 Hello and welcome to today's webinar, Best Practices for Developing Effective Marketing Strategies and Plans. My name is Sarah Gonzales and I'll be your facilitator for today's event. Today's webinar will be hosted by Alex Macon from Seneca Marketing and Natalia was meant to be here but I'll let Alex explain that a little bit more. So how are you today Alex? I'm well and good morning and thank you everyone who's logged in to today's webinar. Great to see some familiar names as well. Good morning to each of you. As mentioned this presentation was originally going to be a joint presentation between myself as the Managing Director of Seneca Marketing and Natalia Pereira, Innovation Director. Unfortunately Natalia has had an unexpected trip to the dentist and isn't exactly in a talking state at the moment but she is watching today's webinar. She will be monitoring the feedback and the comments as they come through. So while I'll be the one that's providing the verbal presentation she certainly is part of today's session as well. I'd like to begin by looking at a number of elements that we'll be covering through today's presentation. And as Natalia just mentioned in the feedback, please do feel free to leave your comments as we go through. Today's presentation is fairly substantial. It covers a lot around marketing theory and based on the feedback that's come through we're also going to be covering some specific marketing and communication tools as well. And thank you to everyone that's submitted their feedback in terms of the content they would like to see today. So first of all we'll look at the context around a marketing plan. What is required to develop effective marketing plans? Particularly looking at the research and the capturing of data. We'll be moving into the strategy. So how we utilise that data and turn it into something that actually means something for your organisation. And then we'll look through how to actually translate those interactions. A strategy is only as effective as its implementation. So we'll be looking at how that can be implemented to ensure that you're able to measure those results and deliver the outcomes that you have identified. And as we go through we'll also be looking at a number of elements and communication tools that are available. I guess the slides will be available after the webinar as well. And Sarah at the end of today's presentation we'll be discussing that process. Okay, first of all everyone I just want to, there we go. We've done that. We've taken the camera off just so we can focus on the presentation at hand. So I'm just going to make that full screen for everybody and then we'll bring Alex back up at the end while we go through some Q&A. So back over to you Alex. Thank you. On the presentation currently is the formal definition of marketing. I don't want to spend too much time on this in particular but one of the big challenges marketing has as a profession is the definition of what marketing actually is. And the fact that for many people marketing can mean anything from graphic design, through to tally sales, through to direct mail pieces, through to the whole gamut of whole range of tools that are used to deliver marketing outcomes. But what marketing actually is is the strategies that are used to create value. And this is ascertained by understanding your organization's context and how to reach and influence your stakeholders. You notice here that we're talking about stakeholders, we're not just talking about clients or customers. The reason being is that particularly in a not-for-profit context but also in a business context you're dealing with more than just your end customers. You need to look at how you interact with business partners, funding partners, how you work with your suppliers, distributors, the whole gamut of the people and the processes that are used to deliver what it is that your organization delivers. It might be a good time to actually stop for a poll just to gain some insight in terms of the roles that each of you undertake in your respective organizations. So I'll pass across to Sarah who will undertake our first poll for this morning. Great. So we're asking people what their core responsibility is within their organization. Is that correct, Alex? That is correct. Okay. So here we go. We've got seven different options here. So perhaps you're a general manager or a CEO. Perhaps you focus on the marketing, comms and PR side of things. Sales, membership, sponsorship are also options. Or other. Or perhaps your role is a bit of a hybrid and you wear a lot of hats like a few of us do. Either way, like Bonnie's just done, please feel free to comment in the Q&A box in the bottom left-hand corner and we can get some discussion going. And then you can see some results coming through, Alex. Certainly can. And a great mix here this morning. A mix between overall management responsibilities, marketing communications. I understand that quite a number of roles are actually shared. But for this purpose, let's focus on the one that is your core responsibility. And yeah, fundraising is another possibility as well. Okay. There's a finer results from that poll. So 28% are just in marketing as a full function. So we'll close out and then we'll move on. And in many organizations, obviously roles are shared. So thank you for completing that poll. It provides an understanding of I guess the content that you'd like to see through this morning. An effective marketing plan begins by understanding what your business or strategic plan needs. And I like to draw the analogy that a