MARCOM 2010 – New Site Coming…

Plan now for MARCOM Professional Development 2010!  Coming to the Hilton Lac-Leamy in Gatineau, June 10 & 11, 2010, it is the premiere forum for public and not-for-profit marketers and communicators.  New Early Bird incentives will give you reason to cheer and to book early to reserve your professional development opportunity.  Don’t forget to plan to attend a pre-forum workshop on June 9.

digitalOttawa is the Event Sponsor and Official Web Designer, busy creating a brand new Website to begin the conversation leading up to the forum in June.

This year’s theme is “Marketing with Authenticity“.  Speakers will give their advice on all the ways to build trust with the audiences you will touch in 2010.

Until the new year, stay safe and happy holidays from the MARCOM team!

Ten Commandments of Social Marketing

James (Jim) H. Mintz

Director, Centre of Excellence for Public Sector Marketing

Introduction

The social marketing approach will put users on the cutting edge of social change. Social marketing need not be expensive; but a way of thinking and approaching behavioral change and not a way of spending money… it is not an ad campaign! It is a tool; really a process and set of tools wrapped in a philosophy for helping an organization do what it wants to do to better society.

To be successful social marketers should focus on aggressive listening rather than aggressive promotion. The planning process starts and finishes with research, and research is conducted throughout to inform the development of the strategy.

The following are my Ten Commandments of Social Marketing:

1. If the staff running the campaign are not trained in marketing and do not have a good grasp of marketing concepts and theory (not communication and education) then more than likely the campaign initiative will not succeed. For reasons which are a complete mystery, most social marketing initiatives seem to be run by individuals that have no background in marketing. Can you imagine someone in the private sector being asked to lead a marketing initiative with no formal training in marketing? Not likely, but frequently staff responsible for managing social marketing campaigns have no basic training in the field of marketing. Most come from the field of communications, which may explain why many campaigns are heavy on communications but lack basic marketing principles and techniques. For more information on marketing training courses go to: http://www.carleton.ca/ppd/indepth/cpsm.htm

2. There are 4 Ps to marketing but check out social marketing campaigns and see how many actually address the 4 Ps of marketing… very few. Most campaigns tend to be social communications or advertising campaigns but few are really social marketing.

3. Segmentation is the key to effective social marketing but many campaigns are not targeted and focus on the “general public”. Some campaigns use demographics and geographic segmentation but remember with social marketing you are dealing with behaviour change and the most important type of segmentation in social marketing is psychographics , but how many social marketers have used psychographic segmentation to develop campaigns… very few.

4. Examine the factors influencing the adoption of the behaviour change (i.e. perceived barriers/potential benefits for targeted behaviour as well as competing behaviours /forces). To be effective in the field of social marketing and influence behaviour change, marketers must understand what their target audiences perceive to be the barriers to change. Marketers focus on removing barriers to an activity while simultaneously enhancing the benefits. There is a tendency for individuals to respond positively to actions that are highly beneficial and have few barriers. Social marketers conduct research to discover the key barriers and potential benefits and then develop strategies and tactics that addresses them. The safer, healthier etc. behaviour you promote is competing with many other choices your target audience can make, including the risky behaviour they may be performing now. To be effective, your strategy must make your proposed behaviour at least as attractive as the alternatives. People do things because they get benefits in return. Barriers make it harder for people to act. Your research must uncover which benefits the target audience wants more, and which barriers they struggle with most. Your strategy depends on this.

5. Pay attention to social norms which are people’s beliefs about the attitudes and behaviours that are normal, acceptable, or even expected in a particular social context. In many situations, people’s perception of these norms will greatly influence their behaviour.

