Category Archives: Blog Tips

Brands and organisations can’t be all things to all people………..

Many of the Not-For-Profit organisations I work with often talk about the inability to be all things to all members, yet they talk about this as if it’s a bad thing. Great news, it is very common and it is not a bad thing. The downside is, not knowing who belongs to what and how to best serve the members’ needs.

I usually start with some simple S.T.P analysis. Segmentation, targeting and Positioning are the Marketers’ tool of choice when trying to decide who is the Primary and Secondary target markets.

Some brief background.

Segmentation

Market or Member segmentation involves dividing a broad target market into subsets of members who have, or are perceived to have, common needs, interests, and priorities. You then design and implement strategies to target them and service their needs. Market segmentation strategies are generally used to identify and further define the target customers and provide supporting data for marketing plan elements such as positioning to achieve certain marketing plan objectives.

You can segment in many ways

  • Geographic segmentation
  • Demographic segmentation
  • Behavioral segmentation
  • Psychographic segmentation
  • Segmentation by benefits
  • Cultural segmentation

Targeting

A target market is a group of customers (your members) where you aim your marketing efforts. The well-defined target market the first element of a marketing strategy. Product, price, promotion, and place are the four elements of a marketing mix strategy that determine the success of a product or service in the marketplace. There are an additional 3 specific to services marketing (Process, Physical Environment/Evidence and People).

These additional 3 are often overlooked by service marketers.

  • People

Of both target market and people directly related to your business. This can be a secret, “internal” competitive advantage a business can have over other your competitors which can inherently affect a business’s position in the marketplace.

  • Process

The systems and processes of the organisation affect the execution of the service. Tweaking and enhancements helps you maximise R.O.I.

  • Physical Evidence

In the service industries, there should be physical evidence that the service was delivered. Additionally, physical evidence pertains also to how a business and it’s products are perceived in the marketplace. You immediately know exactly what your presence is in the marketplace.

Target markets are separated into primary and secondary groups (or markets). Primary target markets are those market segments to which marketing efforts are primarily directed and secondary markets are smaller or less important.

Positioning

Positioning is “the place a product or service occupies in consumers’ minds relative to competing products or services”. There are different strategies that can be used to entice the segment the marketer is trying to reach which will help consumer’s / customers position the brand in their mind.

Marketers have the power to create marketing strategies that can be more appealing to specific target market groups. Each brand differentiates itself differently to gain customers and to create a distinct position in the mind of the consumer/ member.

Applying it

So now that we have recapped, one of the most valuable things we do with my Not-For-Profit clients, is to go back to basics and see what exactly we are trying to do achieve in S.T.P. terms. We can develop primary and secondary group of stakeholders and develop messages that target them accordingly.

We can’t be all things to all people with the limited resources we have.

focus your product

To get a clear picture of whom we are serving, use this worksheet to help you focus.

your perfect client

  1. List your current main stakeholders and be sure to complete the demo and also unmet needs and frustrations
  2. What do they really want from your organsiation
  3. Note down your current segments (likely too many)
  4. Highlight the desired segments we can focus on
  5. Who are our current targets and do they differ from the desired targets
  6. Circle your desired segments and desired targets then identify best ways to communicate with them

focus your usp

Finally, what have we learnt about their needs and whether or not we are delivering for them. Perhaps we are trying to be all things to all people? If so, what actions can we take to start to focus a little more on those stakeholders that will get more value from us if only we focused a little more on their needs. This usually relates to marketing comms activity. Doing a lot of activity that they perhaps don’t even value.

We can fix this.

The attached ideas, steps and simple to follow worksheets are typical of the style of hands on learning we engage in, with my on line workshops.

These are just some thought starters.

Having worked for large multinational companies in senior marketing roles for over 20 years, I’ve now fit my own mask and have now turned my skills to helping NFP marketers……

  1. Focus
  2. Create more thinking time
  3. Cut through the clutter
  4. Automate and outsource and ultimately
  5. Get more bang for your buck !

