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Invest in marketing material
Since marketing is a broad field in which many people work, there should be good possibilities to add this expertise on a pro-bono or volunteer basis at first, as long as the organisation has a compel ling social mission.
Using online tools Social media is a winning channel for many social enterprises, at par with word-of-mouth. Of all the different advice this book can provide, advicing which social media to use would clearly become outdated most quickly. The popularity of different sites vary. At the time of writing, Instagram has for example overtaken Twit ter in terms of news buzz, but in a year this may have completely changed with some new up-and-coming platform. The advice here therefore relates to how to think about getting a message across, in the blur of constant feeds and images, and how to manage these channels effectively.
A few tips for how to make people take action and to stimulate engagement: • Offer something that your target audience will value that is related to a topic of your business. For example: ‘5 tips to make your everyday life more eco-friendly’, ‘5 tips to stimu late social intelligence in your child’. • Normative wording of ‘should’, ‘must’, etc. are very power ful to instigate action, since peer pressure works with most people. If you read ‘3 things you should know about harm ful, common ingredients in food’ – would you not click? Ob viously you need to be ethical in your marketing and use this technique with care. Most social businesses have an urgent message and sometimes it helps to phrase it in this manner, e.g., ‘Things you ought to know about the discrimination of…’. • Messages that confirm self-perception get re-tweeted and shared. Think about the interests or professions of your tar get customers and use topics that are of interest to them. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (a book title) is one example of this.
Build your brand
If marketing is an area which you intend to develop later, think again. A product does not sell itself, no matter how unique or fan tastic it is. It is therefore just as important to build a professional ‘front’ of a business as it is to invest in the development of products. This does not necessarily mean that it will cost as much money, but it is essential that you have as much as possible of the marketing ma terials developed at the time of the launch. The minimum amount of marketing material that an organisation needs to have professio nally made is a web page, social media pages and business cards. A template for the PowerPoint presentations with the visual identity of the organisation and marketing leaflets will probably be needed too.
All marketing campaigns, in any media, should include a socalled ‘call to action’. The message of the campaign is followed by something that you encourage the customer to do. In social media this is particularly easy, since it often takes just a click to take action. Some actions have become standard, such as ‘share’ and ‘forward to a friend’. The organisation’s web site and social media pages should also encourage connection back to your or ganisation.