When you are constantly under scrutiny for your spending it’s essential to look for alternatives that cost little but do a lot. Growing and nurturing your brand without breaking the bank is no easy feat however it can definitely be achieved and NFPs, in particular, can benefit from these concepts.

In our studio, we have the task of being brand custodians for our clients and there are certain suggestions we advise most of our NFPs to undertake. 2020 has thrown a few additional challenges into the mix so more than ever taking care of your brand is essential. Below are our top 5 suggestions to our NFPs to grow and sustain their brand in strange and uncertain times.

 

1. Update and refresh your brand, now I’m not saying you have to go all out and commence an entire organisational rebrand (that would not be a bad thing by any means if necessary) but sometimes all it takes is a re-fresh, an update of colour, a re-work of an old image etc to look current and to put you back in the minds of your target audience without all the effort of a full-scale marketing campaign. As times change and brands grow, little adjustments along the way help keep everything up to date and relevant and limit the ‘Is this look worn out and falling behind’ feeling.

 

2. It’s okay to brag, recommended even. If you don’t highlight your organisation’s small wins, who will? It’s also a great way to personalise a brand and increase customer loyalty. Get creative and think outside the box, show your successes in short videos and infographics featured across your socials and get a laugh from your audience, while at the same time making them feel good about all the positive work your organisation is doing for the community at large. I have said this before and will say it again, give context to statistics and stories to numbers, make it interesting, and change the way people feel about reading company reports and communication pieces.

 

3. Video, Video, Video and did I say video? As online users become increasingly “mobile-only”, a large majority of their online consumption takes place whilst on the go and this has led to a need for video content if a brand wants to stay relevant. Quick, entertaining, and most importantly informative, videos are a great way to stay relevant in the minds of your intended audience. They are easy to watch and it effectively spread an organisation’s message while at the same time having a high chance of being shared across a variety of social platforms. NFP’s in particular can benefit from this medium as it is a great way to link international efforts and show a big picture view in a quick and easy-to-digest format.

 

4. Be consistent, be authentic, and have a clearly identifiable purpose. This can be helped by online feedback. Great campaigns are created based on social media commentary, so show your audience you care and highlight the positive things you feel are mentioned the most by your customers. Also, make sure you address the negative feedback constructively. People love when a brand acknowledges their downfalls especially when they find ways to turn them into a positive selling point.

 

5. Establish your NFP as an innovative and ideas-based organisation. Put ideas forward and question the status quo through your branding. Make people question their currently held beliefs and highlight issues relating to your not for profit that people don’t tend to think about. Teaching your audience something new and interesting, especially through a tech-savvy medium or social media platform, is a great way to be remembered and will potentially steer them towards your charity when it comes time to donate. Utilising Social Media to authentically connect with your audience is possibly the most powerful and cost- effective way to make an emotional connection with viewers in a regular and consistent way, so definitely is a winner for NFPs who need to watch their budget spend. Swapping out more traditional communications for Instagram, Face Book and Twitter can make a real difference to your reach and spend. So too looking at newer platforms like Spotify as opposed to traditional forms like radio can really help to cut costs and the built in metrics in these platforms provide data so you can really understand how these platforms are performing and tweak your strategy accordingly.

 

The best part about the points listed above is that to implement they don’t have to be all-consuming and costly, they can all be introduced little by little over time, gradually building in impact along the way. 2020 has been an interesting year for NFPs (to say the least) and now more than ever enhancing, nurturing, and growing your brand is imperative to cut through all the noise.