This is for the organisation and for you, personally.

The above is some of the areas we focus on in Week 1 of my On Line Program.

In my 6 week on line program, I help you discover and start to unpack, a simple 5 Step Plan that increases your professional worth to your boss, whilst freeing up time for you to plan and execute new ideas for your Not-For-Profit organisation and review your future career prospects. Learning new skills is part of that.

My aim is to help Not-For-Profit Marketers become a Million Dollar Marketer on a NFP budget !

After having helped many hundreds of Not-For-Profit marketers really excel at their work in recent years, this 5 Step plan helps alleviate some of the frustrations and concerns that can shackle us down and to rise above, to think and act like a million dollar commercial marketer.

You can learn too.

As a taste, this week, we are giving away a FREE copy of the “5 Step Plan: Become a Million Dollar Marketer, on a Not-For-Profit budget” Blueprint. In it, I break down the exact 5-steps to deploy in your NFP business. Click here to download your free copy www.milliondollarnfpmarketer.com


Download the free worksheet images and try the above for yourself, and let me know in the feedback box below how you went.

LAST CHANCE BEFORE THE END OF THE FINANCIAL YEAR

If you want all the details of the 6 week program, get the details here https://milliondollarnfpmarketer.com/5-step-program

It’s just $447 for x6 one hour webinars. We hold them at lunchtime and early evenings, mid week. Next intake is soon.

That’s the first step involved in becoming a Million Dollar Marketer on a Not-For-Profit budget.

I hope you received some benefit from the above ideas, please drop me a comment and tell me what might have benefited you most.

Until next time, all the best.

Steve

Are you in control of the asylum ?! ….. Your ideal week action plan

Many of the Not-For-Profit teams I work with nowadays find themselves so occupied with managing a myriad of tasks that end up completely consuming them, to the point where they feel so “spent” and regularly say “thinking time – what’s that” ?!

This endless cycle can be quite defeating and stifles creativity, especially when it comes to identifying and executing new and innovate ways to market and reach your valuable stakeholders in a way they want to be.

It means taking some risks but how do we take risks if we don’t even have the thinking time, and get into trial and error state ?

The best news is, we can eliminate some frictions from your workplace and free up a bit of time and redeploy as “thinking time”. It works for work but also can really help with home life too.

Attribution here to my Executive Coach Taki Moore for helping me understand ME and how I can perform better using these kinds of processes, which I’ve adopted into the worksheets.

Part 1 – We start with an overview and elect some ideas from the 80 / 20 Productivity Worksheet.

80-20 Productivity Worksheet

Here and here how it works.

  1. Select the best fit “design” for your workflow
  2. Identify what we can “eliminate”
  3. Select what we can change in the work “environment” to help you get more creative
  4. How can we “hack” the current tired processes and work toward those that are a better fit for you (what do you like best?)
  5. Start with small steps and “implement” some changes

Part 2 – Eliminate Friction from your workplace.

Eliminate Friction

The fastest way to double your productivity is to eliminate friction from your workflow.

  • First, list all the places where you experience friction
  • Second, target your top 5
  • Third, brainstorm strategies to replace friction with flow – use the 80:20 Productivity Toolkit as a menu to select from.
  • Finally, list your first action for each to get you moving quickly.

Part 3 – Plan the Ideal Week Action Plan.

Ideal Week Action Plan

Now that you have a clear fix on your ideal week, set aside some time to make it happen

  • First, brainstorm all the obstacles that make it hard to live this ideal week consistently
  • Second, target the top 5 obstacles in the way
  • Third, list 3 strategies that will overcome them
  • Finally, list a next action that will get you winning fast

Part 4 – The last step is to determine if YOU are in control of the asylum!

Ideal Week

You can run your week, or let your week run you.

Use this Ideal Week worksheet to design a week full of achievement and fulfilment. Your home life is entwined into this too.