Therefore, when people misperceive the norms of their group—that is, when they inaccurately think an attitude or behaviour is more (or less) common than is actually the case—they may choose to engage in behaviours that are in sync with those false norms. The social norm process works by collecting data on the actual versus perceived behavioural norms. If there is an over-exaggeration of the norms, then social marketing messages and tactics are developed to communicate the true norms that exist. By continuing to communicate the true norms, the myth that everybody is doing it is slowly eroded away until the group realizes that the majority are doing what’s right. When this positive message is sustained for a year or two, the negative behaviours of the group begin to shift downward to reflect the majority behaviour.

6. Employ upstream efforts, which aim to change the political, social, legal, and physical or public policy environment by giving messages to industry or government. The upstream concept involves influencing decisions makers and facilitating changes in environments so change (individual or systemic) can take place.  Think of social change as a stream. Typically organizations do a lot of work downstream – working one-on-one on individual behaviour change.  And this is good. But until norms are shifted and the behaviour is seen as acceptable and desirable, the change can be isolated and short-lived. By moving further upstream and also involving community influential’s or organizations whose actions are needed to bring about change, you have more of a chance to create widespread and sustained change.

7. Objectives must be measurable. Also set objectives for the following 3 types of objectives

Behaviour objectives are simple clear and doable actions.

Belief objectives are tied to attitudes, opinions, feelings or values held by the target audience. For instance the individual may need to believe that their current behaviour is putting themselves, their families or society at risk, that they are capable of performing the desired behaviour and that the behaviour will produce the desired results.

Knowledge objectives are based on statistics or facts that could motivate the target audience. In particular, the target audience should know the benefits of the proposed behaviour and what tools they can access to help them with behaviour change.

8. Positioning is a key element to social marketing. In social marketing, products are hard to promote because of their high “price.” Products like behaviours and attitudes require long ­ term commitments and do not sell as easily as a bar of soap or a car. The cost of a social marketing product often includes a person’s time and effort, giving up things he likes, embarrassment or inconvenience, or social disapproval. To counteract factors working against adoption of the product, we need to acknowledge these potential problems and address them.

Your product positioning determines how the people in your target audience think about your product as compared to the competition. Product positioning is usually based on either the benefits of the product or removal of barriers. By talking about your product with the target audience, you can learn the benefits they value most and the barriers they foresee.

Decisions regarding product will determine positioning. In social marketing it includes the perceptions, impressions and feelings that consumers have for the product. It is important to make choices that are based on a clear understanding of your competition. Know the needs, wants and preferences that your target market associates with their current behaviour (i.e. your competitor). Make choices that ensure that your target audience will see your product as offering more and greater benefits than the one they associate with their current behaviour. The product’s positioning should be thought of as the way the product is defined by consumers on important attributes-the place the product occupies in the consumers’ minds relative to competing products.  (Source: Nedra Kline Weinreich, Weinreich Communications Spare Change Blog http://www.social-marketing.com/blog/)

9. Innovation in methods/tactics used to deliver messages is key to success in social marketing. Strategies should use a combination of social marketing targeted tactics directed to key target groups. It is more effective to reach target audiences with messages that are relevant and will resonate with them. What tends to happen is organizations hire advertising, public relations or web experts and guess what your tactics are focused on …advertising, public relations and web.

There is no secret to ensuring you are using the right methods/ tactics. If you have done your home work and develop a comprehensive social marketing plan … not a communications/public relations or public education/outreach plan … you are much more likely to make the right decisions on selecting the right tactics. (If you don’t know how to prepare a plan get a copy of our planning guide at www.publicsectormarketing.ca- Resources.)

