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If you’ve ever had to take a personality test, you may have heard of Myers-Briggs.  One of the dichotomies explored in this test is a person’s lifestyle preference.  If you are a “J” for judging, you like to have matters settled in relation to the outside world.  If you a “P” for perceiving, you tend to like to keep your options open. 

If you are a serious thinker and planner, and like to have matters settled, you may have no problem creating detailed business and marketing plans.  If you lean more toward keeping your options open, however, you may be more challenged when it comes to the business world. 

Anyone can put out a shingle and offer products or services.  Yard sale enthusiasts do it all the time.  However, if you want to have a business that is effective, efficient, and profitable, you have to have a plan.  You can’t get to where you want to go if you’re not sure where that is. 

All the technological tools in the world will not build your business if you don’t have a goal.  Even a GPS system asks you what your destination is!  If you don’t take the time to narrow your focus and plot a course, your efforts will not achieve the desired results.

Perhaps you already have a business plan and the marketing plan scares you.  There are so many options today- TV, radio, newspaper, internet, social media, billboards, mobile phones, magazines, corporate sponsorships… If you don’t plan how to target your products or services to the right people, you could spend thousands and not make a single sale. 

The good news is that you’re not alone.  People in your community and people you know are at varying levels of business experience and success.  Business coaches and marketing firms can help you clarify your goals and create a workable strategy to meet them. 

AMW Marketing is one of those companies that can help- offering customized solutions to meet your marketing needs. 

Discover the Stories

It may be a television commercial, a Facebook invitation, or a forwarded email. Through words, pictures, or a combination, they aim to inspire with a story of triumph over insurmountable odds, or doing the right thing against enormous pressure, or discovering a solution when none seemed available.

If you want to bring people on board for your cause, you need good stories. Especially when working with nonprofits, stories are the key to:

• Attract attention

• Create resonance

• Generate action

Where do you find stories? In the thick of your mission. Do you run a food pantry? Who is talking to the clients? What are their stories? Is this a humiliating experience? Is this the only way to keep food on the table in the current economy? Did a child say something pitiable, like, “Now we can have sandwiches”?

If you are serving people, those people have stories. No one wants to ask for help, and most are excited, relieved, grateful, and so on, when they are given something that solves a problem or crisis in their lives.

This is not to say that people should be blatantly used as marketing fodder. Stories are merely an effective communication tool to tell the world about what you do. Who is your target audience? It may seem difficult when the people you serve seem to be in a completely different world than your potential donors. But people are drawn to stories about other people they can resonate with. Moms feel for other moms, no matter what their native country or social class. People who struggled in school feel for students who may need extra attention. Military families will be empathetic with anyone who deals with multiple transitions.

Find the stories and share them. Share them at fundraising events and service club meetings. Capture them in brochures and multimedia presentations. Post them on your website and print them in your newsletter. Invite your potential donors and volunteers to be part of the next story.

What am I marketing for?

Following graduation, I worked at several entry-level positions in fields I wasn’t interested in. A few years later, I followed my vision toward a career in marketing when I took a job at a well-known advertising agency in Boston. I went on to working for several other agencies in the area further developing my marketing skills.

After 18 years in the agency world of marketing, I wondered if my time might be better spent using my skills helping others rather than increasing the bottom line for another large corporation. When working at a direct mail agency, I began to question more deeply how important was it we sell another pair of pants to a buyer that probably doesn’t need them. It was at that time I began my quest to search for what was important to me. My deep soul searching revealed that I didn’t necessarily need to abandon my years of experience, marketing knowledge and skills to help the world and make a positive impact.

That’s when my second career working with non-profits began. Looking back I was lucky to have spent five years working for a small non-profit right after college graduation. The experience I gained at that time was invaluable. I learned transferable skills and gained a great understanding about how to work with boards, committees, development teams, and executive directors.

Today as a marketing consultant, I continue to use my marketing skills to make a difference in the world. I take my expertise to serve people who are living with AIDS, to educate the public about important issues, to help those with disabilities, to assist the underserved find insurance, and work with many other organizations who support those in need.

Marketing and sales personnel are often grouped together with snake oil salesman and people who want to trick or seduce you into turning over your hard earned money for things you don’t really need. I believe marketing is a method of communicating solutions to potential problems for the consumer. By working with non-profits, I know the solutions are making a difference for this generation and generations to come.