Marketing Your Organization

Marketing can be defined as the activity, set of institutions and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large.

The overall process includes conducting market research (i.e.identifying who the overall audience is and what’s important/significant to them) and market segmentation (i.e.identifying who the captive audienceis and what’s important/significant to them), business planning and execution (i.e. determining how to best raise awareness and profile with an
audience and executing promotions to support a campaign) and managing partnerships (i.e. satisfying the needs and interests of your clientele).

Below is a basic outline for how to get started with promotion of your organization:

ORGANIZATIONAL PLANNING

Organizations that succeed do so by recruiting and keeping participants. They accomplish this by providing better value to participants than the competition. The marketing arm of an organization must constantly assess which participants they are
trying to reach and how they can design programming that provides better value to those individuals.

To do so though, current and potential organizations must periodically undertake organizational planning to determine how to best operate in the midst of constantly changing circumstances and environments. Organizations must adapt to reflect the changes  in the environment and make decisions about how to best manage the way they operate in order to succeed.

The first step of marketing your organization is thus concerned about the overall direction of the organization and involves decision-making about operations, finance, volunteer management and other organizational issues. The objective of an
organization plan is to set the direction and structure for an organization so its programming meets the overall organizational objectives.

The following questions lie at the heart of any organizational planning process:

• Where are we now?
• How did we get here?
• Where are we heading?
• Where would we like to be?
• How do we get there?
• Are we on course?

Once these answers are known, you can then begin to think about how they impact your organization’s prospective audience.

MARKET RESEARCH

Marketing plays a key role in organizational planning because it is the job of marketers to understand and manage the links between the organization and the “environment.”

After organizational planning, the next step in marketing your organization deals with how programming relates to a participant’s or prospective participant’s needs and wants. Part of determining your target audience’s needs and wants is about making an attempt to involve everyone. Obviously not everyone in the campus community can participate in your organization, but would
everyone be welcome? Is your programming gender neutral? Are your meetings accessible to people with physical disabilities? Would there be any type of racial, cultural, or sexual orientation prejudice?

When researching your prospective audience is, ask the following questions:

• Who is your core audience?
• Who is your disengaged audience?
• How can they find out more information about your organization?
•  What might they like about your organization?
• What might they not like about your organization?

Use customer surveys, random interviews and feedback sheets to acquire this information. Once this information is known, a useful strategy is to classify your audience into groups or segments in order to tailor your programming to meet your
audience’s specific needs. In this regard, market segmentation can lead you to better marketing since it allows your organization to define and convey value in a way that is relevant to a particular audience.

Keep in mind that more is not necessarily better when it comes to audience data. If your organization plans three events a year, the crucial data will come from the participants of these events. For example, if your organization provides career training for students, your best target might be first- and second-year students sincethese segments are open-minded to shaping their University experience around whatever opportunities will ensure they get hired after graduating.

When examining audience data,be sure to pay particular attention to complaints and problems. Customer service studies show that between 2‒ 4% of unhappy customers complain, which leaves about 96‒98% unaccounted for. Can you identify who the unhappy participants of your organization are? By assessing their experience, you may learn of a programming problem, discover a solution to a problem, and/or repair and save a relationship. Remember, if they are not talking to you, they may be complaining to your next potential member.

CONVEYING VALUE

Once your organization has determined how its purpose, vision and values correlate to the audience’s needs and interests, the next step involves conveying value to an audience in a relevant manner. An easy way of conveying value is to identify where there is an overlap between your organization’s purpose, vision and values and the audience’s needs and interests. For example, if your audience is career-driven and tailors their participation on campus towards activities that will better assist them in achieving
professional success, your organization should determine how your programming meets those needs and build promotional campaigns around a particular message purporting those claims.

There is no set process on what forms of media can be used to convey value to an audience. Typically though, organizations will convey value using a combination of the following forms of communications:

Branding:

Branding can be defined as a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or any of combination thereof used to identify the programming and services of one organization or a group of organizations, and to differentiate them from those of other organizations.

Consistency in appearance, the level of professionalism and quality of performance are common characteristics that are often linked to a successful brand. Recognize that your brand resides within the hearts and minds of customers, clients, and prospects. It is the sum total of their experiences and perceptions of your organization – in many ways it is your source of promise to them. It can inspire, reinforce or detract interest.

Some questions to think about when thinking about what your brand is includes:

• Does your organization deliver its messaging clearly?
• Does your organization deliver credible and dependable services and programming?
• Does the services and programming offered connect with your audience emotionally?
• Does your organization create positive experiences for participants?

It is also important to understand that branding is not about getting your target market to choose you over the competition, but it is about getting your prospects to see you as the only one that provides a solution to their problem.

Publicity:

Publicity is the deliberate attempt by an organization to manage the public’s perception of its image. From a marketing perspective, publicity is one component of promotion. Unlike other forms of promotion though, publicity carries with it a certain level credibility by virtue of the fact it is often provided or generated by an external source (e.g. a news reporter, casual observer or participant).

