2. Learning Organisations – Communication
Learning organisations need to make it clear who their services are aimed at, what those services are, and how
their learners can access them! Learning Organisations need to communicate this effectively to all their
stakeholders.
Learning Outcomes: Step 10 – Communication
After completing Step 10, Learning Organisations from the Voluntary and Community and Faith Sector should be
able to:
•
Understand what is meant by the terms ‘Marketing’ and ‘Public Relations’
•
Communicate the Learning Programmes you are hoping to offer
•
Know who your audience, or audiences are
• Understand and analyse your ‘Unique Selling Point’
•
Develop ‘key messages’ for your Learning Organisation
•
Understand how to communicate with new learners
•
Market your Learning Provision and develop a clear Marketing Plan
• Develop and write a PR or Communications plan
Step 10 will help you to meet quality indicators for:
PQASSO Quality area 1 Planning for Quality
PQASSO Quality area 4 User-Centred service
PQASSO Quality area 12 Results
CIF Question 2 Effective Learning and Training
CIF Question 3 Resources
CIF Question 6 Learning Guidance and Support
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3. Marketing and
Public Relations
Learning Provider Extra
Your learning programme
• What is your learning programme?
• What do you have on offer?
How will your learners know what you do?
3 basic questions
• Why does your organisation exist?
• What is it trying to achieve?
• What are the key objectives?
Sound familiar? Here’s a basic definition of marketing
Marketing is about finding out what people need and want and developing effective ways of meeting these.
In a ‘spin’?
Not sure what you want to say, and how you want to say it? Well, before you rush off and design your
new leaflet or website, there are some big questions you need to ask yourselves.
Who do you want to communicate with?
This is about getting your message across to the people you want to reach! These people are your
‘audience’ (target group). Most groups usually have more than one audience. Here’s an example:
Audience who are they?
• Customers - Young people, older people, BME groups, children
• Professionals - People working in your field
• Volunteers - Variety of ages and backgrounds
• Funders - LSC, lottery, trusts, individuals, companies, charities
Each ‘audience’ may require a different message. Younger people may need a different message to
older people. The message you want to get across has to be relevant to the person receiving it!
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You may want to offer a series of
‘taster’ sessions to bring reluctant
learners back into education. From
this, you can find out what they like
and want, and develop successful
programmes for the future. You might
have a very clear idea that intensive
learning is needed for a certain target
group.
Whatever you set out to do funders
need to see what their money is
buying. So, they’ll need to know how
intensive your learning programmes
are.
Now you know who your
audiences are, what’s
your Key Message?
4. What’s your Unique Selling Point? USP
Now you know who your audiences are, what’s your Key Message
Think about why you’re special!
What is your USP (Unique Selling Point)?
4P's
Product
Place
Price
Promotion
Why should potential customers choose you?
What’s your special quality?
When reading about Marketing
you’ll come across the 4 P’s.
Who makes up your market (your audiences)?
For Voluntary and Community
groups this could mean:
Product service provided
Place ease of access
Price fees charged or subsidy needed
Promotion getting your message across
to your target audience
Are all your customers the same?
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5. How will you get your message out there?
There are many ways to communicate with your audiences.
The methods you use are called Marketing Tools. They include:
Marketing Tool
Publicity
Open Days
Promotion
Advertising
Products
Personal
Example
Newsletters, press releases, articles in magazines, events, word of mouth,
websites, email networks
Inviting potential funders, customers and partners to visit you
Targeted mail-outs, competitions, events, websites
Leaflets, posters, adverts in local papers and magazines, other newsletters,
websites
Information guides, toolkits
Networking, meetings, presentations, conferences, displays of your work
What is a Marketing Plan?
So, marketing is not just about running off leaflets from your
overworked printer! Voluntary and Community groups,
however big or small, need a Marketing Plan. For example;
You might be a Learning Provider who’s audience is:
•
•
•
•
•
Young men
From Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities
Aged 16-25 years old
From a particular geographical area
Need basic ICT skills
''''''''''''?
How will you communicate with them?
So, you know your audience!
Now you need to develop your Marketing Objectives (back to those objectives
again!). It’s about how you’re going to do it. They might look like this:
• Hold an event such as an Open Day with attractions aimed at young men from
BME communities
• Inform all youth clubs and schools through presentations and posters
• Make sure your Centre is attractive and welcoming to young men
• Use leaflets, mail-outs, meetings and networks to inform all professionals
working with young men, about your learning opportunity
Now some questions which might help you relate the 4 P’s to your group
and develop you Marketing Objectives
4P's Product Place Price Promotion
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6. Marketing your service
What are you marketing?
Who are you trying to reach?
What are your marketing objectives?
What methods will you use?
Once you’ve agreed on your
Marketing Objectives there are some
questions you need to think about:
How do you want to come across?
• Which ones are most urgent?
• What funds do you have available?
• What are the timescales?
• Who will do what, by when, and how?
Now you’re ready to put
together your Action Plan!
How do you evaluate whether your objectives have been achieved?
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7. Marketing Action Plan
Activities
Who?
Timing
Public Relations - PR
What is PR?
Another term that seems to have a bad
reputation! When people think of PR,
they sometimes get the idea that it’s
about ‘covering your back’, or ‘spinning
an angle’ on something (especially in
politics). In reality, PR is about:
Costs
Comments
Met
Managing your public image – Your… reputation
Why does public relations (PR) matter?
