Overstretching Your Limits - Updated

I'm on the phone with a new client, a small nonprofit arts org.

They have created a marketing plan and want my input.

Cool, send it over.

They email it to me.

The marketing plan was well over 20 long term marketing goals and over 75 short "needs", i.e. marketing problems that need to be fixed

I call the client back

How many people do you have on your marketing staff?

None.  We have one person that does marketing in addition to other things.

How much money do you spend on marketing in a year?

Less then $10,000.

So let me get this straight, you expect one person to achieve almost 20 long term goals, and solve numerous other marketing challenges with a budget of less then 10K?

Silence.  The the truth, "Not really."

After talking with the client, he seemed like a person well aware that the goals of the plan where incredibly unrealistic given their resources.  So I had to ask . .  .

Why would you put all this things in a plan, if you knew you couldn't do them?

Even as I was asking the question, I had a hunch what the answer was.

"My Board wanted to see all this in a marketing plan."

Ah yes, the Board.  My hunch was confirmed.

By the end of the call, we had agreed that I (along with a few others) would sit down with the Board and say all the things the my client couldn't . . . namely that just because an organization may have a ton of marketing challenges doesn't mean they can fix all of them and that trying to do so was a sure fire recipe for employee frustration and burn out.

Then I'm going to try to get them to focus on one priority.

Just  one.

And when they respond that they can't focus on one because there are SO many others, I'm going to ignore them.

And when they tell me that it's reasonable for the organization to maybe focus on three goals instead of one, I'm going to ignore them.

And I'm going to keep stating my case until we can agree on one marketing goal they want to achieve this year.

Just one.

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Update 1:  Someone asked me what my top goals as the Director of Marketing for this place are.  They are:

1.  Expand our local audience - About 35 - 40% of our audience comes from our surrounding neighborhoods.  I'd like to increase that by say 5% and make sure the audience comes consistently to all our shows

2.  Start the promotion process eariler - Normally we start selling a show about 6 weeks before it opens.  I'm trying to move it to about 9 weeks before it opens

3.  Improved electronic communication - This means a more improved website, better email marketing, use of a blog

Is there more we could do?  Of course, I could add 15 things to this list, but right now those three are the focus. 

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Update 2:  This post has caused a lot of people to email me (at mission.paradox@yahoo.com) and talk about the challenges they are having with their board.  Tomorrow, I'll try to talk a bit more about the dynamics between an arts org and their Board of Directors.

Comments

[RVCBard]

*completely floored*

Let me get this straight . . . you mean it's NOT self-evident that going in too many directions all at once - without the staff or funds to support it - is a recipe for disastrous failure?

[Ed]

I'm on the PR and Marketing team for a small non-profit arts organization in the city (you can tell we're small, because PR=Marketing with us). I helped write our marketing plan this year, such as it is. From my point of view, based on our limited resources and what we've seen works in previous seasons, there's a S.O.P. for marketing each show our company produces- a specific timeline and schedule based on distance from opening night. Our marketing plan gets very detailed about the specific things we do, by when, (i.e., initial press release by date x, group of volunteers do postering around the city on weekend y, email blasts go out on dates a, b, and c...) to promote each show. Of course, we have little variations to the plan based on the show- generating web videos, etc., but from my point of view having a basic document anyone in the company can read and follow, to check off and know we're at least getting the basics covered on each production is far more important than long term planning at present. Do we have long term goals? Of course. And I think knowing what those and stating them can be a "Secret-esque" way of moving oneself towards them. But I agree with you that there's a difference between "gee, it would be nice if..." and a plan.

As an aside, does your company separate Marketing and PR or are they synonymous?

[Adam]

Bard,

To answer your question . . . I guess not. :)

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Ed,

I agree with you, having a plan that details exactly what you want to do and when is vital. In the above example it was, as you noted, more like a wishlist that wasn't really connected with reality.

And we do separate Marketing and PR. For us PR is really about our relationship with the press, while marketing focuses on the relationship with a particular patron.