To create or update an online presence, most organisations have just two simple challenges to face when thinking about their marketing:
The first is to discover “who we are & what we do”.
The second? To tell that to the right people.
To embark on tackling the first challenge it’s important to first create a ‘voice’ that represents your community. You need to remember that, in a world where there are so many ways to communicate with an online audience, your voice must be consistently yours whatever the medium. Which brings us to the second challenge: how exactly will you communicate with your members? What marketing channels should you use? Should you spend money on them? How will you measure their effectiveness?
We all know there are standard things you can do to connect with potential and current members, but how can you discover which of those is right for you? At the same time, how can you also ensure you’re sending the right message to your members?
Workshop
So, who are you and what do you do? To answer this you’ll need to put a team together. This can consist of members, marketing experts and/or leading staff at your organisation. From this workshop will spring all the information you’ll need to maximise your marketing efforts and guarantee the success of your online presence.
Use this as an opportunity to analyse and evaluate your current ongoing marketing efforts to ensure there isn’t more that could be done. Don't forget to also monetise these efforts to see how much each channel might be worth to your organisation.
No matter how big or small you are, putting such a team together will ensure you get the best possible answers to those questions from different perspectives. Out of those answers, you can create a definitive mission, vision and tone of voice for your organisation that will communicate “This is who we are and this is what we do”.
Audience personas
Now you have an idea of who you are, you can find out who your members are. In discovering who it is you’re trying to communicate to and what type of member you’re looking to recruit, audience personas are an incredibly important and often overlooked next step. They not only help you know what your tone of voice should be – because you’ll know exactly who you’re speaking to – but also help you to find out what marketing techniques will be best to reach them.
Tone of voice (TOV) document
So now you know who you’re speaking to, now you need to find out how. Again your workshops will have brought to light your mission and company values, meaning you can create a TOV document and style guide. A TOV document is important so that you can ensure your mission and vision is shared across the whole organisation and across all your marketing.
You need to put as much information as possible in your TOV document. Essential information would be exactly what words you’d use to describe your organisation traits, and it’s important to include what your organisation isn’t.
Website audit
Once you know that your organisation has a mission and a clearly defined TOV which can be adopted by every member of the team across all your marketing channels, it’s time to focus on your current marketing efforts, the biggest of which is your website.
For most organisations your website is the one link between you and all your members, the home of your organisation and the best – or in some cases only – way to join your organisation. You need to conduct a full audit of your website; analysing its user experience (UX), its search engine optimisation (SEO), the quality and effectiveness of its content and its speed.
As you might have guessed, this is not the first time we’ve given out this advice. Senior have helps dozens of our clients with their online marketing – in fact this is how we approach each and every one of our web design projects. If you’d like a hand with any of the points given here - from just a simple website audit, to a meeting to discuss audience personas - or if you’re looking to take our advice and put that team together and you want the advice and experience of an award winning digital agency, we’d love to help you. You can get in touch here.
You can also discover how much you should be investing in your website, why not fill out our website cost calculator? Want to receive monthly articles and updates containing advice and inspiration for the membership, nonprofit and charity community? Why not subscribe to Senior's mailing list?