Photo by norwichnuts

When you’re marketing your product, who exactly are you appealing to? What specifically do you think would attract them to what you’re selling? Is it possible to  market your product to the largest audience and simultaneously appeal to different subgroups effectively?

Let’s say you’re a baker selling pastries. What could you say about them?

• They look delicious.
• They taste delicious.
• They cost $2.00 each.
• They are made fresh each day.
• They are made with organic ingredients.
• They are made in small batches to ensure perfect flavoring.
• They are made by formerly homeless people that you trained.
• They have 250 calories.
• They are made with fruit from your organic garden, harvested just before baking.
• They are baked with solar-powered ovens.
• They are made in a peanut-free environment.
• They are vegan.
• They can be delivered to your door within 2 hours of baking.
• They can be customized with your favorite fillings.
• They have a low glycemic index.

What’s the most important of these points to your audience? No doubt taste & looks are #1. But everyone says their pastries look and taste fantastic. So now what?

If you’re marketing to vegan restaurants, the fact they’re vegan is #1. If you’re marketing to socially-conscious people, who makes them is very important.

To appeal to a wider audience, have a different marketing message for each of the senses. Each of these senses combine into a larger message, but the individual message stand perfectly well on their own:

• Sight: Instead of showing a photo of a lone pastry, show someone smiling and eating it (or licking it).
• Smell: Describe how the smell of a fresh pastry can transport you to another time or place (a Parisian cafe or your grandma’s kitchen).
• Taste: Your mouth will dance and your diet won’t be compromised.
• Touch: Feel how the pastry springs back in your hands – it’s a sign of just-made freshness.
• Hearing: The only sound you’ll hear will be silence, from the concentrated pleasure of small-batch perfection.
• (Bonus) Mind: Feel good knowing that each bite of the pastry is full of organic freshness and made by people who were formerly homeless in solar ovens.

Finally, if you don’t know why people buy them, ask them. You might be surprised by the answer.

Photo by Alan Turkus

As a non-profit, you’re constantly looking for opportunities to increase both your donor base and the average donation. In Dan Ariely‘s book The Upside Of Irrationality, he details the three triggers necessary to boost donations: closeness, vividness, and “drop-in-the-bucket” effect.

Closeness refers to how similar your feel to someone. You naturally share a feeling of closeness with people that share your background or zip code. Someone halfway around the world living in vastly different conditions doesn’t encourage my normal empathy.

Vividness refers to how much detail you provide on a problem your organization is solving. If you’re telling people about statistics (“every day, 10 people get infected …” ) or  general conditions (“throughout the village, people are drinking polluted water …”) you’re not engaging their emotions fully. Instead of giving me the big picture of the whole problem, give me the scope of how the problem affects a specific person (“7-year old Jamilia has trouble waking every day. Her mom cries herself to sleep each night watching her only daughter slowly waste away from the parasitic infection that changed her from a bouncy girl into a …”). The better you can paint how one person is affected, the better your potential donor can feel how the problem feels.

Drop-in-the-bucket asks the question, “Will this action really matter?”. What will it matter to heal one person when 1,000 other people in their city are dying each day? People want to donate to a cause that can fix the root cause of the problem. They don’t want to fix the problem one-person-at-a-time.

In your next non-profit marketing effort, develop these 3 marketing strategy points to help your (potential) donors empathize with your fine work and share their generosity with your organization.

Photo by skyseeker

Have you ever imagined exactly how your ideal business day would unfold? If you’re like most people, you spend your business day reacting to phone calls, emails, and customers. By planning for your ideal day, you’ll start the process of making the day happen (and not just once).

Start with the basics: When do you wake up? Where? What’s the weather like? What do you eat? Where do you eat? Who will you eat with? What will you wear?

Next, the business: When does your workday start? How does it start? Do you contact others or do others contact you? Are people calling you because they read an amazing review of your product in that day’s New York Times? Is there a line outside your business waiting for your new product that’s this season’s gotta-have? Perhaps a movie executive wants to hire you to lend your skills for an upcoming big-budget movie starring your favorite actors. Or maybe you get a personal letter from a child, thanking you for making their home such much nicer.

What about the money? Exactly how much money do you really need? For what purpose? Does it come in daily, monthly, or in sporadic royalty checks? Is it hand delivered or direct-deposited?

What about the customers? Who is your ideal customer? Where are they located? What do they look like? What do they say to you? Are you looking to have your customers as friends or simply anonymous consumers? Are they raving about you or keeping you as a special secret weapon?

By focusing on an ideal, you’ll naturally work towards the pleasurable goal (whether intentionally or not). The trick for making it happen is regularly visualize how wonderful the day makes you feel.  Of course, this same technique can be applied to the rest of your life as well. If you don’t dream, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.