November 2010

Breaking Through the Clutter - Creating Powerful Messages for Your Nonprofit By Emily Wachter

Emily Wachter

The best advice I can give is to listen before you speak! Listening seems so fundamental and part of etiquette 101, but it’s amazing how easy it is to forget this step.  Making assumptions, and jumping ahead to communication tactics is one of the main reasons organizations’ marketing and communication efforts fail.  By not listening, your organization runs the risk of making assumptions and creating messages that don’t even matter to your audience. In Stephen Covey’s famous book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he advises his readers “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”  The same advice holds true for organizations.

Listening seeks to discover what your audiences really think, and what will influence these audiences to support your organization, your cause and your mission. Listening can be done through a variety of formal and informal research such as:

• Analyzing your web site or email statistics
• Conducting focus groups
• Developing surveys
• Monitoring social media conversations
• Reviewing relevant national polling or survey data

Developing a better understanding of your audiences will give your organization an unbiased perspective on your strengths, as well as any weaknesses that must be overcome. Listening will not only help craft your organization’s overall messaging, but will help guide how your organization will then package and deliver those messages.  Even the most creative and focused messages can fail if they aren’t delivered in a format or tool that aligns with your audience. 

Understand your audience and they will understand you. This is the key to crafting powerful messages, and developing a successful marketing plan that will work for your nonprofit.  For more information, call Emily at 814-528-9407 or email her at emilywachter@decisionassociates.net