Three tactics that tend to be overlooked are:

“Face to face marketing”: We are so programmed to use conventional communications tactics like the web and publications and other forms of communications that we sometimes forget that the solution to the communications problem may be as simple as getting out of your office and talking to people. (Yes public sector communicators actually communicating face to face with real people which has become out of fashion these days.) For more information on this topic see November 4^th blog at www.jimmintz.ca

Strategic Alliances: When developing your tactical plans it is a good idea to consider how you can expand the reach of your messages through strategic alliances. You may wish to identify specific organizations or simply the types of organizations with whom you will develop alliances. Partnerships between external organizations for the purpose of delivering information to citizens are becoming increasingly popular. Strategic alliances are gaining recognition by all sectors whether they are public, private or non-profit as a legitimate and effective way of reaching and influencing individuals. Partnerships need to be considered as an integral tool for delivering cost effective messages to audiences identified for the campaign. It is believed that both the tangible (e.g. marketing and distribution networks) and intangible (e.g. credibility, associative) value of partnerships could be substantial and these partnerships should be leveraged to deliver psychologically-targeted, positive and sustained messages to target audiences. An expanded marketing network composed of government, as well as corporate sector, non-profits, interest groups, coalitions, professional associations, academia and opinion leaders will improve credibility tremendously, over a single-source marketing campaign. They will also help effectively saturate the media while spreading the cost across all sectors. Strategic Alliances require common and compatible objectives and they should be used to assist an organization do something it cannot do on its own. Finally strategic alliances can be risky and developing them can be time consuming so only enter into a strategic alliance when the benefit to your organization is clear. For info on this important topic visit www.berniecolterman.ca

Social Media Marketing: We now live in an era where the communication and marketing landscape has been completely turned upside down. Organizations and governments are no longer in full control of their messages/brands; the consumer/citizen is. The whole Web 2.0 revolution is essentially synonymous with the democratization of the web. It’s about engagement and dialogue as opposed to one-way communication. The technological barriers that have restricted the “one-2-many” model of communication are no longer present. Now anyone can start a blog, post a video, write a review, join a social network, start a podcast (in seconds), and have their content viewed or heard by millions at virtually no cost. There are over 175,000 new blogs every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second. There are more podcasts than there are radio stations in the world! The topics cover every niche imaginable. The questions each organization should be asking themselves (and know the answers to) are: “What are people saying about us?” and “How can we get engaged to make a favourable impact”? A proper social media marketing strategy as part of a integrated social marketing strategy can help organizations navigate through the world of digital marketing and steer it towards the path of success using these new channels in enhancing their social marketing initiative. For more info on social media marketing visit: www.mikekujawski.ca

10. Evaluate evaluate evaluate. If you have measureable objectives, evaluation should not be difficult. The one approach that works well for social marketers is benchmarking /tracking approach. Benchmark surveys are conducted before a campaign to determine knowledge, behaviours, beliefs and attitudes of the target audience. After the campaign the same questions are asked in a tracking survey. The results of both studies are compared to determine whether the campaign has had an effect on the target audience(s). However there are a number of other methodologies but most important make sure to measure knowledge, beliefs/attitudes/behaviours.

Once the evaluation is completed make sure to take appropriate measures to enhance and improve the campaign. Don’t be disappointed if at first your evaluation shows that your campaign has not been successful. Learn by thoroughly analyzing the results of the evaluation and make the necessary changes.

Oh and one more thing make sure you have staff and or contractors who know how to implement a social marketing campaign and have experience in campaign management.  Many excellent plans fail because of poor execution. Execution of the plan is where “rubber hits the road” so making sure you have experienced staff or contractors who know how to manage the implementation of a social marketing campaign is real important.

James H. Mintz is a former marketing executive with the federal government and is presently the Co-Director of the Centre of Excellence for Public Sector Marketing (CEPSM). He is also Program Director of the “Professional Certificate in Public Sector and Non-Profit Marketing” at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business. He also teaches Non-Profit/Public Sector Marketing at the University of South Florida, College of Public Health, in Tampa FL.

