We are all familiar with the traditional 4 “P’s” of marketing – Price, Product, Place and Promotion.
The transformation is incremental. Kimberly Kadlec, former VP of global marketing at Johnson & Johnson, endorsed a fresh set of 4Ps for the Social Business, which she called Purpose, Presence, Proximity and Partnerships.
The new suggested model seems more fitting for the nonprofit world as it is centered around building quality content and contacts. Taking inspiration from the idea, I’d like to present the 4 Ps in the social marketing strategy for nonprofits.
1. Profiles: This is the simplest of the 4 Ps and it concerns the need to create profiles for your nonprofit on maximum number of networking platform. Whether you’re ready to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, and more, go ahead and create your profile before someone else uses a name that’s right for you. This name does not have to be identical to the name of your nonprofit.Anything that you think portrays the idea of what you do clearly or something that you think would be a good brand for you. Just go for it.
2. Propagate: This second P concerns the need to take all your existing content and start putting it on the web. Your photos, videos, recorded conferences and other documents should be on the content sharing platform.
As you evolve and move towards growth, your nonprofit should look into creating new content. Start by sharing your activities and opinions on social media. It must become a reflex for the marketing team or the team on ground at the fundraising events. Do not do an activity without taking pictures and sharing them.
3. Participation: It is important to be active on social networks, consistently. It starts with an observation period where you have to listen to and understand what is happening in the network and it continues with active and intelligent participation. No need to go to the blogs of industry leaders to publish a comment whose purpose is strictly to bring traffic to your site. One should rather get into the habit of reading their blog, see the types of comments that are posted there and possibly contribute with relevant content.
4. Progression: Finally, no matter what you do, you have to get into the habit of measuring the outcome of your efforts. It is very easy to quantify the impact of your new blog, to validate how many times your photos or videos are viewed and to note the benefits of your involvement in social networks.
