 Waseem Hassan welcomes you to lecture number 20 of Marketing for non-profits, MQT 628 at the virtual University of Pakistan. The component of learning is going to be the experiential level. And this of course is going to be in continuation of the earlier components which were about the organizational level and the identity level. The reason I am talking about these two earlier components is because all these are so intertwined and to form a picture which is so cohesive and should be so consolidated that we cannot talk about just one in isolation of the others. And therefore I have to draw your attention toward whatever we have learned so far in relation to the earlier two components and the two levels so to say of brand raising i.e. the organizational level and the identity level. The fact of the matter is that the experiential level basically is a reflection of these two earlier levels and all the programs that we put together for communication campaigns are translated into the experiential level when we talk about different tools of communication in order to reach our audiences. The reason this level is known as experiential because it is here that our audiences experience our organization. It is here that they try to discover and understand who we are, what we are, what we are supposed to be doing, what we do and what are our intentions and how effectively they really can relate their lives with our cause. You know the most important factor of the communication process is that we can develop certain emotional relationships between our audiences and the cause we are working for. And until the time we can do that our audiences will not really feel actuated and motivated to come towards the cause and take the desired action. And therefore before we put together all the tools that we have at our disposal at this experiential level we've got to be clear of one thing that we do them in a way that we end up arousing their feelings which really can make them take the desired action. There are the different tools at our disposal at this particular level and those are online, in-print, in-person. We have the physical infrastructure, the meaning, the workplace, where we go every day. That is a place that also should communicate what we do. And we have things like the mobile telephones and a few other supports. Now the big question here is how do we take a start? Where do we start? When we are to put together these tools of communication in order to come up with an effective communication campaign? Well, we know that we have the legacy of the founders and when they founded the organization they got in contact with certain audiences. They got in touch with donors, they were in contact with community leaders, the activists, they were in contact with the organization and the people who were part of putting together programs and executing those programs also were an important part of the total setup. And therefore we can trace all that back to who those people were and in particular who those donors were, who the clients were, who the community leaders were, who the activists were, who made their respective contributions and connected themselves with the organization. Now here you see the primary objective of this particular level is that we have to connect with our audiences and we connect with the tools that I just talked about and not only we connect with them, we have to keep them engaged, keep them engaged in a way that they feel actuated to do something for the cause. The point here is that we are trying to determine how the original people got into contact with the organization and for that we have to map out what really worked when they got into contact with the organization, whether it was the personal relationships because of the founders of the organization who were in contact with the different stakeholders or also something else in order to create that connection with our audiences. Whether it was emails or it was the website or some printed material that was sent their way or it was the personal contacts between the organization and activists and between activists and our clients and so on and so forth. The point remains here is that we have to map out what really worked in the past and if something worked in the past that has to be made the basis for something that will work in the future as well and therefore we have to reinforce that particular activity where of course new inputs and new contributions as and when we put together our campaigns. So therefore we have to look at things like the emails that we sent earlier or the Facebook page that we have created. If at all we have created, we also need to get into things like friends, Twitter feed that might have done the trick for us and any other support that has worked in the past because we have to map it out and keep a good serious record off so that we can use those supports over and over again with renewed vigor. Another thing that we can do in order to find out how people get connected with the organization is by initiating a small survey. The reason we may initiate a small survey is because there are two kinds of audiences. If I generalize all the audiences together, one that are connected with the organization already, other who are connected but we do not know how what they're connected. What really is it that worked to create that connection and therefore we initiate a very small survey which is web-based and we send email blasts asking just about a couple of questions as to do you know what the organization is all about and if you do how did you get connected with the organization whether it was through the Facebook page or through email or through Twitter feed or any other tool that you think might have worked. You put that as part of the survey. This should not be a comprehensive kind of a thing. It should be a very precise survey carrying just about two to three questions and not more and that will provide us with some insight into how the people got into contact with our organization and not only can we segment the people in terms of the communication tools which worked toward that connection because we also have a way to find out to what extent these