business plan looks at what you want to achieve. So where your organization wants to be in the next 12 months, where your organization wants to be in the next three years. And a business plan, of course, is a top level document. It connects all the various arms of your organization or your business to provide a COVID direction. Underneath the business plan, you then have a marketing plan looking at how you can actually deliver those outcomes and the vision that has been identified by your organization. So the marketing plan looks at how you actually deliver those outcomes. So it looks at components like the marketing mix. It looks at the mix of your products, your services, pricing, the people that you want to reach, the tools that are available to reach those stakeholders. And it sets out actions that achieve those goals. So marketing should be quite measurable in terms of what it is that you want to identify. And look at the actual actions that you want to achieve that you can use to achieve those goals. So an effective marketing plan complements the existing direction of your organization. And it needs to understand the broader context of your organization. And this is where it's very important to build on strengths. It's very important to build on what it is that you're already undertaking effectively and what can be leveraged to provide new opportunities. Likewise, it provides an opportunity to mitigate any weaknesses that may exist. So ensuring that you're able to build on strengths and minimize any threats that may occur through weaknesses. An effective marketing plan identifies time frames. And we'll be going into a number of these elements in further detail shortly. And it encourages collaboration. The number one tool to ensure that a marketing plan can be adopted across an organization and to ensure that it can be understood and reinforced by an organization is collaboration. Unfortunately, I've seen far too many examples of where marketing fits as a silo within an organizational context. And its impact on the wider organization through the sales process, through customer service, through PR and communications often tend to get sidelines. Marketing needs to be seen as a whole organization approach to ensure it is effective. What I'd like to do now is work through the methodology that we often use in developing marketing plans so that we can look through a number of elements that we often find deliver effective marketing outcomes. Now there's no right or wrong way to deliver marketing. There's no right or wrong way to deliver a marketing plan. But this is the methodology that we utilize. We were a finalist in last year's Australian Marketing Institute's Marketing Awards for Excellence. And this is a methodology that we've utilized with our clients across both the business and not-for-profit sectors as well as in developing social enterprises. And we like to break it down into a framework that encompasses three phases. The first being the capturing phase and this is where you look at the research and the analysis of information. The strategy phase and this is where you apply the thought process to what that data actually means. Building into some recommendations that then impact on the final phase being that delivery phase where you identify the resources that are required and confirm the time frames. Once again this is where collaboration is particularly important. A marketing plan will often impact other aspects of an organisation and you need to ensure that the time frames that are identified are firstly achievable and secondly that the resources are available if you are working in with other departments. We like to consider that our plans follow a 50-50 approach and that's looking at 50% research and 50% strategy. A number of attendees in this morning have actually been clients of ours and no doubt they'll be familiar with our methodology and the fact that there is quite a substantial amount of research to identify the marketing outcomes and to justify the recommendations that we provide. Research allows you to identify potential competitors, not just existing competitors but also emerging competitors. It allows you to identify similar products and services. It allows you to look at key demographics and trends that may impact on your delivery. It allows you to understand the broader marketing context. Are there regulatory changes that may impact your ability to deliver services? Is there a new legal framework that may impact service delivery? Are there emerging risks on the horizon that need to be understood and mitigated? And allows you to also identify other areas that may need to be tackled through the marketing plan. Ultimately, research informs your strategies. If you don't have the right research, you're not going to be able to undertake the right strategic direction for your organisation. The research tends to be as big or as small as you like to make it. So where do you start? Where you start by understanding who are your existing and likely customers? What are their demographics? What other stakeholders do you need to consider? Bearing in mind that marketing is more than just about the service delivery aspect of your organisation. It's more than just looking at your end clients. It's about how do you interface with your board members? How do you work with volunteers? How does your membership and your members fit into your broader marketing strategy? How do you communicate to those members? How do you work with funding partners? And what marketing approach do you need for funding partners to ensure that they're