Marketing strategy

Start with the four-stage approach set out below and amend it to your own situation.

1. Pull together a team of stakeholders - trustees, staff, volunteers etc. This is your marketing team and they will be responsible for shaping your marketing strategy. Each will have a different viewpoint, which is part of the strength of the group. Its many perspectives will ensure that ideas are questioned and challenged.
2. Carry out a review of where you are and what the current position is. To do this, get your marketing team to start by examining where your charity is now. This involves looking critically and objectively at how you operate, why you take the decisions you do, what influences your work. You need to look at your market, your products, your customers, and your promotional work. In short, you are aiming for a complete understanding of how you currently work and the factors in your operating environment that affect that work.
3. Now focus on where you want to go and on what sort of an organisation you would like to be in, say, two or three years' time. This is where your objectives come in. Draw up short-term (perhaps covering the following 12 months) and long-term (up to three years ahead) objectives. Your objectives should state very clearly what you hope to achieve.
4. Having done all this, you are ready to work on your strategy - in other words, on the details of how you will achieve your objectives. Look at your marketing mix. See how much time and effort needs to be put into modifying your products. How much money can you afford for promoting them? Who are you promoting them to and how? Don't forget 'place' and 'price'. Consider all the elements of the marketing mix such as direct mail, PR, advertising and events and see how each one may have a role in helping you do what you do better.

Your market

You operate within a market, and you need to understand that market if you are to be successful in it. In looking at your market you need to consider:

• External variables over which you have no control (e.g. which political party is in power, locally or nationally).
• Internal variables over which you have complete control (e.g. the structure of your organisation).

This will enable you to have a clear picture of the factors you can influence, and those which will inevitably limit you.

Carry out a SWOT analysis.

As part of your strategy you will need to make assumptions about the future market, including the actions of your competitors. You need to build on your strengths, strengthen your weak areas, take action to minimise threats and ensure that you grasp opportunities.

Find out more about other marketing issues and examples in the In more depth section.