The Case for Municipal Marketing

James H. Mintz and Bernie Colterman, Co-Directors, Centre of Excellence for Public Sector Marketing

Destigmatizing Public Sector Marketing

Marketing has its roots in business, and remains a major management function. However, in an era in which governments need to be more responsive and accountable to the needs of the public, marketing can help governments accomplish this goal. With governments spending significant dollars delivering programs and services, there is a need for increased efficiency, accountability and transparency in the processes used to deliver these initiatives. Many government organizations are adopting marketing approaches to help meet two major challenges: the challenge of meeting mandates and satisfying client needs in the face of significantly diminishing resources; and the challenge of meeting specified revenue or cost-recovery targets. As well, with the managerial shift of the public sector to mirror a business-like approach, the adoption of marketing and related managerial practices can serve as a key component in strengthening accountability in government operations[i]

Government organizations have long debated the applicability of marketing concepts and management approaches, many of which stem from private sector notions of consumption and economic choice, as well as an environment in which market forces rule. However, in recent years, there has been growing recognition that marketing can be used to enrich public sector management and better serve citizens and stakeholders. Concepts such as services marketing have emerged in the context of challenges faced by governments. Rather than associating “marketing” with the sale of goods for profit, marketing concepts are now being applied to help encourage program adoption and improve services in support of “public good” mandates [ii]

Marketing and Municipal Government

Marketing is universally recognized as one of the most important elements in business management. In the economically challenging twenty-first century, it may also become one of the most important functions of city management.

Some experts have gone so far as to say that the quintessential function of any business is not manufacturing or service delivery, but marketing. The object of marketing, after all, is to make, hold, and fully develop customers in the face of competition for those customers. Without these customers, no business has a need for any of its other functions. However, the traditional assumption was that since municipal governments do not have customers, and thus no competitors, marketing is an unnecessary function of public management. Indeed, few are the professional city managers or department heads who have had any training or experience in marketing.

Most professional public managers understand that governments are service providers and have customers: the residents, taxpayers, investors, property owners, visitors, small business owners, and other funders and recipients of public services. But because government services are ostensibly monopolies within their geographic jurisdictions, it is commonly assumed that these captive customers have no other possible provider and that cities do not, therefore, have competitors. Also due to public taxation dynamics, it has been assumed that government revenues do not, as in business, depend on how well a city “sells.”[iii]

Many citizens are critical of municipal government and what they perceive as wasteful purchases and practices, a lack of needed services, and a pervasion of government by powerful interest groups. Specific complaints include the belief that there is a discrepancy between taxes paid and the dollar value of services received; scandalous government expenditures on common goods and the resulting overruns on government contracts; the deterioration of critical public infrastructure; the poor responsiveness and flexibility of the public bureaucracy; unwarranted overprotection of public employees even in the face of incompetence or unethical conduct; systems problems resulting in long waiting lines, and dirty streets.

Surely municipal governments need to improve their real and perceived performance in order to raise the citizenry’s confidence and satisfaction and, ultimately, their support. One answer to improving performance is for cities and towns to adopt tools that the private sector uses to operate their businesses more successfully. One of the most overlooked fields has been marketing.[iv]

Too often, professionals from public sector organizations not involved in marketing equate marketing to simplistic “promotion”. In reality, any involvement in delivering programs or services to customers, improving public health or safety, the environment, increasing compliance with laws, improving customer satisfaction, decreasing service delivery costs, increasing revenue, or engaging citizens or stakeholders, implicitly or explicitly involve marketing.

Simply stated, marketing is a process for working smarter. It provides an organized approach to adopting a customer-centered focus, determining who is most likely to respond to organizational offerings, communicating in compelling language that moves audiences to action, defining the environment and other factors that will impact organizational success, delivering a program or service at the right time, place and price, and monitoring efforts so that continuous improvements can be made.[v]

As Kotler and Lee point out “Marketing turns out to be the best planning platform for a public agency that wants to meet citizen needs and deliver real value.” Public agencies can benefit from bringing a more conscious marketing approach and mindset to their mission, problem solving and outcomes. Marketing is not the same as advertising, sales, or communications. It is these skills and more. It involves a customer (citizen–centered) approach, one that helps address citizen complaints, alters their perceptions, and improves performance. It is a disciplined approach, requiring those who adopt marketing for their municipality to develop a formal plan by conducting a situation analysis, setting goals, segmenting the market, conducting market research, positioning, choosing a strategic blend of marketing tools, evaluating results, preparing budgets, and formulating an implementation plan. Governments can move from being low-tech and low-touch to being high-tech and high-touch, thereby delivering more value for the taxpayer dollar.[vi]