  • First, list the ideal ingredients of a perfect week
  • Next, for each day decide if it’s a free, focus or buffer day
  • Then, decide the purpose, who you would most like to spend the day with, and ideal result of the day

END RESULT – This is then your worked up ideal weekly work plan – and you will be amazed how much of your thinking time will be redirected to incubating some new innovative awesome marketing ideas!

The attached ideas, steps and simple to follow worksheets are typical of the style of hands on learning we engage in, with my on line workshops.

These are just some thought starters.

Having worked for large multinational companies in senior marketing roles for over 20 years, I’ve now fit my own mask and have now turned my skills to helping NFP marketers……

  1. Focus
  2. Create more thinking time
  3. Cut through the clutter
  4. Automate and outsource

and ultimately

  1. Get more bang for your buck !

This is for the organisation and for you, personally.

The above is some of the areas we focus on in Week 2 of my On Line Program.

In my 6 week on line program, I help you discover and start to unpack, a simple 5 Step Plan that increases your professional worth to your boss, whilst freeing up time for you to plan and execute new ideas for your Not-For-Profit organisation and review your future career prospects. Learning new skills is part of that.

My aim is to help Not-For-Profit Marketers become a Million Dollar Marketer on a NFP budget !

After having helped many hundreds of Not-For-Profit marketers really excel at their work in recent years, this 5 Step plan helps alleviate some of the frustrations and concerns that can shackle us down and to rise above, to think and act like a million dollar commercial marketer.

You can learn too.

As a taste, this week, we are giving away a FREE copy of the “5 Step Plan: Become a Million Dollar Marketer, on a Not-For-Profit budget” Blueprint. In it, I break down the exact 5-steps to deploy in your NFP business. Click here to download your free copy www.milliondollarnfpmarketer.com

Download the free worksheet images above and try the above for yourself, and let me know in the feedback box below how you went.

If you want all the details of the 6 week program, get the details here https://milliondollarnfpmarketer.com/5-step-program

It’s just $447 for x6 one hour webinars. We hold the at lunchtime and early evenings, mid week. Next intake is soon.

That’s the first step involved in becoming a Million Dollar Marketer on a Not-For-Profit budgetI hope you received some benefit from the above ideas, please drop me a comment and tell me what might have benefited you most.

Until next time, all the best.

Steve

Automate and Outsource – simple and more cost effective than you think!

So many of the Not-For-Profit teams I work with nowadays find themselves doing so many “legacy” marketing tasks that take so much time to prepare and execute. Most are rarely consumed by the receiver in the way desired and there is often little or no data to identify insights to help grow for the future. When I introduce the idea to them of “automation”, with some new innovative easy to use tools, they think I am some kind of messiah!

Well the great news is, I’m not – and you too can get a very quick handle on automation and outsourcing in your business.

I have a simple rule in life – anything that can be digitized …. should be.

Most importantly, email newsletters and well maintained databases are vital for engaging with your valuable stakeholders but developing and delivering content can be expensive and time consuming if not handled right.

I always guarantee with my clients when we first start out, that I will find 5 extremely cost effective on line solutions that will free up time and provide valuable data to analysis and track marketing efforts.

As always, I start the process with a tool. This time it is the Marketing Automation Checklist.

See image above

It is quite simple.

  1. Down the left hand side, list the activity (or campaign) that you are doing now. Be honest about how much time it takes you per week (or period).
  2. Answer a simple question – can we automate ? Yes or No ….. or in some cases, I guess so OR don’t know. This is where I can help.
  3. Try and find a solution, often as simple as a google search “how to automate email newsletters” or “how to sms market my customers” or “how can I share docs on line with my team” etc
  4. The time saving per week column can start in a few phases, what you save first up won’t be huge as you still have to set up and get used to using the system and process, but over time, in Phase 2 and 3, you should see some real time saving and effort rewards. Publish once!
  5. I always throw in an extra one – “Can we get data from this and how will that inform our future decisions?”

