The Nonprofit Marketing Balancing Act

Katya created these summary slides on the fly as we provided one-minute consulting and participants shared their bright ideas on how to:

Get priorities right

• Make a marketing strategy. It's better to have a plan because you'll work smarter. Align audience, objectives and tools.
• At the end/beginning of every day, take five minutes to identify the goals for the day.
• Put your big goals and high-impact activities on a white board in your office.
• Keep to-do lists.
• Say no: What you refuse to do is as important as what you take on!
• Focus on what the top things you need to accomplish with each of your audiences are. If the item in front of you doesn't do a lot to accomplish your aims, put it aside.
• Go to where your supporters are, and feature what your supporters say rather than feeling you have to create and build everything yourself.
• Use your networks. Learn from others so you don't reinvent the wheel. Seek pro bono resources.
• Ask for help, or ask a manager to choose among priorities when you're overloaded.
• Block off time away from e-mail and your computer.
• Communicate early and often with staff and external partners. It avoids time-consuming confusion later.
• No-meeting Fridays.
• Keep social-networking time spent in line with its importance — most attendees put that at less than two hours per day.
• Don't take on something you can't do well. It's better to have no Facebook page or blog than an inactive one in which you don't respond to supporters.