people have been engaged with the organization and in order to pinpoint that particular factor of engagement because we do another thing and that is because we initiate to get newsletters. Newsletters could be initiated in print and also online. Well as a matter of fact they are initiated both ways it has to be a combination of both the media because we have audiences that are tech savvy and we have audiences that still are very much fond of the prints and therefore we initiate the newsletter carrying our messaging platform and some interesting news stories that appear on the scene from time to time and it is through that newsletter that we keep our audiences engaged. Newsletters should be used for two purposes. The one is for collecting donations. You know you talk about certain emotional things with which they can relate themselves and they like to work for the cause and they like to make their contribution by way of making donations and that is one purpose which newsletters serve. The other purpose is that we encourage our audiences to give suggestions toward improvement of our program and the new starter therefore there should be a two-way traffic the kind of a tool which becomes much more useful because when it is online online having the feature of being a two-way traffic we really can make use of the online facilities to register the kind of good suggestions which our audiences have made and when they make those suggestions we have a way of finding out how many of them are really passionate about the cause and how many of them are indifferent. So therefore it also gives us a way and rather lead into discerning the segmented lines in terms of very highly motivated audiences and those who are not highly motivated they're indifferent and therefore they give us a cause for working on our marketing strategies in a way that we try to strengthen that particular segment which happens to be indifferent and try to move that segment into the other stage segment which is a loyal segment or which in other words is the one that is taking that particular action over and over again. Now this takes us back to the behavior change of the model of non-profit marketing and you will recall that there are audiences that are at the preparation stage and there are audiences that are into the action stage. So whichever stage those people who are indifferent are whether it is preparation stage or even before that which is pre-contemplation stage and together we have a way of telling them that we offer a beautiful alternative to them to improve their lives either being a part of the program as clients or by making donations and fulfill their sense of self because they are altruistic people or they are making contributions because they want to derive certain religious benefits or they are out to get publicity. So like I said whatever is the cause of that particular motivation we've got to be able to pinpoint that and then work on that particular segment by having compatible marketing strategies and then having the thrust of the strategy toward that particular goal and that goal could be creating awareness that goal could be strengthening the awareness and making people take more and more action meaning making more and more people take that action over and over again so that their behavior toward that particular cause gets strengthened and if you know they happen to be in the stage which is known as the maintenance then we've got to have a different marketing strategy which basically is going to be that of reinforcement which tells them some motivating and inspiring real life stories just to keep them on our side at all times to come. So this is how we give our communications a kick start and connect with our audiences and then do things in terms of strategic formulations so that those audiences stay engaged with our cause. Another way that we can make our communications effective to begin with is by having the workplace talk a lot about who we are and what we do. Now how do we do that? Well we do that by plashing the work area with all those communication materials that we have put together to send across to our audiences and we shouldn't have the same things as the part of the office setup. Anybody walking into the office space should be exposed to the beautiful looking posters and the messaging platform as part of the big materials printed materials that tell them things starting from the vision of the organization and mission and values and right down to all those things that we do for our audiences. This is something which visitors should find not just attractive but useful. They should take a good look at those materials and then educate themselves about the features because we are trying to highlight all the time in light of our positioning and personality. So the people must know the visitors could be our clients and the clients in the context of nonprofits are all those people for whom we have put together the program. For example, if we are working for an anti-smoking campaign then people who come to the organization or to the workplace in order to be participants of that particular program are our clients and similarly when we talk of the donors, we know who they are, they are the ones who are basically our revenue source and when we talk of the prospects in the context of nonprofits, prospects are those people who have the potential to donate. Those who have not yet donated but have the potential to donate. Conversely, if we take a look at the commercial side then prospects are those people who have the potential to become our customers because by becoming customers they generate revenue for the company, they buy our brand and by the same token prospects on the nonprofit side are those people who have the potential to donate. So visitors whether they are donors, prospects, clients, activists, community leaders, you know any other advocates walking into the workplace because they should get a feeling of authenticity and legitimacy on part of the organization. They must get the feeling that we are a bunch of serious professionals who are here in a very tangible form and we have planned things and we have put things together in a very highly