All About Marketing

Sections of this topic

    Guidelines for developing, marketing, and evaluating nonprofit programs are
    included in the book Field Guide to Nonprofit Program Design, Marketing, and Evaluation. The vast
    majority of the guidelines apply to for-profit marketing as well.

    Sections of This Topic Include

    Basics and Planning

    Basics — and Misunderstanding — About Marketing (below
    on this page)
    Market Planning

    Inbound Marketing

    Marketing
    Research

    Competitive
    Analysis

    Pricing
    Positioning
    (including writing your positioning statement)

    Naming
    and Branding

    Outbound Marketing

    Advertising
    and Promotions

    Public
    and Media Relations

    Sales
    Customer
    Service

    Customer
    Satisfaction

    Social
    Networking

    Protecting Ownership of Your Products/Services

    Intellectual
    Property

    Evaluating Your Marketing Efforts

    Evaluating Your Marketing
    and Advertising Activities

    Marketing On Telephone and/or Online

    Telemarketing
    Email Marketing
    Social
    Networking

    Online
    Reputation Management

    General Resources

    Additional Perspectives on the Basics of Marketing
    Additional Information
    for Nonprofits

    General Resources About Marketing

    Also consider
    Related Library Topics

    Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Marketing

    In addition to the articles on this current page, also see the following blogs
    that have posts related to Marketing. Scan down the blog’s page to see various
    posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of
    the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog.
    The blog also links to numerous free related resources.

    Library’s
    Marketing Blog

    Library’s
    Public and Media Relations Blog


    Basics — and Misunderstandings — About Marketing

    © Copyright Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD

    What is Marketing?

    Before you learn more about marketing in the many links later on below topic,
    you should first understand what marketing is, because the topic is so often
    misunderstood. Marketing is the wide range of activities involved in making
    sure that you’re continuing to meet the needs of your customers and are getting
    appropriate value in return.

    How Marketing is So Misunderstood

    Far too often, organizations try to develop a product to meet customers’
    needs without ever really verifying what the customers wanted in the first place.
    Instead, those organizations make a strenuous effort to “sell” the
    product through rigorous, ongoing advertising, promotions and publicity — through
    “outbound” marketing. These organizations may have built a beautiful
    ladder – but it may be entirely on the wrong roof! Far too often, that
    lesson comes from painful experience.

    Experienced organizations have learned that it is not their opinion that matters
    most regarding whether their product is needed or not. The opinion that matters
    most is that of the customers. These organizations have learned that they might
    not know what they don’t know about their customers. That precious knowledge
    about the customers comes from “inbound” marketing — through market
    research to clarify customers’ needs and what they are willing to do to get
    those needs met. If the inbound marketing is done well, the outbound marketing
    is particularly easy — and effective.

    Inbound Marketing Includes Market Research to Find Out:

    1. What specific groups of potential customers/clients (markets) might have
      which specific needs (nonprofits often already have a very clear community
      need in mind when starting out with a new program — however, the emerging
      practice of nonprofit business development, or earned income development,
      often starts by researching a broad group of clients to identify new opportunities
      for programs)
    2. How those needs might be met for each group (or target market), which suggests
      how a product might be designed to meet the need (nonprofits might think in
      terms of outcomes, or changes, to accomplish among the groups of clients in
      order to meet the needs)
    3. How each of the target markets might choose to access the product, etc.
      (its “packaging”)
    4. How much the customers/clients might be willing pay and how (pricing analysis)
    5. Who the competitors are (competitor analysis)
    6. How to design and describe the product such that customers/clients will
      buy from the organization, rather than from its competitors (its unique value
      proposition)
    7. How the product should be identified — its personality — to be most identifiable
      (its naming and branding)

    Outbound Marketing Includes:

    1. Advertising and promotions (focused on the product)
    2. Sales
    3. Public and media relations (focused on the entire organization)
    4. Customer service
    5. Customer satisfaction

    (Return to Table of Contents above)

    Additional Perspectives on the Basics of Marketing

    What’s
    “Advertising, Marketing, Promotion, Public Relations and Publicity, and
    Sales?”

    Makin’
    the Marketing Strategy Happen!

    Numerous free
    online resources

    Top
    6 Marketing Consultants Share Their Secrets

    Get
    Everyone on Your Marketing Team — 3 Steps

    10 Marketing Musts
    Marketing Basics for the Small Business
    Small Business Marketing Strategy
    Rules
    of Marketing: Old vs. New

    10 Things
    They Don’t Teach You About Marketing in College

    How
    to Create a Powerful Marketing Message

    What Are Some Marketing Mistakes That Companies Make?
    Survey
    of Marketing Executives’ Priorities

    Marketing Can Do Better
    Marketing’s
    the Engine of a Growing Company

    Four
    Strategies for Marketing a Grand Opening

    Reasons
    Not to Combine Fundraising and Marketing Committees

    General Resources About Marketing

    Good Marketing
    Ideas: a collection of marketing ideas and articles aimed at a variety of marketing
    forms and business types. Includes offline and internet marketing as well as
    non-profit marketing ideas.

    Marketing Resource
    Center

    List
    of useful articles

    Industry Standard
    Marketing Plan Do-It-Yourself Step by Step
    Marketing Internet Library

    20
    Powerful Marketing Tips

    Best
    Practices and Marketing Case Studies

    Question Marketing


    For the Category of Marketing:

    To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may
    want to review some related topics, available from the link below.
    Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

    Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been
    selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

    Related Library Topics

    Recommended Books