“What we do isn’t really marketing.” I hear that a lot when I work with non-profits and higher education. Charitable organizations do “outreach.” Some organizations do “patient awareness.” The problem is that they still need to fill seats or beds or donation boxes. You might not want to call it marketing–call it whatever you want–but there is something that you need people to do so that your organization keeps going. There is something that you need to persuade people to do that they might not do without your little nudge, no matter what you want to call it.
I have done a lot of work in higher education and this is a common mistake. They don’t like to think of what they do as marketing–it is some kind of higher calling–except, they must attract students who are the customers.
Even if you don’t want to admit that what you do is marketing, maybe you could at least bring yourself to learn from those who actually call what they do marketing. You need to understand your target markets, craft messages that they respond to, and track how they respond, all the way to a conversion–no matter what that conversion happens to be. Put together your Web conversion cycle: Learn about the school, make an appointment to visit, complete the visit, research the application, apply to the school, get accepted, decide to attend.
You might not be a school, but every non-profit organization wants people to do something, and they need to follow direct marketing principles to spend as little money getting people to do it as possible. That’s how they spend more on their higher calling.
