Not for Profit Marketing

A Not-for-profit is the term that is used to describe organisations that are working towards a cause such as charities, non-governmental organisations and CSO’s which are the Civil Society Organisations. There are also private voluntary organisations that fall within the definition of the not-for-profit organisations (Hartley & Claycomb, 2013). As the name implies, not-for-profit marketing is the range of the marketing activities that are used by non-profit organisations (Mort et al., 2015). The main aim of  using this particular type of marketing is to spread the message of the non-profit organisation, whose objectives are to solicit donations and to call for volunteers. The not-for-profit marketing involves creating logos and slogans as well as using other media campaign to make sure that the exposure of the organisation can be made possible outside their conventional audience (Hartley & Claycomb, 2013).

     
     Non-profit organisation can use the same marketing approach as any conventional business would opt to do (Hartley & Claycomb, 2013). In doing so, they must, firstly, identify the target market, or the people they want to reach. When that is done, the next thing to do is to develop the marketing material so that it can be sent to the target market (Hartley & Claycomb, 2013).  The other thing that can optimise the outcome is determining the objective of the market campaign (Mort et al., 2015).  In some ways, it can be said that the not-for-profit marketing is based on the same premises as the conventional marketing as they are following the same line of thinking. For instance, both approaches follow the much-discussed Four P’s of marketing.  However, there are several distinct differences between the two (Hartley & Claycomb, 2013).

To understand this concept, understanding the ideology behind social entrepreneurship is essential (Mort et al., 2015). This concept is pretty much an organisation on its own. The concept stresses on the importance for the not-for-profit organisations to not being too dependent on the funds that are provided by the government or by other charitable foundations. As they are relying on external source of funding, it becomes really hard for them to carry out their financial projections. Consequently, in order to have a much more steady source of funds, it is important that they efficiency allocate their resources (Hartley & Claycomb, 2013).

In the case of non-profit organisation, the marketing is centred on creating awareness on the cause that the organisation is working towards rather than selling a product or a commodity ( Mort et al., 2015; Pitts et al., 2014). Once the customers understand the cause and start supporting it, the financial support can be taken care of  (Mort et al., 2015). In other words, the customers are buying the cause, and in return, contributing towards the cause, which has been earlier “sold” to them. Similarly, as in the case with the profit marketing, the results are the corporation might keep the funds and the product and the service that is being sold (Hartley & Claycomb, 2013).

With regards to the communication methods and overall strategy that are used in the not-for-profit marketing, there are many elements that must be incorporated (Pitts et al., 2014). Firstly, the target customers must be identified. This refers to the people, who are passionate about the cause that the organisation is working towards ( Hartley & Claycomb, 2013; Pitts et al., 2014). Secondly, relevant communication methods must be employed to ensure that message could reach these people (Pitts et al., 2014).  For instance, a non-profit organisation that concerns about veterans should focus on spreading the message to people in the veteran community (Pitts et al., 2014). Thirdly, the strategic marketers must communicate using the message using the right sort of communication tools.  Some of the methods that can be used for the communication include carrying out the social networking, fundraising events, and even using the traditional advertising (Hartley & Claycomb, 2013). Using the same example, the use of mass media marketing tools is not going to attract people in the veteran community as there are not many prospective people who care about veterans who would care about the veterans (Hartley & Claycomb, 2013).

Next, creation of the alliances also play an important role in how profit marketing works. The not-for-profit marketers should collaborate with the other similar organisations and mobilise their resources (Pitts et al., 2014). For instance, collaboration can be made with the local grocery store chains or retailers. Moreover, bar coded cards can be used to facilitate the alignment of the resources that can be shown to the existing and prospective non-profit donors (Pitts et al., 2014). When the card is presented and scanned at the checkout, the barcode will allow a certain percentage of the purchase to be shared with between the partner non-profit organisations (Pitts et al., 2014). These are some of the few examples that can be applied by non-profit organisations for fundraising. Lastly, relevant communication channel should be set up (Hartley & Claycomb, 2013). In doing so, non-profit organisations can add an instant donation button to their website and social networking profiles. Potential donors can simply click the button, fill out a donation form with their credit card information and the amount that they wish to donate. Once the transaction completes, the system can generate a charitable donation tax receipt for the donor (Hartley & Claycomb, 2013).