The marketing of communities is most often associated with ads and brochures aimed at attracting new industrial development. But ads and brochures hardly define the scope of community marketing media, which now include web sites, videos, trade shows, publicity, special events, direct mail, and personal sales calls. Moreover, there are many other purposes for marketing, as communities may want to:

• Recruit industry and office facilities
• Attract retail development
• Draw tourists
• Draw shoppers downtown
• Draw home buyers to bypassed neighbourhoods
• Be chosen as a convention and meeting site
• Be the location for major sports, entertainment, or cultural events
• Be the site of on-location movie production
• Attract real estate investment and development, perhaps to depressed or designated redevelopment areas
• Attract new residents generally, as with some depleted rural towns
• Attract retirees as residents
• Attract young people or the “Creative Class” as residents
• Attract new college graduates as residents and workers
• Attract certain categories of locally scarce labour from other areas
• Bring back former residents
• Recruit families with children to support local public schools.[vii]

Communities also, if less frequently, market for retention in addition to attraction in some of the above categories, seeking to hold onto customers who now have more choices than ever. And it isn’t always the entire community—the city, county, or region that is marketed. It may be the industrial park, the downtown business district, a tourist area, a special street, or a historic property. A few cities have marketed older residential neighborhoods to home buyers, while regions advertise scenic, historic, or other underused highways to travelers.

In recent years many places have chosen to market themselves in one fashion or another. But when agencies and departments undertake separate marketing efforts, there can sometimes be inconsistencies that muddle perceptions of the community. Such marketing initiatives characteristically suffer from a lack of management perspective, and therefore fail to benefit from the lessons that decades of marketing experience in the private sector have taught managers in business. Such difficulties can be minimized, however, with overall expert marketing oversight from the city manager’s office. Different approaches to different markets are not, however, undesirable.[viii]

Marketing is not “communications,” since a city can communicate without achieving any marketing effect. It is not simply buying media. It’s not being creative, achieving awareness, or making the public like you. Nor is it a matter of producing art or entertainment. All of these actions are done in the name of marketing, and certainly all can contribute to its objectives; but none of these should be seen as the essence of marketing.

Marketing simply means creating, enhancing the value of, or retaining, a customer. A customer is someone who will benefit an organization financially–primarily taxes in the case of municipalities—for what it has to offer. And that makes it a function of management. Marketing is management strategy. But perhaps the most compelling reason for cities to engage in marketing is that they are, in effect, doing it anyway by default even if they are unaware of it. Over the last century, cities formed planning commissions because they understood that their future growth would be planned for them by land owners and developers—in potentially undesirable ways—if they didn’t take some initiative themselves. Similarly, what a city stands for in the minds of out-of-town businesspeople and investors, tourists, shoppers, young people, and others is being defined every day by other people, and those perceptions strongly influence location and investment decisions. So the only question is whether the local government wishes to be part of the game or leave its destiny in the hands of others.[ix]

Landmark Study Public Sector Marketing

Recognizing the growing importance of marketing in the public and non-profit sectors, the Centre of Excellence for Public Sector Marketing and Phase 5 conducted a landmark study in May, 2006 to assess the health of marketing in the public and non-profit sectors in Canada. The study “Setting the Baseline: the State of Marketing in the Public and Not-Profit Sectors in Canada” is based on a survey of close to 600 professionals in marketing-related positions in government and non-profit organizations across Canada. It represents a benchmark against which organizations can gauge marketing management capabilities in the future.