Because people will form an image or opinion of:
• your organisation
• who you work with and their needs
• how you work with them
You want to influence that because that image can affect:
• demand for your services
• recruitment of staff
• community backing
• funding
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good or bad
8. Writing a PR or Communications Plan
Where are you now? (situation analysis)
Any PR or communications plan has to ask these questions:
• Why does your organisation exist?
• What are you trying to achieve?
• What are your key objectives?
This will provide the grounding to
enable you to construct your plan.
Having done this you need to ask
yourself how aware the public are of
your work and what their opinion of it is.
In order to get an objective view, some
research will probably be required –
often a quick questionnaire or phone
call to a reasonable selection of people
will do. This will help identify your
‘position’ in people’s minds.
Where are you?
Take a Learning Provider as an example:
Get people in your organisation together. Draw a straight line across a page.
At one end write ‘LEARNING PROVIDER’, at the other OPEN COLLEGE NETWORK
(OCN). Ask people to put a cross where they think your organisation is between the
two extremes in your field. This can help you to agree on where you are now.
Learning Provider
Learning Provider Extra
OCN
Where do you want to go? (your objective)
Where do you want your organisation to be seen within a certain time frame, say a year, three
years or perhaps by the end of a campaign? Do you want more people to know about you, and
if so, why? Do you have the capacity to handle larger numbers of users/clients/visitors?
Who do you want to talk to? (your target audience)
Which section(s) of the community are you trying to reach? Examples may be local opinion
leaders, such as the local MP or newspaper editor, parents of children under five, or those who
care for the elderly. The ‘general public’, or ‘everybody’ is too vague. The more you narrow this
target down the more effective you will be. Targeting does not mean excluding everybody else, it
just means knowing a smaller group of people better.
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Find out how your target audience
gets its information:
• What papers do they read?
• Do they listen to local radio?
• Are they part of another network?
• Do they think the local paper is a waste
of time?
This will all help with implementing your
strategy.
What do you want to say? (your key
message)
Narrow down what you want to say as
much as possible. Key messages are
usually very simple and rarely involve
policy statements.
9. You should ask yourself:
‘Why should our target audience come to us?’
The answer ‘because we are good’ is not good enough! Why are you good?
‘We are trustworthy’ - ‘We know what we are talking about’ Both key messages!
You don’t always need to spell out a key message in words. It may be incorporated into the design of
your newsletter, your new leaflet, your business card. For example, a leaflet from your local Supermarket
about new their products will look very different from a leaflet about new training courses taking place in
your local Community Centre!
What methods will you use?
How best can you reach your audience with your message? This is based on what you know about them.
Think beyond media relations. If word of mouth is best then use it. Conferences, meetings and site visits
can all be part of a PR plan. How about shop window displays, direct mail, or exhibitions? Your methods
should be based as much as possible on what you know about your target audience. For example, there
is no point in putting a great effort into getting coverage in the Yorkshire Evening Post if very few of your
target audience read that particular paper. The local weekly may be much more use to you!
Strategy timetables
Your plan of action! Do you want a big blast of publicity or a steady flow? Give yourself targets and a
timetable. Magazines, even local ones, may need a story or feature three months before they appear in
print. If your strategy is to spread the word through attending various meetings, then set yourself a target
of attending ‘X’ number of meetings over the next six months. Each method or way of communicating you
have identified will have its own time restraints or limits. If you don't set yourself some targets you will
probably forget your good intentions.
Budget
What is this all going to cost you? In an ideal world your budget would simply be set at what it would cost
to implement the strategy. In the Voluntary and Community Sector this is where you start to narrow down
your options. You are unlikely to be able to do it all, so target your resources at the methods you think will
be most effective, even if they are not the most glamorous ones! Some elements in your strategy may not
start for several months, in which case you might have time to try and raise some money. Funders are far
more likely to give you cash for a specific item if it is clearly part of a general communications strategy,
than an item on its own.
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Evaluation
This is an ongoing process and you
have to keep up! How else can you
judge whether your efforts have been a
success? Plan time in for this on a
regular basis, even if it is simply a matter
of keeping press cuttings and a record of
the number of inquiries you receive. If
you do it regularly you will start to notice
if things are not working out as you
hoped. It’s a great early warning system
that enables you to change your strategy
in a clear, positive way!
The best strategy is one that is
flexible and changes over time!
10. Write your own PR or
Communications Plan
Where are you now? (situation analysis)
Where do you want to go? (your objective)
Where do you want your organisation to be within a certain time frame?
How aware are the public of your work? What is their opinion of it?
How can you find this out?
Who do you want to talk to? (your target audience)
Which section(s) of the community are you trying to reach?
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11. How does your target audience get its information?
Weblinks
www.mediatrust.org.uk
Go to this website for further info on
media-related issues. You can
download information sheets from here
too.
www.volresource.org.uk
A wealth of information here. Click on
‘Taking Action’ and you’ll find lots of
good information about media issues
and stuff around ‘campaigning’.
What do you want to say? (your key message)
www.lsc.gov.uk
www.atlcats.org.uk
What methods will you use?
How best can you reach your audience with your message?
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