Top Marketing Strategies in the Education-Nonprofit Sector

Over the past few years, more nonprofits have opened a new revenue stream by offering consulting and/or professional learning services. It’s a wonderful opportunity and makes a lot of sense to share your skills and talents with others while introducing additional—unrestricted—funding. But, consulting services require a bit different tact to market and sell than traditional fundraising or grantwriting. I’ll help you get a handle on your marketing and outreach strategy for consulting services so you can help the people you are here to help.

For many of us in the education and nonprofit sector, marketing and selling services has been a big mystery. It seems that everyone wants to know how to do it better. This is in part because of how nonprofit funding works—typically through private philanthropy and public grant making. The K-12 system, of course, thinks about funding in a totally different way including: federal, state and local allocations, tax levies and budgets that have been passed down to them. It also seems that we hang a lot on the marketing efforts: “If only we had better marketing, we would have…”

• More money

• More clients

• More participants

• More members

• More partners

• More recognition

• More influence

• More impact

I continue to see social media posts, videos, website upgrades and bulk emails going out in the name of marketing. Many of us in the education and nonprofit space hold on to this “spray and pray” approach—reaching a large number of people with the expectation that some (much smaller percentage) will read them and a still smaller percentage will engage your services or take whatever action you’re asking them to take.

The truth is: Marketing is not going to turn everything around for you, your work and your organization.

If it makes you feel better, it’s fine to keep the broad-reaching strategy, but it’s time to focus on quality over quantity.

After participating in two years of intensive marketing and sales coaching, I have some lessons to share with you in hopes they will help you refine your efforts and get more of whatever it is you want more of.

1) Identify your primary purchaser.

Who invests money in your work? That’s who you are connecting with. We spent years focusing our messaging on afterschool directors—site or multi-site level. They were excited about everything we shared. They wanted to participate. BUT—they did not have control of their budgets. So, no matter how wonderful they thought we were, no matter how much they wanted our services, they couldn’t actually purchase our services. The shift for us was to identify: Who writes the checks? Who has budget control or ability to spend?

In this example, the executive director or chief operating officer became our target audience.

Market to the people that purchase your services, not the beneficiaries of your services.

My marketing and sales coach framed it with an example from the pet industry: “Are you selling to the dog or the dog owner?” Whoever signs the checks…THAT is your target audience for marketing efforts.

An important note: Your primary purchaser is not the same as your cheerleaders or readers. Just because they read your social media posts or open your emails does not mean they are your primary marketing audience. You may need to actually look through each person on your list and label them.

Are they a primary purchaser? They get a star! These are the people you reach out to and put your marketing energy into.

Are they a cheerleader—a peer or friend in the field who ‘likes’ everything you post? They get a heart—but don’t spend your marketing energy here.

Are they a reader—a researcher, advisor or consultant who appreciates your work but is not purchasing your services? They get a heart, too. But not your marketing messages.

2) Construct messages THEY want to hear.

You’ve got your primary purchaser identified. Now, it’s time to refine your marketing message. That message has to address what they want. It could be a nuanced difference, but it is a difference. From my previous example, here’s how a message we would write for site director audience:

Top 5 Strategies to Navigate Stress

vs.

a message we’d write for the purchaser audience (school district directors):

Top 5 Ways to Help Each Staffmember in Your District Navigate Stress

See the difference?

And, pro tip: The best way to find out what your primary purchasers want is to ask them. Ask some of your current or former clients like this:

Hey Cal, we are upgrading our outreach strategy. Since we have worked with your organization with great success, I’m wondering if you’d be willing to chat for 15 minutes so I could get your insights and recommendations?

This call is for you to LISTEN, not tell. Do not share your current services or how you can help them. This is not a sales call, this is a research call. So just listen. Make sure to ask:

• What is the biggest challenge you are dealing with right now?

• What are your biggest obstacles?

• If you solved that challenge, what would you be able to do better?

• What results are you hoping to gain?

• What gaps do you need to fill?

Take notes or better yet, record the call. Listen closely to the language your primary purchaser uses to describe their challenges. That is the language you use in your marketing: the exact words and phrases you hear from your client base.

3) Stop talking about the services you offer. Start talking about the results your clients receive.

This was a particularly tough one for us because our field is so fixated on services offered. Look at your website and any one of your colleagues’ websites—I bet you have a list of services you offer.

An initial conversation with my marketing coach went something like this:

Coach: What does your primary buyer want?

Me: Capacity building services.

Coach: No, they don’t.

Me: Yes, of course they do.

Coach: No. They want the results of the capacity building services. They want their people to be able to _____________ so they can better _______________. Capacity building is the vehicle. Not the destination.

Me: 🤦‍♀️ Doh.

Since you took the time to do a little research and talk to some previous clients. You have their exact language on what they want and need and why they want and need it.

You already know you can help them and others solve those issues. You already know you can help them get to the results they want. You have your methods, your frameworks, your processes, your tried and true services.

They do not care about the services offered. They care about the results you can help them reach.

That is what you focus your marketing efforts on.

That means your messaging should shift. Rather than talking about the various workshops, strategic planning sessions, evaluation tools, curriculum products, etc. that you may offer, talk about the results the prospective clients want and then you can share how your services and products will help them get there.

You know that education and nonprofit clients are always geared toward the end game of being able to better achieve their mission with the communities they care about. The specific results they want vary. Examples include:

• More money so they can better achieve their mission

• Improved staff or leadership retention

• Increased membership or participation rate

• Increased average of student standardized test scores

• Increased student graduation rate

• Increased recognition as a thought leader in the field

• Improved program quality and consistency

What result do your clients want the most? Focus your marketing language and energy on the results you help them achieve, not how you do it. 💥 You’ve got this.