structured fashion and for that we have everything in writing and that really communicates a lot to all the visitors. Now it doesn't end here, it also goes across the personnel side meaning the front office people, people at the reception or all those people who get into contact with the visitors. These people they must know what the company is all about meaning the organization is all about and I think I did throw light on this particular factor. They have to remember the elevator pitch because they can quickly articulate the positioning side of the organization and therefore give a picture of clarity by saying a few words about what the program is all about and these people should be accessible all the time. It is not that visitors walking into the office could find the space without humans and it doesn't end there as well. It goes across the further communication lines and that is the technical support in terms of the voice mail facility and answer back the calling support. These people should be equipped with all these supports because those people who contact the organization by telephone must have access to relevant information about what the organization is all about and therefore these people should be able to answer all those questions which I just talked about and in case they are questioned about those things which are more comprehensive, detailed and more professional and cannot be handled by the front office people they should be in a position to pinpoint the relevant people within the organization or the spokespeople who can talk convincingly on behalf of the organization and you might have experienced rather I'm sure you must have experienced calling the different organizations not just nonprofits trying to find out certain information and in the process getting frustrated because you are put on a long hold listening to very highly mechanized recorded messages which are at that particular point in time of no particular use because you want to get across to the relevant person with your pertinent questions and you want to answer straight away not getting across the relevant persons quickly also adds to the disadvantage of the organization because the people at the other end get frustrated because they cannot really communicate with the organization and therefore this also happens to be a very important factor when we talk of the workplace or the tangible evidence that we create while we sell our programs, we sell our positioning this is a selling exercise in which we are trying to sell to all our audiences that we are just about the right people who can take care of this noble cause and once you become part of this noble cause and start making your respective contributions as donors or as activists we can really make the program a huge success in addition to making the workplace communicate all these features in terms of printed material and also in terms of having trained staff we need to do yet another thing because while we try to put together our communications together in the formative period I am talking about how do we take a start and because once we have taken a start the kind of things that we do I have not yet started talking about the communication tools one by one and therefore keep in mind if you are working for a new non-profit organization the kind of measures you should take while you endeavor to put together certain communication initiatives as to how to connect with audiences and the ones you get connected how to keep them engaged I think it goes without saying the ones that you have done all those things that I talked about in terms of the workplace you have to have those things online as well whatever you talk about as part of the workplace has to appear online in the cyberspace and this again goes without saying that the launching pad for that is the website so therefore whatever material we have prepared as part of the identity level has got to be reflected not just at the workplace at the entrance but also online because your website has got to be very comprehensive and alongside the website you need to have other tools like Facebook and MySpace, LinkedIn and blogs and other supports that can really highlight your communication material and the catch here is the tools which you think are going to be very appropriate in terms of accessibility to your audiences and therefore it is not just a question of putting together all those tools that are available as part of the experiential level rather it is a question of embedding the organization into those communication tools and this is a statement that I made at the beginning of the component as well we have to find out what exactly works if the audience is very tech savvy of course we need to put together all those tools which are part of the cyberspace and if an audience happens to be very comfortable with the prints then we need to work on those and the fact remains that in real life situations because we work on a combination of these media and we also run into situations as nonprofits in particular the way we are dealing with audiences that are not literate and what do we do then well cyberspace is no good in that particular regard because we also may not be able to count on the printed material in that particular situation or situations because we attempt to make the person to person contacts and that is why you see these mobile units going to remote areas villages in particular where teams from nonprofits do this job by communicating face to face with their audiences and there they can carry with them some nice looking posters which have more graphics and less copy as part of the material and create certain images within their audience's mind as to what they're talking about because that's something which the audiences may keep to themselves and rather they will keep to themselves because once they've gotten that because attractive printed material as experience as well as research have shown are things which people like to maintain for some time to come as part of permanent record intentionally or unintentionally they do that and this is how we put together all these communication tools together in order to embed the organization