To brand your nonprofit on the Internet effectively, you must first focus on communicating three primary attributes of your organization:
- Brand personality
- Brand attributes
- Core value
These three qualities make up what is called the Brand Triangle, and your organization must understand the importance of these interconnected components if you are to be successful in getting your message across in an increasingly cluttered world.
Your organization's brand personality is made up of those qualities that express who you are and what you do.
To develop a successful brand, you must attract people using messaging (marketing) that is in tune with the manner in which they already identify with you and your mission. Once you have been successful in attracting people to your site, your content must confirm your marketing or there will be a disconnect. When that happens, you will lose potential friends perhaps forever.
It then becomes self evident that branding = marketing + content.
How do You Make that happen?
For example, the elements that might describe your brand "personality" could be: faith based, educational in emphasis and global in scope.
As you firm up your position on the Web and increase your level of conversation with your visitors you will begin to integrate these personality traits into everything you say in your email campaigns, newsletters, year end reports, and as you talk and share with your growing list of volunteers who are now beginning to support your cause online.
Your nonprofit's brand attributes are the values your nonprofit puts out there, and the primary benefits/features your organization provides. For example, your "attributes" may be: saving and/or changing lives, providing a place for the expression of art and culture, bringing health to those in need, providing educational materials, etc. As you brand your nonprofit on the Internet, it is critical that you stay within these "attribute" categories. Not to do so will confuse people and dilute your message.
Many organizations produce lengthy lists of core values. And there is not worth wrong with it. However, to brand your organization successfully on the Internet,
I would encourage you to think though the single thing you promise to deliver.
Your core value is the basis of your positioning strategy that will permeate your marketing tactics and help you capture mind share of potential visitors.
Here are some examples to illustrate how organizations have distilled their core values to a single word or phrase:
The Red Cross (www.redcross.org) provides disaster relief.
Good News Jail & Prison Ministry (www.goodnewsjail.org) provides chaplains worldwide.
The American Bible Society uses its www.ForMinistry.com website to equip the church online for ministry.
These organizations have worked diligently on their single core value in order to capture mind share of their potential donors. Therefore, if a disaster hits, we all know the Red Cross will be there to help because the Red Cross has done an excellent job of securing that mind share in all of us. The Red Cross has done this mostly by doing good work, not marketing alone. Remember, effective branding equals content plus marketing.
As you can see, having an effective brand strategy, which ensures that positioning statements in your marketing are in harmony with the content found on your site, will help your organization build mind share and cut through the Internet clutter that promises only to get more massive.
Your goal should be to capture mind share and make your nonprofit a household name.
How are you going to do this?
What steps would you take to ensure a positive result?
Imagine for a moment that you are running your organization for public office, say, President of the United States. How would you determine your message?
What would your message look like?
How would you go about achieving "mind share" from among the electorate?
What would be your "talking points or platform"?
How concerned would you be about maintaining a consistent message, i.e. positioning?
What about the consistency of your personal brand? Would you keep throwing mud on the wall, hoping that some of it sticks? Or would you be focused, clear, to the point?
What kinds of conversations would you initiate with people? If you are not sure of your
answers, take the time to ask your donors and friends their opinion. It's a cost effective method of doing hands on research.
