Written by Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD

Adapted from Field
Guide to Nonprofit Program Design, Marketing and Evaluation

“Marketing” — A Commonly Misunderstood Term

  Before you learn more about marketing, you should get a basic
impression of what marketing is. See What’s

"Advertising, Marketing, Promotion, Public Relations and
Publicity, and Sales?". Basically, you might look at
marketing as 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. Think about marketing
as "inbound" and "outbound" marketing. (In
the following, consider "product" to be either a tangible
product or a service — nonprofits often refer to these as "programs".)

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

  Too often, people jump right to the outbound marketing. As
a result, they often end up trying to push products onto people
who really don’t want the products at all. Effective inbound marketing
often results in much more effective — and less difficult –
outbound marketing and sales.

Sections of This Topic Include:

Basics of Marketing
Market Planning

Protecting Ownership of Your Products/Services
Intellectual Property

(Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, etc.)
 

  The following, miscellaneous information which may be helpful
as an overview of various aspects of business law in the United
States of America. Businesses requiring legal advice should contact
an attorney.

  Very simply put, copyrights are to protect ownership (authorship)
of written words, eg, in books, pamphlets, etc. Patents are to
protect ownership of processes or technologies. Trademarks are
to protect ownership of names, titles, slogans, images, etc.