Marketing
There are many different types of marketing plans and tools that a cause could utilize to grow their supporter base and spread their message. In fact, there are so many that just the act of choosing a marketing strategy to follow becomes an intense and long process for most organizations. Thats where we come in. Mark & Phil helps causes all the way through the marketing process: from strategy to implementation. We do this by utilizing existing industry wide tools while also providing some of our own, available only to our clients. Here is a diverse array of marketing pieces that we offer. If you’re looking for something specific and don’t see it here, just ask. Chances are we do it or can direct you to someone who does.
Develop a marketing plan that works within the core philosophy of your organization, not against it. We do this by giving your org a SWOT Analysis, evaluating the market landscape, defining your goals for the coming year, and then establish marketing ideas that can be implemented to achieve greatness. We also provided day-to-day marketing implementation for many clients on a monthly retainer. Combine your causes values with that of a sponsor or corporation to provide a win-win product or campaign. We work with you to define possible portions of your cause that could be ripe for sponsorship, then we define the ideal corporations, and sometimes even individuals, that would be perfect as a sponsor. And as if that wasn’t enough, we also help contact the potential sponsors and will follow all the way through until a deal is signed. What’s not to like?! The newest addition to marketing tactics, going viral has become a must for many causes looking to gain a lot of exposure around a campaign very quickly. We work with you to define what possible viral ideas would work within your org’s framework and then help you execute these ideas to success. You might have already seen some of our successes like Instant Oil Spill and Flood It
Marketing Strategy
Cause Marketing
Viral Marketing
Tweeting, facing, texting, tumbling, and tubing can be confusing but it SO doesn’t have to be. Your cause deserves a chance to engage your supporters and potential donors across the social media landscape. You might think that you don’t need social media, but the truth is that your competing causes are already implementing a strategy or are starting to. Invest the time now and give your cause a sustainable solution that puts your organization ahead of the pack. We’ll help you identify the most appropriate social media channels to target, develop a content strategy that makes sense, and we can even carry out the messaging on your behalf if you need us to. Advertising for causes is a new concept that has been gaining momentum with the widespread adoption of textual search advertising like Google Adwords or Facebook Ads and ad serve networks like Double Click. We will help you identify the key platforms that you should work with, some of them you’ll even be able to get great deals (sometime even free) if you have 501 (c)(3) status. PSAs are also a great way to reach out to potential supporters. We’ll help you determine what the PSA should involve, how it should be distributed (on radio, tv, or web), and we can even help you record it. Its the dawn of a new era when corporations and organizations actually care about their triple bottom line: people, planet, and profit. So who says your cause has to be painted as being a greedy, money hungry charity? We work hard with clients to share their story and show how they care to not just make money in this world, but actually be a part of it and make a difference. We’ll help you define an overall public relations strategy, identify the ways to see it grow, and help you implement it with press releases, a list of qualified media to contact, press conferences, a press kit, and event opportunities.
Social Media
Advertising / PSA
Public Relations
Philanthropy
When you think of Philanthropy, many people don’t understand what that word means. The actual definition is the effort or inclination to increase the well-being of humankind, as by charitable aid or donations. But often the best way to describe it is “all things fundraising”. At Mark & Phil we provide different ways to fundraise through grant management, philanthropic strategies, board prospecting and online / traditional / event fundraising. One thing that we wholeheartedly believe is that the best fundraising makes people feel amazing about helping your cause. Again, if you’re looking for something specific and don’t see it here, just ask. Chances are we do it or can direct you to someone who does.
Online, offline, mobile, annual reports, grants, donors, oh my! Wading through the philanthropy options at your fingertips can be overwhelming and make you feel like your organization is drowning in a sea of sameness with competing causes. It doesn’t have to be that way! We help you define the best philanthropic strategy based on your unique situation and needs. Our team gets to know everything about your cause and where you are trying to take it. Goals are paramount and so are results, so we provide you with a strategy that can be measured towards success. Some call it a black art, we call it fantastically fun! There are several different ways to fundraise online and we’ll help guide you to the ones that make the most sense for you and your target donors: micro-fundraising, auctions, celebrity endorsements, donation systems, mobile donations, planned giving forms, and plenty more. We work with you to determine what your online fundraising needs are, then identify your options, and we can even help you setup the online fundraising campaign and maintain it. Yep, it still exists! We may be modern focused fundraisers but we’re deeply rooted in the traditional methods as well: marketing campaigns, annual appeals, direct solicitation, capital campaigns, special events – its all still very important to a well rounded philanthropic campaign. We’ll work with you to determine what makes the most sense based on your audience, time, and budget. Also, there’s nothing more exciting than pairing an online fundraising campaign with a traditional one to meet all your goals – it’s so full of win!
