Mistakes are brutal teachers. Making a mistake is never pleasant, but once you’ve recovered you’ll be far less likely to make the mistake again. For example, imagine you keep a George Foreman grill on the floor next to your bed so you can wake up to the smell of crackling bacon. If you were ever to step on the scorching hot grill on your way out of bed, you would hopefully learn your lesson and realize your bizarre wake-up routine is a bad idea.
But rather than make our own mistakes, we all have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others. Today, Nonprofit Marketing Guide is covering 5 common nonprofit marketing mistakes so you’ll know what to avoid.
- Not choosing and prioritizing. There’s only so much you can take on with the resources you have available. The tricky part is there is usually more work than you can get around to. For these reasons, it’s necessary to determine what can wait and what needs addressing now. Mastering the prioritization of tasks will get you much further than trying to juggle everything at once.
- Relying on free services for mission-critical work. The notion that you get what you pay for still applies. Sure, you can manage smaller tasks with smaller tools, but bigger jobs will require bigger tools. Understand what you have to accomplish and be realistic about what level of expertise or what type of software you’ll need to invest in to make it happen.
- Failing to see the individuals on your mailing list as people. Marketers need to know their audiences. People need relevant information and we have the ability to deliver relevant information. Whether it’s your email list or your social media followers, dive into basic demographics and start to define the personas that make up your audience.
Read on for more. And if you’re reading this on your phone right after waking up in bed, watch out for the grill beside you and enjoy the bacon!
