Positioning and Messaging for Greater Influence in the Nonprofit Sector
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A presentation to an audience of nonprofit leaders who wanted to learn how to craft more powerful messaging for their organization
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Positioning and Messaging for Greater Influence in the Nonprofit Sector
- 1. Who Are You? No, Really… Positioning and Messaging for Greater Influence For The Non Profit Sector Suzanne E. Henry Four Leaf Public Relations LLC May 2009 Clarity. Creativity. Connection. Care.
- 11. Concept Pyramid Who are you? CONCEPT What do you do? CONCEPT How do you do it? CONCEPT Why do you do this? CONCEPT Why would someone get involved with you? CONCEPT Why else would someone get involved? CONCEPT
- 12. Concept Pyramid: NewEnergyFocus, Inc. Who are you? A non-profit org committed to encouraging tomorrow’s engineers to find alternative energy solutions What do you do? We hook up universities and colleges with experts and current alternative energy engineers (as visiting professors) and provide curriculum on alternative energy topics How do you do it? We identify, fund and place these current experts– for 2 week stints – at a university or college; we also help them develop the curriculum to deliver their expertise to the students Why do you do this? We believe educational institutions can impact and accelerate our ability to develop alternative energy technology; we also believe our program helps produce more scientists and engineers due to the “hot” nature of this topic Why would someone get involved with you? The “visiting professors” get attention for their companies and expertise; the investors get attention for funding an “action-oriented” program around our energy dilemma Why else would someone get involved? Its “future” orientation is naturally appealing; alternative energy topics are “hot”; the early players will gain fame
- 15. What is a Powerful Message or Story?
- 23. Positioning Statement Elevator Pitch
Editor's Notes
- This brings us to some of the challenges. And, I encourage you to think about what you are faced with here. Because this dictates a lot of the processes or exercises you might choose. As you can see competition is listed first because I find frequently this is a big concern for both agencies and nonprofits. Something is taking mindshare away from you, and it is growing. Falling... What was cool yesterday is no longer considered cool today Which of these is the greatest challenge your organization or agency is currently facing?
- Before we launch into an actual messaging process. There are three questions to ask to put yourself in the right frame of mind. First , questions to ask yourself to get ready for tackling your language choices: SET YOURSELF UP USUALLY PEOPLE COME TO P&M BECAUSE SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT. So, the first question is Why am I doing this? Is the competition fiercer? Are sales sluggish? Are customers’ priorities shifting? Are you about to launch a new effort – for nonprofits it could be fundraising. For profits it’s introducing a new product. This will inform what intelligence you need to gather before making language selections . There is a lot of noise out there. It’s not enough to have powerful messages. They must be unique and powerful to your audience who is listening to a lot of other things, too. So, if competition is forcing you to revamp your positioning and messaging, you’ll need to collect what the competitor’s are doing – message wise. Second big question: What do I want my listener to do? Seems obvious, but sometimes we get lost in the creative side of things, we forget to identify the action we want to cause. Do you want people to buy? Do you want them to feel good about you? Do you want them to join? Give money? What? How much do I know about my target audience for this message? I am a big fan of market research and using it at the beginning of messaging and near the end, in testing. Today, we aren’t going to go deeply into market research, but know that if you don’t know your customer well enough, messaging in a vacumn won’t help. Surveys, focus groups, even one on one interviews with current and potential participants or customers -- doing it yourself is better than nothing, etc. You can do these relatively inexpensively these days. Today, let’s focus on messaging that assumes you know who your audience is
- You want to go through this process at least every 18 months, if not annually. I have an organization that brings me in almost annually – almost ever summer, I come in and we go through this whole process.
- I pesonally spend 3 weeks at minumum doing this analysis piece.
- Look for patterns and themes. Look for what is missing. What are you really saying to your audience?? What is your image saying – what words are repeated again and again? Do the same for interviews…
- Broad view of competition…
- But, before you create messages, I recommend at least two exercises to go through. GET THE KEY PEOPLE FROM YOUR OFFICE or whoever is on the team of your project AROUND A CONFERENCE ROOM TABLE. One is developing a concept pyramid. This pyramid organizes your thoughts and ideas. It’s mean to simply get down on paper, the general concepts you are trying to get across. It is NOT wordsmithed yet.
- But, before you create messages, I recommend at least two exercises to go through. GET THE KEY PEOPLE FROM YOUR OFFICE or whoever is on the team of your project AROUND A CONFERENCE ROOM TABLE. One is developing a concept pyramid. This pyramid organizes your thoughts and ideas. It’s mean to simply get down on paper, the general concepts you are trying to get across. It is NOT wordsmithed yet.
- Look for appropriate energy words --
- Where do you think most organizations fall down? Or aren’t very good at?
- People respond to energy more than the facts…you want to be accurate, but you don’t want to drown people in facts so they can’t see the forest for the trees.
- Answer these questions – lay it aside
- Once you have this arsenal, you are ready to go to the world… The final tag line, always comes at the end. It’s usually where the board wants to start. Because, let’s face it..It’s fun. It’s like choosing the corporate colors. But, while it feels and sounds fun, it must be grounded in who you are, what you are trying to accomplish and how you want people to FEEL about you .