Using Design Thinking to Develop a Nonprofit Marketing Plan
In 18 years, my agency’s team has supported approximately 1,100 clients in developing their marketing plans. These companies vary in size and industry; however, until recently, our client intake process varied only slightly for each client.
Our onboarding process included an in-depth questionnaire, survey, and interview to collect data that would help our team write the client’s marketing plan. If client team members wanted to provide input during the drafting process, they could provide us with feedback as we submitted each draft. Otherwise, customers remained indifferent because they trusted that we would provide the service they had paid for.
However, over the past 18 months, I have decided to start using various design thinking techniques to help my nonprofit clients develop their marketing plans. I have found these techniques particularly useful in facilitating marketing strategy boot camps.
What is Design Thinking?
Design thinking is a collaborative solution-based strategy for solving problems. Organizations that use design thinking define a problem, develop different ways to solve the problem, and then test those solutions to find the answers they need. They work through this process in a collaborative environment. At the very heart of design thinking is the goal of leading an organization to become actionable and improve its sustainability.
Design thinking techniques
The design thinking techniques I use most often in my bootcamps and workshops are brainstorming, brain dumping, and brainwriting.
The basic concept of brainstorming is to generate ideas face to face in a group setting. I usually ask workshop participants to introduce themselves and their organization and begin by discussing the marketing strategies and techniques they have already used. I then encourage participants to tap into the ideas that have been shared to start generating new ideas.
Brain dumping is the process of clearing your mind of any marketing idea you can think of. Workshop participants are encouraged to set a specific goal. This goal could be to recruit more volunteers for an upcoming event. Participants have 10 minutes to write down all the ideas they can think of on a sticky note. When time is up, all sticky notes are placed on a whiteboard for workshop participants to discuss.
Brainwriting is a bit like a brain dump, except the team builds on each other’s ideas before the group discussion begins. In the workshop, for example, participants are asked to think about a specific challenge that most nonprofits face and write down marketing ideas to overcome those challenges. Participants share these ideas with other workshop participants, who then build on these ideas and pass them on to other participants. After 10 minutes, the workshop leader collects the ideas and the group discussion begins.
Brainstorming, brain dumping and brainwriting are practical tools that do not require a lot of financial resources like expensive surveys, data collection or market research. Marketing consultants can bring value to their clients by using these profitable tools as a service they provide to their clients.
Lessons learned
After completing my first boot camp which implemented design thinking strategies, I learned some valuable lessons:
1. The intake process, like the one I discussed at the beginning of the article, does not usually allow a consultant to gain in-depth knowledge of an organization, its people, its history and its challenges.
2. A consultant cannot truly understand the nonprofit’s target market – or its true impact – with an admissions process.
3. A consultant often lacks the marketing and business intelligence needed to develop a efficient marketing plan, as an admissions process cannot provide this type of data.
4. Design thinking offers a new way to approach marketing problems. It’s much more effective to first gain a deep understanding of the organization and then use ideation to brainstorm various strategies to meet the needs of your community.
Why is design thinking an effective tool for associations?
Using a variety of design thinking techniques, marketing consultants can work with staff and the board—the people who know the organization best—to gain insights needed to implement effective marketing solutions for the organization. ‘organization. This strategy encourages full engagement with the organization.
As the problem-solving process unfolds, the consultant can collect the necessary marketing information to provide guidance during the planning process. This is where a thorough evaluation of what may or may not work for the organization occurs.
Using design thinking techniques enables the marketing consultant as well as the nonprofit’s board and staff to create an actionable marketing plan written in a language that the staff, board of administration and volunteers of the organization can understand.
Generating ideas using a collaborative approach to solving marketing problems is much more effective when a marketing consultant works with the people who have the deepest knowledge of the organization.
Key points to remember
The intake process that I have been using for years included onboarding which allowed my team to gather a lot of business information from our clients. But our process didn’t include the kind of customer engagement needed to develop a product that helped improve customer sustainability.
Design thinking, at its core, encourages nonprofits to take a broad look at how all the pieces of the organization fit together. Using this technique can help marketing consultants gather the business intelligence they need to develop an actionable marketing plan that is closely aligned with the nonprofit organization’s strategic plan.
