Sandi Brown, MD of marketing specialist CoAlliance, says that many NPOs focus on doing good work rather than marketing themselves and tend to get lost in the public eye. "When dealing with sponsorships, multiple hats have to be worn - salesman, educator and marketing professional - all able to see the benefits that can be afforded the corporate sponsor. Many NPOs have never had to sell sponsorship and many do not have marketing resources or departments or staff to manage the business relationships that are required."
"Corporate marketers seek partner brands that have the ability to raise their own brands by association, as well as foster loyalty and turn stakeholders into ambassadors. This is the foundation of 'meaningful marketing'."
"To become an organisation poised to take advantage of the shift to meaningful marketing, a NPO must reposition itself in the partnership marketplace. To meet the new demands of companies and brands, it must answer certain questions. Does the organisation's brand have high equity? Can it easily convey its brand strength and value to prospective partners? Are its various units unified under a single, strong brand or do they have separate identities not easily recognised as part of the whole?"
Every NPO must recognise its brand as a strategic asset that defines the organisation for all stakeholders and directly affects the value of its corporate partnerships. The brand should be at the core of the organisation, with everyone involved committed to understanding, articulating and managing it.
"Understanding the brand and being able to communicate its positioning and impact is an important step in transitioning the relationship between NPO and corporation from one-dimensional and transactional to the more dynamic and profitable model of a partnership in which each party delivers value to the other and has a stake in the other's success."
In other words, meaningful marketing requires partnerships with NPOs that understand the meaning and worth of their brands and practice all the elements of good brand management, including conducting and responding to research into audience and stakeholder attitudes, and developing strategic marketing campaigns that differentiate their organisation.
"Meaningful marketing requires NPOs to commit to working with businesses in ways that are different to their current approaches to such relationships. The cause has to see the bigger picture of the corporate sponsor/company and NPOs need to work more holistically and more in-line with the sponsor's overall brand objectives. This certainly does not spell doom and gloom for the relationships that are currently based on philanthropic ideals. Rather it marks an opportunity for NPOs to realise the full potential of their corporate relationships and take a major step forward.'
CoAlliance has therefore set out to assist NPOs in making the move to meaningful marketing. The company works with these organisations to launch sponsorship or partnership programmes, doing all the legwork including dealing with sponsorship opportunities, establishing sponsorship levels and packages, and creating a sales strategy before approaching any potential sponsors.
"We communicate with prospects, showing what the NPO could do through specific promotional ideas. Instead of going into a meeting with the mindset of 'selling something' or 'taking money', we offer the opportunity of a marketing agency working for them. We can educate the business on the benefits of working with a NPO agency, and will invest time in researching and speaking to these companies to find out what their goals are. Once we have determined this, we can find unique opportunities of how to align our benefits with their goals.
"NPO brands need to create identifiable cause platforms that target audiences will understand and remember. Meaningful marketing is a trend just starting to gain traction, with many more companies poised to adopt it as their central approach to partnering with NPOs," concludes Brown.