Simply, the object of the exercise is to focus on what you are doing now and what you could be doing and given lack of time is our biggest issue, that’s why the focus as a cost centre, your time is valuable.

I often talk to my clients about how much time and effort there is managing social media. Well in the first instance there should not be major hurdles. Once things are set up, like any system, it will just flow. Managing social media is not like it used to be.

Imagine being able to load up one piece of communication and have it delivered to your key audiences on multiple social media platforms while you are sitting on the coach at home in the evening. This is what million dollar marketers are doing.

So once we have interrogated our checklist, we need to find a tool.

My absolute favourite on line tools for managing marketing activities in the cloud are:

Active Campaign – for enewsletters, database management, sms marketing, event management and all automated email (and just about anything) …. campaign sequences. It can do SO much. They have a free trial too. http://www.activecampaign.com/

Calendly – a simple and free calendar integration tool. Just use this for all in your workplace and stakeholders to get access to your diary. Best part is, you block out areas that are a no go zone. https://calendly.com/

Hoot Suite – a tremendous social media platform tool. You write one post and send once, it’s that simple. They have a free trial period too.https://hootsuite.com/

GoogleDrive – the best free way to securely share docs and activities with your team. One doc always updated. You don’t even need software to run this, they have their own “office” suite of programs. https://www.google.com.au/drive/

Just some thought starters.

Having worked for large multinational companies in senior marketing roles for over 20 years, I’ve now fit my own mask and have turned my skills to helping NFP marketers……

  1. Focus
  2. Create more thinking time
  3. Cut through the clutter
  4. Automate and outsource

and ultimately

  1. Get more bang for your buck !

This is for the organisation and for you, personally.

The above is some of the areas we focus on in Week 4 of my Program.

In my 6 week on line program, I help you discover and start to unpack, a simple 5 Step Plan that increases your professional worth to your boss, whilst freeing up time for you to plan and execute new ideas for your Not-For-Profit organisation and review your future career prospects. Learning new skills is part of that.

My aim is to help Not-For-Profit Marketers become a Million Dollar Marketer on a NFP budget !

After having helped many hundreds of Not-For-Profit marketers really excel at their work in recent years, this 5 Step plan helps alleviate some of the frustrations and concerns that can shackle us down and to rise above, to think and act like a million dollar commercial marketer.

You can learn too.

As a taste, this week, we are giving away a FREE copy of the “5 Step Plan: Become a Million Dollar Marketer, on a Not-For-Profit budget” Blueprint. In it, I break down the exact 5-steps to deploy in your NFP business. Click here to download your free copy www.milliondollarnfpmarketer.com

The attached worksheet is typical of the style of hands on learning we engage in, in these on line workshops.

Fit your own mask first, and you will be able to help others!

If you want all the details of the 6 week program, get the details here https://milliondollarnfpmarketer.com/5-step-program

It’s just $447 for x6 one hour webinars. We hold the at lunchtime and early evenings, mid week. Next session intake is soon.

That’s the first step involved in becoming a Million Dollar Marketer on a Not-For-Profit budget.

I hope you received something from the above ideas, please drop me a comment and tell me what might have benefited you most.

Until next time, all the best.

Steve


Is the constant drag in your job preventing you from soaring like an eagle?

So many of the Not-For-Profit teams I work with complain about not being in control of their day. Day after day they just feel like they are being dragged down by a whole heap of activities that seem to be getting more and more out of control, worst of all, pointless.

The two most common relate to seemingly never ending threads of emails and too many meetings.

For emails, they are a necessary part of work life but you have to be able to clear the clutter and know how to manage the important versus the nice to know.

A few simple tips include being able to reduce the noise!

