Making the Most of Your Marketing Moment

With all the great marketing tools available today it’s easy to believe that your staff can handle it all. And day-to-day, that’s probably true.

But occasionally a special project comes along…something significant that could really have an impact on your organization. Something that, with a little outsourced support could really transform your results and your team’s capabilities.

Maybe it’s an anniversary or the need to rebrand. Perhaps you’ve completed a study or received funding for a new initiative. For Smith Memorial Playground and Playhouse, their moment was a reopening after a game-changing 8.5-million-dollar renovation.

When something big happens it’s a chance to turn eyes toward you. How you use this moment can set your organization up for success for years to come.

And that’s exactly what Smith did

In 2021 Executive Director Frances Hoover brought in Susannah Coleman from Dunleavy and Associates as interim Director of Development. A key part of Susannah’s role was to reconnect their funders with the need for support beyond this renovation.

Susannah believed in the power of a Giving Day campaign to do more than just raise funds. Her previous events sparked engagement, built excitement, and exceeded giving goals. She thought that might be just the ticket to celebrate the reopening while kicking off a new ask.

An effective Giving Day has countless moving parts. And like many nonprofits, Smith’s communications were traditionally handled internally by people who, have a million things on their plate. Frances knew that stepping out of that and getting external help was needed to take what they would normally have done to another level.

“One of the reasons the results were so strong is that it was a really professional campaign,” said Frances. “It’s not always easy to know how to produce high quality marketing on your own.”

What it takes to create a moment that lives on

While a campaign has a lot of elements, it’s also more than the sum of its parts. The alchemy that happens when strategy, planning, brand, theme, and delivery all come together can be nothing short of magic.

It starts with asking the most important question of all: what does success look like?

Making money on a campaign is an immediate outcome. Is that your definition of success? Because a Giving Day can generate so much more than cash in hand.

Unexpected Outcomes from a Giving Day

The online activity increases visibility
• The time-limited goal jumpstarts action
• The excitement encourages your followers to share your work with their friends
• Reporting quick success
• The content plan can give you a reason to reconnect with supporters to ask for contributions
• The fundraising plan can let you test increased or second asks from major donors

To create those kinds of outcomes requires some strategic thinking

Smith was at a unique moment in their history. They needed to remind current donors and their community that this re-opening was step one of their next phase, not the end of their needs. As a 100+ year old organization, they need every generation to think about the future.

To get this message across, our team at Iris Creative created a campaign theme called “Play it Forward.” The ideas of play, giving on behalf of others and sustaining the future all come together in this concept. An idea like this is specific to Smith while also being big and inspirational enough to live beyond the launch event to become an annual campaign.

When designing the logo for the campaign, we considered brand hierarchy – how this brand would fit in under the Smith umbrella. A fresh and fun typeface gave it distinction while using Smith’s colors and tagline font aligned it with the organizational brand. To connect all campaign content together and set it apart from day-to-day communications, we introduced a mellow yellow color to the brand palette.

The concept was then built out with an overall marketing plan that included social, email, and website content as well as a toolkit for ambassador participation.

One surprising fact about social sharing

Across all the Giving Days we’ve created, probably the most impactful element is the marketing toolkit. But not always in the way you’d expect.

On the surface they are intended to give supporters grab-and-go chunks of content they can easily share. Interestingly, Frances noticed that “10% of our board members actually posted to social media using it but 100% of them got excited about having the toolkit and had a different level of engagement with the campaign because of it.” She believes that even though many didn’t use it to post, it gave them language to use while talking to people and empowered them to act as ambassadors for the organization.

This seems to hold true for all the Giving Days we’ve supported. Often, we don’t see as many users of the posts as we’d expect, but across the board, organizations that have a toolkit exceed their goals. In the state-wide Do More 24 Delaware campaign, the nonprofits who use the toolkits we create raise 30% more than those that don’t.

Susannah is also convinced that organizations that go into a Giving Day with a plan for both marketing and development will succeed. Just like a capital campaign, the work done in the silent phase is the key to success.

A repeatable roadmap

When it was time to ramp up for year two, Smith had a new director of development and communications person who had not been there when Play it Forward was created. Staff turnover can be incredibly disruptive when institutional knowledge walks out the door.

Turns out, the toolkit saved the day. Frances recognized that they had “a well-documented progression of how things were released and how they were used that made it really easy to pick up where you guys left off.”

While Frances would have relaunched keeping everything the same (aww, thanks Frances), she knows that people like to put their own stamp on things. With editable templates, graphics and a color scheme, the new team has the flexibility to play, which clearly Smith knows everyone needs.

“It’s easy to explain something in a ten-page report but it’s hard to explain something in three words” Fraces says. “That’s the value of having a professional. That’s really hard work.”

The investment that keeps on giving

It’s so easy to assume that getting outside help is unrealistic. But if you think of it as an investment in your staff, you may see that the boost they get can pay you back for years.

The combination of professional strategic marketing thinking and high-quality design paired with repeatable plans and updateable templates can help staff level up what they can do in the future. Yes, it saves time and improves results but it also builds your team’s confidence that they have what they need to make it work.

If you have a special project that’s been on the back burner, is outside your staff’s time or skill level or is too important to wing it, let’s talk. An infusion of outside creativity may be just the ticket to skyrocket your team’s success, just like Smith.

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