Successful Marketing With Staff Transitions
Are your marketing efforts being impacted by staff turnover? Does your fundraising halt when someone leaves?
It’s easy to understand that changes in staff can cause a serious disruption to your processes. When this occurs, it can disrupt ongoing marketing campaigns, fundraising events and donor visits, among other things.
There are many reasons for nonprofit staff changes that are out of your control, including budget and leadership changes. Here are three things your nonprofit can do to help keep your marketing efforts on track despite staff changes.
Cross-train
There are huge benefits to cross-training your employees to play multiple roles in the organization. Cross-training your staff will allow your employees to step-up and fill in when key positions are vacant. Empower your employees and even your volunteers by growing their skill set. Give employees the opportunity to share their skill set with other employees. This will increase morale and make communication stronger.
The good news is that cross-training your staff is not that time consuming. Most training can be done by shadowing or going the extra mile to explain how things are done. Nonprofit employees and volunteers are very special people. Give them the chance to share their skills with one another and create greater future stability for your organization.
Create a Marketing Plan
Creating a marketing plan for your organization will lead to success for many reasons. Your marketing plan should be available to your entire staff. Everyone needs a clear understanding of what you are trying to accomplish with your marketing efforts. With a clearly written marketing plan, there are no surprises.
Think about the types of campaigns or initiatives you want to focus on this year. For example, you might feature a different marketing concept or gift offering for each quarter. In developing your marketing plan, you need to also consider the timing for each of your marketing touches and how frequently you will reach out to your supporters. Assign these tasks to your staff members and include each of them in the plan.
If only one person on your staff knows how to accomplish something on your plan, you may have a problem, which is why cross training can be effective. An easy way to prevent a hold-up is by making sure everyone is on the same page. A written marketing plan makes the organization’s plans clear for everyone.
Continuous Content
We have all heard the common expression, “content is king.” The value of well-written content cannot be undervalued. Content helps provide education, steward your donors, and builds trust between your organization and your donors. Without good content, your communication stops. Typically, an organization has two options for content creation. You can create content internally or you can outsource your content with a company like Crescendo. When creating content internally, you run the risk of running out of material. If the person who creates your content leaves or is not versed with a particular gift option of interest to your donors, your communication with supporters can be impacted. All of these things can halt your marketing efforts and delay closing gifts.
Crescendo provides rich content to nonprofits and their donors. This allows the nonprofit to focus on the relationship with the donor rather than the content they provide them. Hiring an outside vendor ensures your nonprofit will always have something to provide a donor.
Staff changes in today’s nonprofit world is inevitable. The best thing you can do for your nonprofit in order to prevent disruptions within your marketing efforts is to empower your staff and volunteers, have a clear understanding of what you are marketing and keep your content flowing. Contact Crescendo if we can be of help to you in your marketing.