The survey results clearly demonstrated that strategic marketing management and best practices have not been adopted in any significant way by governments across Canada. Managers indicated, on balance, that their organizations have adopted very few of the best practices of leading marketing organizations. [x]

Although non-profits tend to score higher on all indices, the study paints a bleak picture of the overall marketing health of these two sectors. Government organizations, in particular, seem to lack the culture, strategic planning environment, management systems, knowledge and skill set, marketing information and performance measurement regime that are indicative of market-centred organizations.[xi]

This trait also appears to be wide-spread and cultural in nature, with little evidence that there are significant pockets of marketing excellence in the public sector. To test this, further analysis was conducted to determine whether certain types of government organizations are naturally more inclined to be marketing-oriented given the nature of their mandate. For example, an organization that delivers services to citizens like municipal governments might have more impetus to be marketing-oriented than one that performs a regulatory role. Surprisingly, the analysis shows that scores are tightly grouped and do not vary significantly depending on the role and types of services provided (i.e. whether mandatory or optional.)[xii]

As governments and other public organizations continue to try to meet the challenges associated with demands for better and improved service delivery as well as new services and programs with budgetary constraints, new and different models of management and their associated tools and tactics need to be considered to help municipal governments deliver more quality, speed, efficiency, convenience and fairness to its citizens. Marketing presents a comprehensive, integrated and innovative approach from which to manage municipal government resources. The time has come for leaders in municipal government to recognize and embrace the lexicon and practice of strategic marketing.

James H. Mintz is a former marketing executive with the federal government and is presently the Co-Director of the Centre of Excellence for Public Sector Marketing (CEPSM). He is also Program Director of the “Professional Certificate in Public Sector and Non-Profit Marketing” at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business. He also teaches Non-Profit/Public Sector Marketing at the University of South Florida, College of Public Health, in Tampa FL.

Bernie Colterman is a Co-Director of CEPSM . For 17 years, Bernie worked in municipal government and now consults with the federal, provincial and municipal governments, national associations and not-for profit organizations in the areas of strategic marketing planning, partnership development and revenue generation. He has trained numerous municipal employees in the areas of Sponsorship Development and Marketing and is a regular speaker at conferences and events for the public and not-for-profit sectors.

MARKETING “VITAL SIGNS” CHECKLIST

Are you a marketing driven organization? Take the test

□ You do not use terms like “general public” when referring to your target audience

□ “Plan” is more than a four letter word

□ All marketing activities are coordinated and integrated into an overall plan

□ You focus on results and NOT process and politics

□ Your organization takes “risks”, although ensuring they are “reasoned risks“

□ You do not keep doing the same things every year i.e. programs, services, products

□ Marketing campaigns consistently meet their goals and objectives.

□ You take action when results are not achieved.

□ You have a clear understanding of the needs of your target group(s)

□ You have a dedicated marketing budget

□ Your organization’s brand has value

□ Reinventing the wheel is not standard operating procedure

□ Your organization is focused on “outcomes” not “outputs”

□ Evidence-based decision making is in your organization’s vocabulary.

□ Strategic Alliances/partnerships are a key component of your marketing activities

□ Your marketing objectives are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time Limited)

□ Your organization does not use the web as a warehouse to store information

□ You value training in areas like marketing and communications

□ Performance measurement is something that your organization does regularly

□ You are up to date with the latest trends and technologies in the area of marketing and communications

□ Branding is more than a visual identifier

□ You are open to change

□ You see the need to understand your “competition”

□ You use all the elements of the marketing mix (4 p’s) and not just promotion

□ Your organization believes that the ultimate objective for marketing is not education and creating awareness but behaviour change

If you scored:

20 –25: You have the tools, processes and culture in place to be successful and sustainable

15 –19: You are on the right path, but need to examine those areas where you are weak

10 –14: You are likely struggling and need to take a serious look at priorities and processes

6 –9: You are on the borderline of existence

0 –5: You need to start over

[i] Mintz, J.H., Church, D., & Colterman, B. The Case for Marketing in the Public Sector. The Journal of Public Sector Management, 36, Retrieved March 17, 2009, from http://optimumonline.ca/article.phtml?id=270

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Gann, J. (2008).How to Evaluate (and Improve) Your Community’s Marketing-Part One. ICMA Press IQ Report. 40.

