I’m finally watching the first season of Mad Men, and it’s got me thinking a lot about marketing. OK, it’s a combination of the show and the fact that my job involves marketing. Granted, I’m working for a small nonprofit organization that’s saving the world one kid at a time, and not some soulless advertising firm on Madison Avenue. Still, I’ve noticed some basic principles are at play in both worlds, and I wanted to point them out here.
In my limited experience in the marketing industry, I’ve noticed that good marketing, in its simplest terms, boils down to this: make the buyer (or donor, investor, whoever) feel like their life will be better if they spend their money on whatever it is you’re selling. If you do that, you’ll attract people. Everything else you do as a marketer can be built on that foundation.
I’m sure this philosophy will come as no shock to anyone who has taken a Marketing 101 class or worked as a salesperson anywhere. But for me, and maybe for others in the do-gooder industry, it’s not the first concept that comes to mind when we’re looking for donors. Many of us believe that people will give simply because they see a need and want to be nice, or because Jesus told them to. Sure, there are some folks out there who have genuinely altruistic motives for giving. But in a world where millions of nonprofits are competing for a limited supply of money, we have to appeal to a broader audience.
When I started working in the nonprofit communications/marketing business two years ago, I didn’t know any of this. But in the time since then, I’ve seen this basic principle taught and proved correct over and over again. I’ll talk more about that next time.
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