For the last three months, we’ve been using our ParkNois blog to share some of the marketing insights we’ve gained while working with various parks-and-rec agencies around Illinois. This month’s post will be the last article in this series. We’ve never offered this kind of marketing-focused content on the blog before, and we hope it’s been useful. If it’s had any impact on how your agency gets its message out, we’d love to hear about it.
For this last post, we wanted to leave you with five ways your agency can start toning it’s marketing muscle right now. This list includes disciplines we’ve talked about earlier in the series as well as a couple of new ones we wanted to introduce here. The great thing about all of them is that they don’t require the latest technology or even consultation with us. All you really need is the organizational will to make them happen.
1. Mind Your Mindshare
Mindshare is the marketing presence your agency has in the minds of the people you serve. It’s the soil in which all your short-term marketing initiatives must grow. If you don’t spend enough time preparing residents and potential partners to be receptive to what you have to say, you’re going to have a hard time growing interest in anything you do.
Chances are, your agency has the tools it needs to start nourishing its mindshare right now. Maybe you’re using your social media outlets as little more than event calendars or bulletin boards. Try using them to give the public a glimpse of the little things you do for the community every day. Having a consistent brand identity across all your channels helps, too. Just remember, cultivating mindshare doesn’t happen overnight. You have to think long term (for more about mindshare, read this).
2. Start Using Creative Briefs
Keeping everyone in your agency on message is a lot easier when they’re all operating from the same page. Creative briefs are documents that allow you to do exactly that. Building a good creative brief is all about asking the right questions. You start by asking strategic questions like, “What is the brand experience we want residents to have?”, and “Who is our target market?” The answers to these questions will give your people a clear framework for all the tactical decisions they need to make when planning and promoting your agency’s programs and events (read more here – see a sample creative brief here).
3. Know (and Prioritize) Your Target Audiences
More often than not, your agency has to talk to several different audiences just to achieve a single objective. These groups are almost always the same: stakeholders, staff, board members, and residents. Not every objective, though, requires you to reach out to all of them, or reach out to them in the same way. This is why it’s not enough to simply know who your audiences are. You have to know who the priorities are for each objective. Creative briefs can help here, too.
4. Designate a Gatekeeper
Mastering any of the disciplines we’ve talked about here requires accountability. That’s why we always advise the agencies we work with to designate a marketing gatekeeper. This would be someone within the organization who keeps track of marketing timelines. They would also ensure branding stays consistent by maintaining a central library of approved images and brand assets.
The more people you have working remotely or in different facilities, the more important it is to have a gatekeeper. The last thing you want is multiple iterations of your agency’s logo scattered all over the place or people just grabbing images from anywhere.
5. Have Regular Marketing Check-ins
All of these disciplines require open lines of communication in order to work. Quick, little check-in meetings every week or so are a great way to facilitate this. They shouldn’t be conducted over email or instant messaging either. A check-in should be an in-person meeting (or Zoom call) where everyone involved with marketing shares what they’re working on.
Sometimes there will be more than one project vying for the same resources and time frame. Regular check-ins can help you catch conflicts like this early on, before they become bigger problems. And, because everyone is face-to-face, you can avoid a lot of the mixed messages or misunderstandings that often plague e-mail and chat.
Ready to Get a Little Uncomfortable?
A lot of times, it’s not the mechanics of change that are difficult. It’s usually a fear of change that keeps organizations from doing what they need to do. None of the things we’ve recommended here require a huge investment in time or money. All they may require of your agency is a willingness to be a little uncomfortable at first.
We can help. While you don’t really need us to implement anything we’re talking about here, we do have a lot of experience walking Illinois agencies through the changes they need to make in order to better connect with the communities they serve. We would welcome the opportunity to partner with you. To get that conversation started, click here. We hope to talk to you soon!