on-site in terms of your service delivery? Who are your competitors? Particularly looking at grants and funding partners, every organisation has a form of competition. So how do you leverage the strengths of your organisation to provide that edge in terms of receiving funding income? And what other factors will influence your marketing? Many of you are probably familiar with the situation analysis, otherwise known as the SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis looks at both the internal and the external factors. SWOT analysis tends to be a tried and true sort of methodology that tends to be used. But they are quite a useful tool, particularly in getting other personnel involved in marketing. It allows you to quickly identify the internal factors that are relevant to your organisation. So looking at the strengths and weaknesses that can be controlled by your organisation. As I mentioned, you want to leverage those strengths. Understand what your core strengths are, because ultimately they are going to be able to provide you with a competitive advantage. Conversely, do understand weaknesses and ensure that you're able to control those weaknesses so that they don't become emerging threats. As well as also the external factors. So the opportunities that are both current as well as potential emerging opportunities. And then the threats and risks that exist. So the threats that are both current and may be likely in the future. Where you need to actually analyse a SWOT analysis is not just in listing each of those items, but in understanding particularly how likely each of those factors are to occur. How likely are the opportunities that you have identified? How likely are those threats or risks? And depending on how probable they are, what can you undertake to influence their likelihood? Marketing has a number of interfaces with risk management. And this is where it's particularly important to understand what those risks are so that you can mitigate them. And how probable they are as well. Obviously the more probable and the more serious the threat is, the more you want to actually take the time to understand how they can be mitigated. Conversely, looking at how probable and how likely an opportunity is will allow you to actually devote the time to actually develop that opportunity and enable you to leverage your strengths to take advantage of that. I'd like to pause for a moment and just take a quick snapshot around how many of your organisations that you're here representing today actually have a current marketing plan. Over to you Sarah. Great. So this is a simple yes or no question. So does your organisation actually have a marketing plan? I think this is going to be really interesting to get some insights on Alex, don't you? Yeah, it definitely is. And it's interesting. This is a question that I often ask at a number of presentations that I deliver. And as time goes on, I've increasingly seen the yes responses increase. And it's great to see that we're almost at a position of, well, 40, 60 splits here, but it's great to see that the yes responses keep on increasing. A marketing plan is critical to enable you to leverage opportunities for an organisation. There's been quite common in the corporate world, quite common in particularly medium and larger enterprises increasingly being used in smaller businesses and likewise increasingly being developed in the not-for-profit sector. And when we look at the emerging trends and the challenges that the not-for-profit sector faces, a marketing plan is going to be critical for mitigating those challenges and understanding the opportunities that exist. And great to see also that discussion around developing an overall organisational plan as well. And you're right, Susan, what needs to be undertaken is that consolidation around each of those plans so that your organisation is able to work in one direction. Thank you for the responses there. And great to see, as I mentioned, that yes column increasing each time. Off we go. So let's talk about how we understand our customers and definitely you do want to remove those silos, Susan. Great to see work in that regard. So who are your customers and what needs do you fulfil? And this is where you want to look at both the direct needs that you're fulfilling but also the indirect needs. If you're a professional services organisation, you're obviously fulfilling a component in your members being able to demonstrate that they are a member of your organisation. But what other needs are you fulfilling? Conversely, what value are you providing through the products and services that you're delivering and how do those products or services actually fulfil that need? This is where you want to look then at the market segments that are available. So what you want to do is move beyond the broad brush marketing approach. No product or service applies to everyone in the entire country. You want to actually look at what common elements and who your target customers are and to do that by looking at what their common attributes are. This component tends to be fairly research heavy, particularly looking at primary data. And this is where the Australian Bureau of Statistics can be incredibly useful. The ABS has actually released the CETA Index which can now be integrated into Google Maps and that allows you to actually map particularly areas of relative disadvantage. If you're an organisation that does a lot of work in areas of need and looking at tackling social disadvantage, ABS data in the CETA Index can be a critical tool in understanding where your