into our communication strategies so any strategies that we may come up with we have to be sensitive to the fact about tools which are going to work for a certain audience because we are not going to have all the tools working for all the audiences one size fits all is not the strategy which is going to work now the question here is how do we make sure the work works for one particular audience well just like I said in the beginning here as well we go back to you know a couple of important factors that we have to consider or other measures that we have to undertake the one is that we have to map out all that has worked in the past and all those things I've talked so far as part of the component I mean online things and prints and the person-to-person contact anything that has worked in the past is something that has to be taken very seriously as part of our communication strategy or as part of associative strategies another thing that we can do is we can shadow our audiences wherever we can now it is not possible to shadow each and every member of the audience because you have limitations it's not humanly possible however you do have a great chance to shadow all those audience members you get to contact with on a frequent basis for example your donors or those activists who could work for your cause on a regular basis or those members of governmental agencies or international agencies who offers you a lot of support in terms of making things easy in terms of regulatory framework there are certain governmental regulations all organizations can have to follow with non-profits being no exception and therefore you need their help you know in this particular regard if not other situations also so what I'm saying is you get into the contact with so many different important members of the audiences different audiences on a very wide spectrum of stakeholders and you have a chance to follow them and figure out for yourself as to what really is it that works for them in terms of communications you sit with somebody for a few minutes and immediately can establish to what extent the person is knowledgeable in terms of the latest technology or in terms of traditional communication supports he's comfortable with so that is something that you have to generalize and the ones you can generalize by shadowing selective parts and portions of your audience you can draw a bigger picture in terms of the respective tools that you should put together to reach your audiences because don't forget the fact that in order to draw very specific and clear segmental lines while you are dealing with different segments you need to keep in mind the factor of reachability and if you cannot really effectively reach your audience meaning here the right audience then you are wasting your effort of putting together all the factors of marketing mix therefore you need to be very clear about what are the tools that are more appropriate for one particular audience this well obviously gives you insights into their communication preferences not only that it also gives us a lot of insights into many other things of which segmentation is a very important factor we can really pinpoint with the help of the focus groups and interviews as to what really motivates them into associating themselves with our cause we have talked a lot about this I think in previous segments and therefore no more further discussion or throwing light on this let us now talk about the tools that we have at our disposal as part of the experiential level I have talked about these tools here and there in different contexts but let me tell you now as part of a list we first of all have a website which of course is the primary launching pad and without a website we just cannot move ahead and it happens to be the source of so many other online tools that we use for our communications the next one is the emails because we go for email blasts to reach our target audiences and talk with them about all those developments that are taking place because whether those are new stories or whatever then we have social networks like Facebook and the LinkedIn and MySpace we have social media like Twitter and the friend feed dig and so on and so forth then we also have user generated content this has taken on a lot of importance in present days online communications because this is something which can go either far or against the organization it works both ways and you know there are so many websites that talk of a range of subjects anywhere from the comments on a restaurant to a hospital to a shop to a fashion designer and so on and so forth too a non-profit as well so therefore we've got to be get very conscious of the fact that the user generated content also happens to be a very important tool as part of the overall kit that we have to ourselves okay how do we manage this particular tool I'll come to that as well then we have virtual words because you know through the web we can have the virtual events and the whole thing has become so comprehensive and we've got so much choice of so many different online vehicles that we've got to decide for ourselves what exactly is the more appropriate vehicle for our particular purpose and therefore we look into the features of all these vehicles so again you see the question here is how do we determine what exactly is the right vehicle and where we should have our presence and invest in the money into whether it is Facebook or whether it is LinkedIn, whether it is Twitter, whether it is you know something else, whether we've got to establish all that with the help of putting in a proper perspective our capabilities, let us go back to the organizational level this is something you know which is extremely extremely dependent on the organizational level this may look rather strange at this particular moment because while we are talking about online supports and the shifting of our focus all of a sudden to the organizational level because it is at that level we determine the kind of capabilities we have and the competencies that we have okay do we have the capabilities and competencies to deal with all these media or rather to manage all these media you know why because they have