  • Try colour coding your superiors, when they speak, look and react. Treat the rest as noise unless you are working on a project that requires your colleagues to engage now to move forward.
  • Use your junk email filter proactively, do a test and after two weeks if you still have newsletters and emails in your folder you feel don’t really enrich your professional existence, drag them to the junk folder. You well never see them again. If you feel you’ve missed. something, reverse the process from the folder. Try it, you will enjoy the liberation.
  • Use email rules to auto file informational emails into your filing system.
  • Once a week, either Monday morning or Friday afternoon, get deleting and be brutal!
  • And finally, if you have an office culture where everyone has a view, and then there is a view on that, and you have to be involved due to said culture, be smarter, and only engage once. Usually the best way is at the end of the day, let those who want to involve themselves knock themselves out, and then just engage share one view. Notice that possibly your boss does this too? They usually do it in the evening.
  • If you are easily overwhelmed by the size of your inbox, control it don’t let it control you!

Meetings are a little trickier as this can also be a cultural thing in the organisation. If some of them run too long or seem completely irrelevant to you, keep a detailed log of them over a period of about a month. Make notes about who was involved and what is was about and how long it took and the end result for you. Sometimes the easiest way is to populate the meeting (in outlook) and print it off, and get writing, all your data will then be there. Dump into word if you prefer to soft copy everything.

If you end up in a place where you have quite a bit of data (as this is), either wait until the next team meeting where you can attempt to manage an intervention on the team OR if more suitable, chat to your boss about it. Most managers will be comfortable discussing these kinds of issues if they believe workplace inefficiencies are an issue. They will get your point quickly.

There are a few tools I use with my clients to help them have a bit of a model around this. And I give attribution to my executive coach Taki Moore for helping me on this path.

final image

See attached images below.

First, do a Drag Audit, list them and look at the impact on your and likely your colleagues and then come up with some strategies to try and control them or reduce them, better still remove them if possible. Ensure you have a measurable actions list. This data can then be used for sensible conversations with those around you to show the impact in black and white.

On the other side in this tool, focus on the positive, do a Lift Analysis……what are the things that lift you up and help you soar like an eagle at work? Complete the boxes in tool in the same way as the Drag Audit.

Finally you can transfer this data to a summary sheet and be disciplined, get this down to ONLY 3 focus areas for now. Which 3 are affecting you the most?

By taking this approach, this helps you to identify your productivity issues in the workplace. Chances are, there are others around you in the same situation.

Imagine the impact this simple tool could have on the workplace if you had the entire team that is in your surrounding world carry out the same audit? Once you all come together you may well be able to relieve some of the issues.

I recently ran this exercise is an office and the impact was instant.

By focusing in this way, it feels like you are taking control of your own situation, if you have the confidence to have this spread across the office, you are well on your way to leading some real change that I guarantee will benefit everyone at work.

This is just one of the things we put in place with my clients, we regularly check in and repeat the exercise. I know this isn’t complex stuff but we need to remind ourselves all the time, of the importance of getting our own self sorted first.

Having worked for large multinational companies in senior marketing roles for over 20 years, I’ve now fit my own mask and have turned my skills to helping NFP marketers……

  1. Focus
  2. Create more thinking time
  3. Cut through the clutter
  4. Automate and outsource and ultimately
  5. Get more bang for your buck!

This is for the organisation and for you, personally.

In my 6 week on line program, I help you discover and start to unpack, a simple 5 Step Plan that increases your professional worth to your boss, whilst freeing up time for you to plan and execute new ideas for your Not-For-Profit organisation and review your future career prospects. Learning new skills is part of that.

My aim is to help Not-For-Profit Marketers become a Million Dollar Marketer on a NFP budget!

After having helped many hundreds of Not-For-Profit marketers really excel at their work in recent years, this 5 Step plan helps alleviate some of the frustrations and concerns that can shackle us down and to rise above, to think and act like a million dollar commercial marketer.

You can learn too.