end clients actually are. Customer surveys can be extremely useful. Where customer surveys work is when you have the ability. Sorry, the Australian Bureau of Statistics is through the ABS website, abs.gov.au and that allows you to actually download a lot of data that's available, not just in Australia Live but also per local government area and per locality. It allows you to actually drill down into particular localities. The CETA Index and I'll type it in, looks at the relative areas of disadvantage. So it actually involves an index looking at areas that have higher degrees of disadvantage compared to others. When you're looking at particularly funding grants or funding submissions to government leveraging indexes like CETA, leveraging ABS data can be critical. You also want to be able to reinforce your knowledge through customer surveys and where surveys work effectively is when you have that mix of quantitative questions, so simple guess no questions or that mix of agreeing through to disagree and that mix of openings into questions. Typically if your surveys live in online, the simpler it is to fill out, the higher the response rate you're going to get. Surveys, you want to make sure that you do have a response rate that is representative of the sample that you're polling. Basically what you want to be able to do is extrapolate those results to your broader membership or to your broader customer base based on those surveys. Incentives can be a great aspect or great tool to actually encourage people to fill out the survey. Sample percentages tend to depend on the sample size that you're polling but typically you want to look at at least 10% and that allows you to undertake a fairly broad representative sample. Peer networks can also be useful. So benchmark yourself against other organisations. What customers are they undertaking? What customer sector are they tracking? And that allows you to look at what approaches they're using and who it is that they're targeting. And also purchasing trends. Choosing trends will impact your customer base and the people that you want to reach. And as I mentioned, remember other stakeholders. Hi everyone, it seems that Alex has actually cut out with his phone at the moment so we'll just wait for him to come on board. If everyone can hear me, just let me know. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to launch another poll. Just say by the time Alex comes back online we can actually have something ready for him to go. So this one's really referring to marketing tools. So what marketing tools do you currently use? Now this is a multiple choice question. So going to launch this and you guys can pick as many as you like. So we've got, here we go, website. Do you currently use your website as a marketing tool? Social media, brochures, information sessions. And if you are using information sessions perhaps you can elaborate a bit on that. Video, which has obviously become a lot more common in today's world and many people have turned into video for a few reasons. Media releases, email campaigns and then even posters. So maybe you are still using posters outside as well. And we can see some responses come through now. And obviously website is huge for people online. And if you could just put those through and if you do have any additional comments please feel free to let us know in the text chat box in the bottom left-hand corner like Lindsay has. So a bit of everything we're appropriate and I think that is the case for many organizations out there trying to use a mix of both online and offline marketing tools to try and get results is great. And then email campaigns as well which is also quite high just as much so as brochures. I'd be interested to know the people who selected brochures whether or not you're actually speaking about online brochures or maybe hard copy brochures as well when you're actually at trade shows. So let's just give people a few more seconds to go through this. Great. So interesting to know that you have hard copy and online brochures and I think that can be a great mix especially when you are at trade shows and stuff like that alike. So we're just still waiting for Alex to come back in. So just one moment and we'll just keep those questions coming. And that's also an interesting comment from Bonnie. So we have reduced the size so as more people move online but we still have a large amount of people ordering direct from hard copy brochures which is very interesting. And also at expos that's also very important. Quite an interesting mix there in marketing tools that are used and it's great to see the diverse range that is being undertaken particularly where the strength in marketing is around integrating each of those tools. So it's about ensuring that each of those tools work in synergy with each other. And this is where it's particularly important that you remember that you're not just targeting your clients but also the other stakeholders that you do interact with. So as I mentioned the members, the intermediaries, your suppliers, your volunteers and the funding partners that you work with as well ensure that you are able to appeal to each of those multiple target markets. The other aspect to remember with looking at your target markets is the buying process. So what is the length of time actually that's required before someone actually makes the decision to utilise your products and services? It's important to remember this particularly works true when you're looking at grant applications and working with funding partners is that the person who's actually