Hartley, R. F., & Claycomb, C. (2013). Marketing mistakes and successes. Wiley. Retrieved from http://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/scholbks/148/

Mort, G. S., Weerawardena, J., Sargeant, A., & Bennett, R. (2015). Social entrepreneurship and value creation in not-for-profit organizations. In Marketing in transition: Scarcity, globalism, & sustainability (pp. 372-376). Springer International Publishing. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-18687-0_140

Pitts, R., Blose, J., & Mack, R. (2014). Exploring Donation Appeals in Top Not-For-Profit Websites. MIS Review, 19(2), 15-38. Retrieved from http://www.airitifile.com/al/a0000558/201501270005/a0000558-201403-201501270005-201501270005-15-38.pdf

Privacy in Marketing

As marketing strategy evolves overtime, the onus is on the to make sure that the privacy of the consumers is being looked after in the right manner. Additionally, with the advent of the internet, privacy issues and concerns of the users are going to magnify with the passage of time.  The problem often lies in the unawareness of the marketers on customers’ privacy, and at times, they delve into the personal lives of the consumers and try to extract information that is not ethical. Unethical use of information means that the consumer themselves are not willing to share certain information (Holtrop et al., 2017). As customers are becoming more aware of their privacy, however, things have started to change and therefore, organisations have started to develop strategies to address consumers’ privacy (Gana & Koce, 2016).  Some of the strategies that can be used by the organisation would be discussed here.

Bringing transparency into the use of customers’ information is one of the strategies that organisations use to maintain customers’ privacy by eliminating the chance of delivering misleading message. Considering this advantage, many tech savvy customers might be willing to compromise their privacy for the sake of knowing how the personal information is going to be used.  Whatever the situation is, the customer needs to be aware of how their privacy can be ensured in variety of methods. The dialogue boxes for instance, can be provided to the visitors as well as providing complete transparency when it comes to the way data collection is carried out (Gana & Koce, 2016). With regards to social media use, the other thing that can be done is avoiding a third party tagging by bringing better settings as well as by ensuring the use of the third party tags. At the same time, effort must be made to make sure that whatever the information is being used, any unusual behaviour must be taken care of. In order to achieve that, the organisations must develop policies regarding the third party tagging and ensure that there is no slip up the way they are being done.

The recent trend had emerged where brands started to share customers’ information with the third party users, which is an unethical practice that must be abolished (Gonen & Tassa, 2016). Marketers can enhance their way of approaching the target consumer by using market optimisation solutions. Market optimisation can help in making sure that unethical use of the information pertaining to the consumer can be worked out. This will eventually help in achieving desired business outcomes whilst allowing the marketers to ensure the privacy of the consumer.  The marketers must make try to generate information during the course of marketing process, allowing greater attention to detail. Once the information has been used, the effort must be made to make sure that all the respective trails about the consumers’ information are done away with.

Using technology that is privacy conscious is another strategy that is used by the marketers to support the regulations that are pertaining to the E-Privacy (Holtrop et al., 2017). The technology should ideally be responding to all the people who are part of different jurisdiction, and allows the consumers’ privacy preferences to be set accordingly (Gonen & Tassa, 2016). Moreover, the changing landscape of the E-Privacy regulations is going to play a huge part in the development and improvement of consumers’ privacy regulation.  United Kingdom for instance, has made great strides in data protection regulation, which hopefully becomes a role model for the United States and rest of Europe.

     Finally, the best thing that the marketer can do is to win the trust of the consumer by making sure that all information is securely kept (Figure 4). Even if there is a case where information is disclosed, the marketers should let the consumers know whenever the information is being used.  This would give the brand some additional credibility and the level of trust that consumers are going exhibit over the brand. There is also an element of convenience to information storing. When a brand asks to store personal information online it’s easier for consumers who frequently shop on a site (Gana & Koce, 2016).  That allows the marketers to have information about the consumer, but effort must be made to ensure that privacy of the consumer is taken care off.

Gana, M. A., & Koce, H. D. (2016). Mobile Marketing: The influence of trust and privacy concerns on consumers’ purchase intention. International Journal of Marketing Studies, 8(2), 121. Retrieved from http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijms/article/view/58523

Gonen, R., & Tassa, T. (2016, August). Privacy preserving computations for viral marketing: the case of rational players. In Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES), 2016 11th International Conference on (pp. 677-686). IEEE. Retrieved from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7784633/

Holtrop, N., Wieringa, J. E., Gijsenberg, M. J., & Verhoef, P. C. (2017). No future without the past? Predicting churn in the face of customer privacy. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 34(1), 154-172. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167811616300805