Why marketing?

Knowing your market and what your users want and providing a quality product or service is vital to the success of any organisation. With more charities chasing less money, and with funders demanding 'value for money' and 'added value', a marketing approach has to be considered. Inspired marketing can bring freshness, vigour and popular appeal to even the most unfashionable or neglected causes.

Successful marketing is getting the right product in the right place at the right price, and promoting it so that everyone knows about it. You need the right mix of four Ps: product, price, place and promotion.

Evaluating your product or service

Even if you are involved in just one line of 'business', you will probably have a range of different products or services. By itemising each of your products, you can measure their effectiveness and performance, and develop separate promotional programmes. For example a charity for elderly people might provide the following services, each of which require a different marketing approach:

• Residential homes.
• Befriending and visiting services.
• A day centre.
• Meals-on-wheels services.
• An information service for elderly people.
• Training courses for professionals who work with older people.
• Lobbying for improved rights for older people.

Try the product recognition exercise for your own organisation.

Different customer needs

The most important customers for voluntary organisations are likely to be your service-users. However, there are other customers to consider. For example consider the customers of a free alcohol counselling service:

• A service-user who needs help with their drink problem.
• The health service contracting the voluntary organisation to run the counselling service so it can meet its statutory healthcare objectives.
• A whisky distiller sponsoring the organisation's annual report to reinforce its socially responsible image.

The user, the health service and the whisky company are all customers, but their needs, wants and motivations are very different from each other. Try the customer identification exercise for your own organisation.

Keeping an eye on your market

There will be plenty of influences on your market, many of them beyond your control such as changing technology, government policy or competitor's activities - see uncontrollables. Some will threaten, others will offer opportunities, as long as you have an eye on the market, are flexible and ready to adapt to changing environments and changing needs.

To be truly effective at marketing you need to take a systematic and sustained approach. You should keep your marketing under review, and evaluate success (and failure) as part of that review. To work in this kind of planned way you need a marketing strategy.

Image, identity and branding

'Branding' is the way goods from one producer or retailer are distinguished from those of another. It's a concept that's also relevant to voluntary organisations. It's a kind of shorthand: the name of your charity, product or service comes to represent a host of associations for your 'customers'. If they feel good about the Oxfam brand, they will be happy to support Oxfam in its many manifestations e.g. its shops, its publications, its campaigns, its mail order service. It is well worth putting in some serious thought into creating a brand, re-branding an outdated marketing concept or designing a new logo.

You might also consider some classic marketing techniques, such as incentives, endorsements and testimonials to encourage the take up of your product or service.

Evaluation

You need to evaluate your work, and your marketing strategy should explain how this will be done. Usually commercial businesses start by examining:

• Sales.
• Profits.
• Reduced costs.
• Advertising effectiveness.

Evaluating sales figures or profits may not be appropriate for many organisations since they are often providing a social need. For example it might be very expensive to run a free condom service for prostitutes. But the price of not running such a service might prove very costly in social terms, leading to the spread of HIV/AIDS among adults, the birth of HIV positive babies, and the transmission of sexual diseases. It's important to think of ways to measure the effectiveness.