taken on you know the dimension of the two-way traffic and that is something which is a formidable challenge for the non-profit managers here I would like to say you know a couple of things about the website itself before I start picking other tools like Facebook and Twitter and so on and so forth website has changed a lot ever since it was introduced there was a time when website used to be just a reflection of the printed material the meaning it was not a two-way traffic and it did not really have the interactive feature whatever we had as part of the print could be showed that as part of the website so it was kind of a picture of whether your brochures and your leaflets whether your flyers and whatever you printed you showed that on the website no longer is the case in the present day's world because of this feature of interactivity website has become very comprehensive and very challengeable at the same time comprehensive because it is very useful it offers us so many different vehicles which can be embedded in that website or you know which can have links to that to the website and challenging because maintaining that website in terms of technology applications and updates is a huge challenge and we've got to establish whether or not because we have the ability capability and the core competencies to face that challenge and to fulfill that challenge if we have that challenge the meaning if we happen to be part of a large organization which can beautifully manage this two-way traffic in terms of analyzing the content all the time and before that you know developing the content then analyzing the content and then managing interactivity then we are all set because we have message boards and we have chat rooms and we have people who are really trained in matters of the developing and analyzing the content and they also have the marketing savvy and if they do not have the requisite technology savvy then they always can get into contact with the marketing consultants who work on this side you know we have consultants in the marketplace who are working on so many different dimensions of the website starting from optimizing search engines to developing websites and putting in the right content and then managing that content or giving you a consulting service as to how to manage that but then you as an organization need to have writing skills in order to come up with the right content if you think you are constrained to even do that you again can go back to the consultants who can do this job for you so the bottom line here is you should not shy away from marketing consultants who offer all these kinds of supports in order for you to be tech savvy and offering things online which can have a very effective reachability in terms of your audiences if you can reach your audiences and you can manage the content effectively then you can face all the online challenges going back to the relevance of all this to the organizational level that we can say that we have to make sure that online supports are absolutely consistent with our organizational goals and goals in terms of positioning and personality and therefore we've got to make sure that anything and everything that goes online has a lot of consistency with the personality of the cause also we like to ensure that the online supports deepen our relationship with all the audiences if we get the feeling that we cannot really deepen this relationship then online support is not really good we do not go for the online supports only because it happens to be in fashion and it happens to be the latest technology and it sounds impressive you know that we are on the web and we have a page on the facebook that we have a twitter account and so on and so forth what is more important is developing and deepening the relationship with our audiences so that we can talk to them all the time another thing which we have to ensure in light of the organizational level is that our online support should be such that they really highlight our positioning and the factor of distinctiveness I think if the communications online happen to be consistent with the personality it goes without saying they will also highlight the positioning of the cause and they bring into a limelight the factor of distinctiveness we also have to make sure that anything that we do is supported by compatible staff support because we need to have the right human resource and this is a factor which I already have talked about however the one thing which I would like to add to this particular factor is that our communities grow from time to time we have to assume that we are a growing organization for which we are adding to our audiences because more and more people and as our communities grow our presence online also grows and for that we need to add more stories more real-life examples and update all the testimonials which happen to be part of the content that we have online and we need to make sure that that content is not absurd it is to the point it is in absolute clarity it does not really contain jargons or technical terminologies it is something which is understood by a layperson and it is something which is supported by some other means as well in order to stay relevant and in order to make sure that we are sustaining the factor of reachability how do we do that I think it is a very important point and here I would like to quote an expert who says that once we go online the post and pray strategy post and pray with an inverted commas post and pray strategy does not work actually it never works as the argument goes because you have posted something on the website that then start praying that it will come in the way of all those who surf the web and will convince all of them into developing certain emotional relationships with the cause and then bring all of them into our fold it's not something which works it doesn't work that way you've got to do something else as well now what is it that you can do well you can have blogs because once you have created the website you also can have blogs because you post something maybe every week or if you have the capacity to do something at a shorter frequency so be it but the fact here is