An effective marketing Campaign is one of the most important components of any successful non-profit organization. Without the ability to market your organization and its brand, people will not know who you are, they will be unmotivated to donate your cause, and ultimately, you will not be able to successful pursue your mission.

Effective marketing campaigns do not just happen by fate, luck, or coincidence. They are conducted by creating a detailed plan well in advance that is able to orient your organization in the right direction. Though running a successful campaign is not easy, it is clear that effective planning can offer your organization a major competitive advantage.

Use a goal-oriented approach

When creating an effective marketing campaign, it is very important that your organization has a specific goal in mind. A goal ought to be something that is both specific and measurable—it is not enough to simply proclaim that you want to run a “good campaign”.

Ask yourself, when you are evaluating your campaign in the future, what will enable you to know if it was actually successful? Are you trying to reach a certain amount of people? Raise a certain amount of funds? What is the purpose of your campaign?

Regardless of what the answer to any of these questions may be, having a clear and predetermined objective can empower you to at least be moving in the right direction.

Understand your target market

Very few organizations actually want to appeal to everybody. No matter what you do, there are some people who will be interested in supporting your organization and there are some who won’t be. What your goal ought to be isn’t to appeal to everybody, but appeal to the people who are most likely to engage.

Think about the kind of person who is most likely to support your cause and design your campaign to appeal to them.

There are numerous different ways you can describe your target market. Whether you are categorizing them demographically, geographically, by their general interests, or by anything else, it is clear that the more specific you are with your target market, the more effective your campaign can be.

Anticipate problems ahead of time

No campaign is foolproof and no campaign is perfect. But while problems will inevitably emerge along the way, you can minimize their effects by having a plan of action in advance.

Imagine the worst case scenario regarding your campaign. Maybe a newspaper decides to abandon an article, maybe people don’t show up to a certain event, maybe you lose an essential source of funding your organization is reliant upon. If such a disaster emerges, what is it that you plan to do?

Anyone can prepare for success. But what is your organization doing to #overcome obstacles?
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Even if these scenarios never end up happening, having a well-organized disaster plan will certainly help your marketing campaign run more smoothly in the long-run.

Utilize a SWOT analysis

In order to recognize the paths to success worth pursuing and the paths towards failure worth avoiding, many organizations find that conducting a “SWOT Analysis” can be quite helpful:

• Strengths- in the status quo, what is it that your organization does the best?
• Weaknesses- in the status quo, what is it about your organization that needs the most improvement?
• Opportunities- how can you utilize your strengths in order to create lasting and long-term success?
• Threats- what is it that is most likely to cause this particular marketing campaign to fail? What are you going to do to avoid this sort of failure?

Though conducting a SWOT Analysis can be a relatively informal process, many organizations feel as if it can help them think more creatively and get themselves oriented for success.

Be as detailed as possible

When it comes to running a successful marketing campaign, there is really no such thing as being over-prepared. During the planning stages of the campaign, it is a good idea to organize a group of people to preemptively ask—and answer—as many questions regarding the campaign as you possibly can.

Having a plan of attack can’t guarantee problems won’t emerge—but it will equip you to react to such problems successfully.

What supplies will you need? Who needs to be doing what, where, and when? How is everything going to be paid for? What does the day-by-day plan of action look like for your campaign? What are you hoping to accomplish, and how are you going to accomplish it?

These are just a few questions that can get your team’s creative juices flowing. Obviously, the specific problems and solutions you are going to have to come up with will be unique to each individual campaign. But with the ability to successfully plan as a team, your organization will inevitably be poised for success.

To read part two in this series, Implementing a Successful Nonprofit Marketing Campaign, click here.

To read part three in this series, Evaluating a Successful Nonprofit Marketing Campaign, click here.

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