[iv] Kotler, P., & Lee, N. (2007). Marketing in the Public Sector: A Roadmap for Improved Performance. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education.

[v] Colterman, B. (2009, February 9). Call it whatever you want-I call it working smarter… Message posted to http://berniecolterman.wordpress.com/2009/02/09/call-it-whatever-you-want-i-call-it-working-smarter/

[vi] Kotler, P., & Lee, N. (2007). Marketing in the Public Sector: A Roadmap for Improved Performance. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education.

[vii] Gann, J. (2008).How to Evaluate (and Improve) Your Community’s Marketing-Part One. ICMA Press IQ Report. 40.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] Ibid.

[x] http://www.publicsectormarketing.ca/downloads/CEPSM_Optimum_Article.pdf p,5-12

[xi] ibid

[xii] Ibid

Insights from Mitch Joel

Posted by Mitch Joel, President, Twist Image, on his blog, Six Pixels of Separation, April 1, 2009, 10:31 PM

ALWAYS REMEMBER MARKETING IS NOT ADVERTISING

It’s not just traditional mass media advertising that is being affected by the economy. It turns out that Web advertising is beginning to show signs of economic woes as well, but make no mistake about it, Digital Marketing is still growing and people are still spending money getting their brands online.

Does that confuse you? It should not.

Advertising is only one sub-set of Marketing. It’s not the entire Marketing sector (at all).

Read the full post…

Marketing Magazine dubbed him the “Rock Star of Digital Marketing” and in 2006 he was named one of the most influential authorities on Blog Marketing in the world. Mitch Joel is President of Twist Image – an award-winning Digital Marketing and Communications agency. In 2008, Mitch was named Canada’s Most Influential Male in Social Media and one of the top 100 online marketers in the world. His first book, Six Pixels of Separation, named after his successful Blog and Podcast (www.twistimage.com/blog) will be published in the Fall 2009 on Grand Central Publishing – Hachette Book Group (formerly Time Warner Books).

When the sponsorship going gets tough – the tough innovate

Bernie Colterman, President

Colterman Marketing Group (CMG) Canada

The current economic situation has had a significant effect on corporate spending at all levels. Organizations that rely on “corporate goodwill” or “soft” benefit programs to generate sponsorship revenue are likely to have major challenges when it comes to renewing existing or recruiting new sponsors. Despite the gloom, there is an upside. Challenging times provides an opportunity to become more innovative and value-driven in our sponsorship approach. It creates an opportunity to take our sponsorship program to the next level by actively seeking sponsors that are more aligned with our events, listening to their needs and responding at a more strategic level in meeting their challenges.

Here are some tips on how you increase your odds for survival in this tough economic climate.

Don’t Ignore the Reality – Talk to Your Current Customers

Take the time to meet with your sponsors now, acknowledge their past support, re-establish mutual benefits and discuss how you can help them adjust to their new reality. More effort should be placed on helping sponsors capitalize on all of the opportunities that are presented through the sponsorship. Allocating up to 15% of your total sponsorship fee towards sponsor activation is not unreasonable. You may also need to be flexible by spreading payment terms over two company fiscal years or providing multiple invoices that allows them to allocate costs from different budgets.

Promote Your Unique Position in the Market

Take a stand on who you are, what audience (s) you serve and why your organization or event is unique in the marketplace (e.g. we’re the only event that brings together the entire agriculture community”). Communicate your unique value proposition and competitive advantage in all of your print and electronic documents. This will help to position your organization in a competitive environment and reinforce why a company should stick with you during challenging times.