A high level of publicity is often generated through standard media outlets, particularly by the press. It is therefore advantageous to forge relationships with the media to give the appearance that you’re providing news to them as opposed to them digging up news on you. This also ensures the press is always ready to report on happenings within your group.

Given, however, that organizations lack control over how the press uses the information provided to them and the frustration over the low percentage of releases that are taken up by the media, many organizations will choose create their own publicity. Examples of these methods include contests, event sponsorship, publishing polls or surveys, holding open houses, issuing reports, seeking endorsements and more.

Suffice to say that with the economy struggling and organizations asking their staff to do more with less, publicity is a useful tool to simultaneously promote and lend credibility to initiatives.

Advertising:

Advertising is the most conventional form of marketing used by organizations. It typically involves attempts by an organization to persuade consumers to make an investment of some sorts in the programming, products or services they offer.

Many advertisements are designed to generate increased consumption of those products and
services through the creation and reinvention of the “brand image.” For these purposes, advertisements sometimes craft a persuasive message that is supplemented with factual information to reinforce for consumers why a particular investment may be justified.

Every major medium is used to deliver advertisements, including television, radio, cinema, magazines, newspapers, video games, the Internet, carrier bags and billboards. For your organization’s purposes, it’s important to understand that your target audience will be flooded with thousands of impressions delivered through advertisements on a daily basis. Therefore, using advertising as the sole method of raising awareness and profile may not generate the expected results you want.

However, if you recognize that advertising is a useful tool to reinforce existing conceptions that consumers already have of your organization’s brand, you may find that the results to be rewarding. For this reason, try pairing advertising with other forms of promotion to maximize awareness of your organization’s initiatives.

Relationship Marketing:

In their haste to gain increase their exposure; campus organizations sometimes overlook the most important resource of all—their relationships with their members! This is ironic since the successes of many campus organizations are driven by the commitment of their volunteers, staff members and loyal participants. To survive in an increasingly competitive and changing social market, you must recognize that heightened public awareness of your organizations is only one part of the larger marketing process.

Building constructive relationships with selected target audiences is in many ways more important to your organization’s long-term marketing success than acquiring wide-spread public awareness.This process is often referred to as relationship marketing. Relationship marketing –sometimes referred to as internal marketing – is the process of attracting, maintaining and enhancing relationships with key stakeholders.

Relationship marketing is often driven by “five I’s”—Identification, Information, Interest, Involvement, and Investment.

To fully appreciate the power of the “five I’s,” you need to think about individuals as operating within circles of influence. The closer to the center of the circle a person gets, the greater the influence that person may have on an organization and, conversely, the greater the influence the organization may wield over that person.

To illustrate, draw a small circle on a sheet of paper. Next, draw three concentric circles around that circle.

Now imagine a core group of people within the smallest circle. Those are your stakeholders—so called because they have a personal stake in the success of your organization.

The second circle is occupied by investors— people or institutions that have a connection to your organization and contribute regularly to its mission.

The third circle is occupied by prospects—individuals or institutions that have shown interest in supporting your organization.

The last circle is populated by possibilities—so called because you believe those individuals to be prospective participants.

To turn possibilities into prospects, you have to identify their connection to, interest in and ability to give to your organization and be honest about what you can provide in return. Prospects, in turn, need information about your organization
as much as you need information about them.From information comes interest—that with which we become familiar. People tend to become involved in that which interests them assuming an organization has made a commitment to rewarding their participation. As individuals become more interested, they establish connections with an organization and are recognized for this connection. From recognition comes investment—which needs to be fostered over time through frequent assessment and reflection of each participant’s experiences and insights.

Following the “five I’s” remind us to focus our efforts on moving each occupant of a “circle” closer to the centre. In this way, possibilities become prospects who become investors. Once an investment has been made, relationship marketing is about constantly reinforcing value by offering competitive and innovative programming (developed through feedback provided by members) in order continuously pique their interest.

EMAIL AND WEB SPACE

Every recognized student group will be provided with a U of T Scarborough e-mail account and web server space free of charge.

When your group is recognized for the first time, your recognition package will contain a sheet identifying your organization’s email account and website address. You will be provided with a generic password to begin with, which can be changed by visiting www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~accounts/chpasswds.cgi.

To access your organization’s webspace, follow these steps:
1. Open Internet Explorer (NOTE: You MUST use internet explorer in order to upload new files, other web browsers will not work).

2. Type the following into the browser window: ftp://<CLUB EMAIL>@fissure.utsc.utoronto .ca/./public_html
     For example if your club email is generic@utsc.utoronto.ca, you would type: ftp://generic@fissure.utsc.utoronto .ca/./public_html

3. Enter your login and password when prompted (these are the same as your email login and password)

INTRANET 

The Intranet can be an extremely powerful and effective communications tool for your organization. To access the intranet, visit www.utsc.utoronto.ca, and click on the “intranet” link in the top right-hand corner.

The intranet provides a place for you to communicate with members and create an online home “channel” for your organization. Up to three executives from your organization will be given access to post information on the intranet.

To obtain guidelines on how to add members to your group account, create a group intranet channel, or post announcements to members, please email studentlife@utsc.utoronto.ca or visit www.scsu.ca/clubs for more information.