Philanthropy Strategy
Online Fundraising
Traditional Fundraising
Who likes dealing with grants?! We Do! We love the thrill of the hunt to find the perfect grants for our clients. We then collect all of the necessary data and start creating a well oiled draft that highlights why your cause deserves this funding. Finally we wrap up any grant writing project by delivering the grant for you and also following up on your behalf to the grantor. Basically, you tell us what we need, and we help you get it. We can also train your own staff to do proper grant management and help them put a process to follow in process. So where are all the donors? We’ll help you find them! We’ll work with you to create a plan of action that makes the most sense given your audience and fundraising objectives. We can’t give away our complete process here because its super hush-hush. But we can say that in the past we’ve helped organizations use their existing donors to find new ones, created complete events around donor development, and even utilized some technological tools to provide well targeted donor lists that provide real results. Whether its a large fundraiser or a small donor dinner, putting together a fundraising event can feel like such a daunting task for most causes. We’ll help your cause define what kind of fundraising events might work best for your supporters and we’ll help handle all of the logistics such as: venue, caterers, program, entertainment, photography/video, sponsors, silent/public auctions, gift bags, ticketing and more. Mark & Phil will also help you with publicity surrounding your event: secure press coverage, setup a red carpet, market online, and more.
Grant Management
Donor Prospecting
Event Fundraising
Design & Technology
The world of digital creativity is moving at an extremely rapid pace, so much so, that if you don’t pay attention you’ll often miss many of the new marketing opportunities available to your cause. We’ve worked several years with global brands, media enterprises, and even tons of rock bands – seriously. But now we’re committed to using our talents to give causes an edge that is the highest quality possible without breaking the bank. In fact, most of our design and technology work is discounted dramatically because we feel that it doesn’t have to be so hard for causes to look so good. Oh, and we should mention that web hosting is always 100% free for our clients! So lastly, if you’re looking for something specific and don’t see it here, just ask. Chances are we do it or can direct you to someone who does.
For a cause, your branding is perhaps one of the most important elements in your marketing arsenal. If your branding doesn’t reflect your organization’s persona then you’ll be losing many potential supporters or worse, totally repelling them. It’s our belief that branding should come from within for any good cause. So for us, the first thing we do for any branding strategy is define what your organization’s core values are and then help you reflect that through all of your branding elements, such as: identity/logo, colors, tone, tag-line, and more. Each branding strategy also includes a healthy in-depth look into how you should be branding your larger marketing campaigns and events throughout the year. Every cause needs to show off the best parts of their organization, thats where truly great graphic design comes in. We help you design elements for your marketing such as annual reports, brochures, one-pagers, flyers, posters, business cards, letterhead, billboards, on-site signage, table tents, and more. As if that wasn’t enough, we can also help you make sure that the designs are printed on quality paper with soy ink that is green certified and less harmful to the environment but still light on your wallet. We really love design and we truly believe that good design can take a cause to that next level, separating them from their “competition”. A proper cause website can help you showcase your organization’s achievements while offering several different channels of communication with additional features such as forums, blogs, or member systems. We’re well rooted in web design and love helping causes with website redesigns so they can look like a million bucks without having to spend like it. The first thing we help you with is determining how your website should look with wireframes, mood-boards and then design compositions. Basically we work with you to make your new website reflect your branding. We also design micro-sites and social media profiles for causes that need it.
Brand Strategy
Graphic Design
Web Design
Content Management Systems (CMS) and Client Relationship Managers (CRM) are becoming more and more necessary for causes to keep their website content fresh and keep tabs on their list of supporters respectively. At Mark & Phil, we’re founded on the belief that every organization should be able to update their own website content and maintain their own database of constituents without making the process cumbersome or costly. We’ve helped our clients setup CMS’ using open-source systems like Joomla, Drupal, Expression Engine, Tumblr and WordPress. Lately we have been most impressed by CiviCRM, a CMS combined with the functionality of a CRM that was specifically created for non-profit organizations to keep track of everything from event management, to donor management, to website content, and in-between. We also make custom CMS/CRM builds when its appropriate, for these types of projects we like to utilize CakePHP or Ruby On Rails. Software as a Service (SaaS) and Google Apps are two great online technological achievements that all organizations should take advantage of. You might have seen Microsoft commercials talking about putting photos or emails “in the cloud” and thats what we’re talking about here. We’ve helped a few clients make the move to having their IT infrastructure to the internet and away from their actual location. So what does this really mean? It means you can save enormous amounts of money, sometimes even slashing your IT budget altogether, and get the reliability of a global digital corporation such as Google. We specifically love Google Apps because they provide any 501 (c)(3) with Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Calendar, and even more for free! You get all of the advantages of a premium Google Apps account without the cost or headache. There are also tons of great add-on web apps in the Google Apps Marketplace Keeping track of the progress of a marketing or fundraising campaign is key to establishing its effectiveness and defining its success. With every web project we take on, we always install the free analytics reporting tools by default such as Google Analytics, WordPress Stats, Drupal Stats and such. We also have experience using tracking methods on advertising and keyword buys – this is a great way to measure how effective your advertising campaign is and how it can be improved. If your cause deems it appropriate, we can also install analytics on your micro-sites, social media accounts, YouTube account and elsewhere. We’re also very excited about new link tracking methods being used in social media through services like HootSuite and Bit.ly. We’ll help you set those up and integrate them into your existing website or CMS.
CMS / CRM
SaaS / Google Apps
Analytics