As a taste, this week, we are giving away a FREE copy of the “5 Step Plan: Become a Million Dollar Marketer, on a Not-For-Profit budget” Blueprint. In it, I break down the exact 5-steps to deploy in your NFP business. Click here to download your free copy www.milliondollarnfpmarketer.com

The attached worksheets (images x3) are typical of the style of hands on learning we engage in, in these on line workshops.

Fit your own mask first, and you will be able to help others!

If you want all the details of the 6 week program, get the details here https://milliondollarnfpmarketer.com/5-step-program

It’s just $447 for x6 one hour webinars. We hold the at lunchtime and early evenings, mid week. Next session intake is soon.

That’s the first step involved in becoming a Million Dollar Marketer on a Not-For-Profit budget.

Have a Vision and a Plan – fit your own mask first!

So many of the Not-For-Profit teams I work with find themselves being pulled from pillar to post because of continuing views on how the organisation should be focusing its energies, often being shared from the membership base, with their own agenda. It becomes very tiring for the team and can often be part of the reason for staff burnout.

One of the things that we quickly uncover when we start to strategise some of the issues, is that the organisation doesn’t have a robust measurable strategic plan, that they can stick to……… But that’s a conversation for another day.

On top of that, the team doesn’t have their own individual plan either.

So to start with, we make sure we understand the simple analogy “fit your own mask first before attempting to help others” !

The attached worksheet starts the conversation and continues on the in flight theme.

On the runway, we need to have a pretty good handle of the main task at hand before we take off. What do we have on the boil this week and what do we have to do to achieve it, who will help us ?

From here we need to get airborn and look toward the next 90 days, so we are up from 10000 feet. Once we start to stabilize we have to start looing forward into the next 12 months. Where do we want to scale to as a professional in the coming year? Finally, to get to the lofty career heights of 30 000 feet, what do I have to do today, to take me on that journey to achieve my 3 year vision.

The point is, you will crash and burn if you never quite get off the runway.

I know this isn’t complex stuff but we need to remind ourselves all the time, of the importance of getting our own plan sorted. Attribution here to my Executive Coach Taki Moore who has helped me focus on what I need to do as I continue to run 4 completely different businesses and stroke that ongoing entrepreneurial spirit that did stay dormant for so many years.

Having worked for large multinational companies in senior marketing roles for over 20 years, I’ve now refit my own mask and have turned my skills to helping NFP marketers…

  • Focus
  • Create more thinking time
  • Cut through the clutter
  • Automate and outsource and ultimately
  • Get more bang for your buck !

This is for the organisation and for you, personally.

In my 6 week on line program, I help you discover and start to unpack, a simple 5 Step Plan that increases your professional worth to your boss, whilst freeing up time for you to plan and execute new ideas for your Not-For-Profit organisation and review your future career prospects. Learning new skills is part of that.

My aim is to help Not-For-Profit Marketers become a Million Dollar Marketer on a NFP budget !

After having helped many hundreds of Not-For-Profit marketers really excel at their work in recent years, this 5 Step plan helps alleviate some of the frustrations and concerns that can shackle us down and to rise above, to think and act like a million dollar commercial marketer.

As a taste, this week, we are giving away a FREE copy of the “5 Step Plan: Become a Million Dollar Marketer, on a Not-For-Profit budget” Blueprint. In it, I break down the exact 5-steps to deploy in your NFP business. Click here to download your free copy www.milliondollarnfpmarketer.com

The attached worksheet is typical of the style of hands on learning we engage in, at these on line workshops.

AAEAAQAAAAAAAAgzAAAAJDQxMjdjOWUxLTk4MmItNDlmZi1iODY5LTk5YTBmMzU1ZTIzNg

Fit your own mask first, and you will be able to help others!

If you want all the details of the 6 week program, get the details here https://milliondollarnfpmarketer.com/5-step-program

That’s the first step involved in becoming a Million Dollar Marketer on a Not-For-Profit budget.