to everyone, if you don't know how to utilize a tool, someone is going to get hurts. I talked to my old friend who is currently working on a social media campaign. After I listened to her, there is a pattern of social mediagaphoning. "Social mediagaphoning" (Adj.) - yes, I made it up - is the action of shouting information on the social world regardless of the listeners. Well, we got the information out but... who is listening? Is this what we want? How loud should we shout until someone notice?

My point today is, marketing is an investment. An investment contain risks, and risks can be minimized. Everyone can get into stock market, but how many make fortune out of it? Same thing. You required knowledge, experience, and guts to invest in marketing. Perhaps, risks were always the reason why small charities choose to avoid (similar to someone with small budget trying to buy a stock).

But! this is not our last hope. We can turn this around. I had this idea for 3 years now; unfortunately, my situation did not allow me to move on with the idea. I think it is time to share it to everyone; in case someone can start or share with me the viability of the idea. I will share this idea in my next post because I think you have enough today. Let's close the page and we will continue later.

"Shaping the Future of Business"

Keep in touch:

Twitter - @Rathapat_S

LinkedIn - Rathapat (Moe) Suwanaratana

Generating Funds Is Fun: Visual Matters

Youtube Campaign? Great Idea, Let's Make It Effective!

Posting a video on Youtube is not a difficult task. A successful video however, can be puzzling. How many people recall, share, embed, subscribe the video (channel)? How long people stay on your Youtube page/channel? Those are some of many ways to measure your video's success. I would like to share knowledge and opinions from what I have been taught by a few people about how-to create an effective video.

8 Steps To Success

1. Take a brainstorming session to identify goals, concepts, and ideas of implementing the video. Always remind yourself on the budget and timeframe of the video.
2. After you have a solid goal, concept, and idea, compare them with your organizational message, image, and position. You do not want a successful video campaign to reposition your organization (except it was the goal).
3. Designing ad script - this step requires you to determine the locations, time, characters, and budget of the video. These assessments will allow you to create a video script.
• Location - A specific place and time of the day/night to shoot the video as well as the number of scenes and setting of the scenes.
• Time - How long will it take for planning, shooting, and editing processes?
• Character - Who are the actor/actress for your video? 
• Budget - A video production can cost a fortune depending on the plan you create. As a nonprofit organization, use the advantage of sponsorship from students, other nonprofit organizations related to film, etc.
4. Designing storyboard - is the most indispensable step among all. Storyboard gets your script into action. It looks like a comic strip in a way that it should give a full understanding of the video from opening to closing details of a scene. Here is 8 steps to creating a great storyboard by Jake Knapp.
5. So far, you would have everything planned and ready to shoot. You will need to contact people for location, actor/actress, etc. This will take a while to complete, plan it well and have plan B and C.
• I advice to create another script for each shooting location. It will save time and cost.
• Expect the unexpected - Anything can happen, if it does, act fast. it might not be the best decision, but it is better than no reaction.
• Just in case your video might go on broadcast channels, it is a good idea to have a video shortening plan (from a minute to 30 seconds).
6. After your video is shot, update your script and rearrange all the files into proper place that is easy to find. A small tip from an instructor of mine, "never let the shooting team edit the video". Because they do not want to remove anything off the film.
7. Find some time to sit together in a room and watch the video. This aims to improve the message being delivered to the audience by giving feedbacks and comments to the video editor.
8. Final touch - the final step after adjusting the video from the feedbacks and comments. And you are ready to post it on Youtube!

Although...

your video is great, everyone is happy with the video; however, there are a few unexplainable reasons about social media. Nobody can guarantee the success of a social media campaign.

All in all, Youtube is one of the social media tools; for that reason, it has to integrate with other media platforms to maximize the result. For now, I hope this helps.

"Shaping The Future of Business"

Follow me on:

Twitter: @Rathapat_S

LinkedIn: ca.linkedin.com/in/rsuwanaratana