that you've got to post updated stories testimonials from all those people that you think could be good influencers on the blog and then going to manage that content in the light of the feedback that you get from your audiences and this is how you make your website more effective this is how you manage the two-way traffic or interactivity if we are in a position to manage this interactivity then our online support is really going to work very effectively for our communication strategies another factor that we really need to be very sensitive to is that of the user-generated content and like I could have pinpointed earlier that we've got to be aware of all that the content which goes against us because the meaning we have to have the resource that can counter the negative advocacy toward our cause and can ward off all the threats that may appear online and it again takes us back to the organizational level because we've got to be very clear about this particular strength of the human resource that we either have or do not have and if we have this resource rather we should have this resource so that we can counter this particular threat the reason I like to draw association of this particular online support which has so many different vehicles or tools within it to the organizational level is because it has to be very consistent with the organizational goals and it has to reflect the personality of the cause and in order to do all that we've got to make sure that we basically have the organizational resource that can handle all this so in other words the importance of the online tool as a whole within which we have discussed so many different vehicles cannot be overly emphasized and it has a strong link back to the organizational level and it goes back to the source where we start taking stock of our competencies and all the capabilities that we put together to formulate our strategies and then reflect our positioning and personality through all the tools that I've talked about as part of the online support so we can say that creating a Facebook page or a Twitter feed there could be an easy part the real hard part is to manage those pages and toward that we have to have a human resource that is competent enough to do their job and toward doing that job because we have to have very very defined the job descriptions and the people within the organization should continually manage the content which happens to be online. In order to summarize all this I've talked about as part of this component which has been an introduction to the experiential level and the online support which is one of the tools of experiential level let me now give you a summary of the whole thing in order to have our perspective very clear on what we have learned so far we start with the communication process and the given present days the world and the features attached with it we generally start with the online facility because people do have a tendency to associate themselves with the online supports and it is an economical way of connecting ourselves with our audiences it is a quick way of finding out who are the people already connected with the cause and who could be the ones who could be brought into the fold of the organization as donors as activists or as any other stakeholders who can be helpful toward the cause and then we talk about the formative moves that we took when the organization started we map out all those supports and all those tools particularly the online tools that helpful in establishing the contacts with our stakeholders with different audiences and then we went on to the learning as to how we can strengthen the availability of those tools in order to make those people engage with us it doesn't really end with the connection meaning establishing the connection rather you see it takes us on to the next stage which is engaging those people and engaging to see on a long-term basis whether they are donors or anybody else as part of the stakeholders and then we talked about together so many different tools we have at our disposal and the discussion took us on to the area of the comprehensiveness of these tools and then the sophistication involved in managing these tools and that sophistication basically stems from the feature of the two-way traffic or interactivity of the online supports nowadays and we need to have the right kind of people who can manage that interactivity failing which our communication campaign is not really going to take us too far I can assure you of that even if we have a beautifully looking impressive website with a full of all kinds of materials that we think are comprehensive enough for anyone to pay attention as long as we have the ability to manage interactivity that we can make everything get very effective but if we do not have that capability we are not going to make our communication campaign get very effective that's the crux of the whole matter and the one more thing which I would like to pinpoint as part of the summary as well is the ability of the website and all those the supports to connect our audiences with the people sitting in the organization to answer any questions could the website or the related supports may not answer they should be able to maintain a direct contact and as soon as possible they want to in order to get the information which they want to lay their hands on it is their right and we cannot deny them the information which basically is going to be good for us in the long run because having that information which basically is answers to questions which they may have they're going to help us so if the website says that the relevant spokespeople are the following we should have complete information on their coordinates and anybody wanting to reach them they should be able to reach them and they should be reachable they should respond to the callers within no time and even if they are not there they have to have you know that technological support in terms of callback facility and mail voice box and so on and so forth so that nothing remains unanswered now with this this component of for the experiential level in relation to the online supports is over and I thank you for your patience