Make the Shift from Tactical to Strategic Partner

You need to understand the real needs of your current sponsors or prospects and be flexible in your sponsorship packages. This can only be accomplished by talking with your sponsors and responding with sponsorship proposals (solutions) that actually respond to their specific needs, whether it’s increased sales, product positioning, employee recruitment, etc.

Focus on In-Kind Sponsorships

Look at how you can reduce expenses through in-kind sponsorships or increase impact through strategic partnerships or other forms of collaborative arrangements. For example, instead of looking for a big cash sponsorship from a local retailer, why not make use of a sponsor’s distribution network to help promote the event, thus increasing revenues through increased attendance?

Sell the Sponsorship “Experience”

Move away from features as your key selling point and focus on presenting the “sponsorship experience”. You want your prospect to see, hear, touch or get a taste of your sponsorship opportunity – to appeal to the emotional “hot buttons”. Techniques include the use of visual images to communicate the appeal of your event, posting on line videos that include audience testimonials, featuring sponsor testimonials in your promotional materials and demonstrating the community benefits that are achieved through sponsored initiatives.

Demonstrate Value and Impact

You need to clearly demonstrate the value that a sponsor has received through their investment. As a starting point, you should be aiming to provide at least $2.00 in value for every $1.00 invested by the company. You’ll also want to demonstrate how their sponsorship has helped influence customer buying decisions by tracking the numbers of samples distributed, web site click-thru’s, number of customers attending a product demonstration, coupon redemptions, etc. Lastly, you’ll want to demonstrate the impact of the sponsorship by linking their investment with something tangible that your organization (and audience) sees as valuable in the community.

Try the “If It Was My Money” Test

To determine if your sponsorship program is relevant, ask yourself “would I invest my own money in this sponsorship opportunity?” If the answer is “Yes”, then you likely have the confidence to respond to tough questions. If the answer is “No”, it’s time to adjust your sponsorship benefits program to the point where you would be willing to spend your own money.

CMG Canada specializes in sponsorship training, assessment and valuation services to the fair industry. Check out Bernie’s Blog at www.berniecolterman.ca

The Emergence of Marketing as a “Business Enabler” for the Public and Not-for-Profit Sectors

Arlene Dickinson, CEO Venture Communications and Judge on CBC's hit series Dragons' Den

Marketers in the public and not for profit sectors have a unique and difficult challenge to overcome. They must show relevance to the organization they serve, in order for their efforts to be supported. There is often little understanding of the value that you as a marketer deliver.

For both sectors, marketing is not only misunderstood, but often characterized as an “advertising” or sales-focused endeavor. This, by very definition, can lead the organizations to believe they are being “sold”, instead of represented, through thoughtful and disciplined communication.

What many fail to realize is that some of the fundamental challenges facing public and not-for-profit organizations are not that dissimilar from what many private and for-profit companies confront. Every organization exists to serve a purpose. And every organization relies on multiple stakeholders in order to fulfill that purpose. Marketing provides a powerful framework and toolset for helping all organizations clearly articulate their sense of purpose, to understand their business model (and who they rely upon to execute it), and to identify key information needs to address in order to make it all work. Yes, marketing also provides a tactical set of tools for executing that communication – but the real power of the discipline lies in the strategy behind those tactics.

And because of its inherently strategic focus, Marketing must be owned by the senior executives of the organization in order for it to be a driver in any business model. In these tough times, it’s more important than ever that marketing be leveraged as a business enabler and invited into strategic discussions and planning processes.
MARCOM 2009 provides a unique opportunity for program managers, marketing and communications professionals from government, associations and the non-profit sectors to share experiences and ideas with colleagues from across Canada on how marketing can contribute strategically to an organization’s goals. I invite you to join me at my Opening Keynote where I will speak about how to ensure that you are engaging your internal stakeholders to help them understand the value of marketing in the context of solving your organization’s challenges. You will learn some simple ways to ensure you are speaking the same language as the people you rely on in order for your marketing plans to be effective. And you will gain unique insights into how to get your senior executives to be champions of marketing.

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