utilising your product or service may not actually be the one that's actually purchasing it or making the decision to actually make that purchase. So it's around understanding the roles that everyone undertakes within that buying process. So how the users, the people that are actually utilising that product or service, whether they are people that are influencing that decision, the people that are actually deciding on the purchase and those that are actually making that decision as well. This works particularly true in retail and you look at in supermarkets the number of products that are clearly targeting kids as the user of the product and the candies and lollies at the exit counters of supermarkets as the prime example of this. So obviously targeting children in the consumption of those products but it's ultimately the parent that is making the decision to make that purchase. And this is where that decision making process is a matter of not just targeting those that are utilising the product but also influencing those that are actually making that decision and the ones that are actually providing the financial transaction. Similarly it works through in government where you're looking at interfacing with those that are actually making the decision and granting funding and where it's actually going towards service delivery aspects. So where it may actually be assisting people who may be receiving the benefits of the services that you provide. Every organisation has competitors and why you may not have direct competitors in terms of the services that you're providing. If you're receiving any sort of funding or sponsorship or you're working in with philanthropic trusts who are providing you with funding, the reality is you're actually competing against organisations for that income. So it's looking at who your direct competitors are. So those that are actually offering the same or similar products and services to you and those that are serving similar market segments to your indirect competitors. Those that may be offering different products but are fulfilling the same needs. Classic example is looking at say restaurants and if you look at high-end restaurants, obviously direct competitors are other high-end restaurants but also when you look at indirect competitors might be other high-end entertainment venues as well. So comparing say a dinner through to a night out of the theatre. And then the other products and services that fulfill a related need. So obviously in the example that we've used the broader needs is one around entertainment. So how does going out for dinner or seeing a musical theatre show compared to say watching a movie at home and sitting on the couch and having watching an entertaining DVD or video. It's around understanding that broader competitive context. So it's not just about looking at your direct competitors but who those broader competitors are as well. And that's particularly important when you're looking at funding applications. Bearing in mind that funding applications obviously work in looking at priority areas from either government or philanthropic trusts or business partners and identifying on how you identify those needs and achieve those needs that they see as their priority areas. You also want to be able to look at the broader environment. The marketing terminology here is known as a PESTAL analysis. And basically that looks at your broader political context. So and this is particularly true in the non-profit context currently. What is the impact of political changes? What does it mean for your organisation? Economic impacts, not just around hard economic data around Australia going through the current economic recovery. But what does it actually mean for your potential customers and service delivery? Social attitudes. How do changing social needs impact on your organisation and its ability to deliver its products or services? What's the impact of technological changes? Not just around the organisational capacity and internal technology changes. But what does that mean in terms of that broader service delivery? True to the environmental elements. How does the changing environmental context change regulatory frameworks, changing legal frameworks? How does that impact your ability to achieve those marketing outcomes? And it's looking at the broader regulatory changes as well. As an example there's been changes around the Association's Act and the Incorporation's Act looking at the responsibilities of committees of management. How do those broadening responsibilities which by their very nature bring non-profit organisations in line with company structures, how do those broader responsibilities impact your ability to recruit board members? And what frameworks and what impact does that have on current board members as well? And how does that impact your ability to actually recruit prospective members and board members into your organisation? Once again it's not just around what these factors are but how rightly are they and how do you mitigate those impacts? And not only what does it mean for yourself but what does it also mean for your competitors? And Nick, a very good example based on your organisation looking at who your competitors are so why do you may not have direct competitors? You're right, it is around that broader attitude around recycling and the broader aspects around people viewing is recycling more difficult than just the traditional view of rubbish collection. How do you actually encourage people to shape some of the broader attitude trends? Once we have all this data we move into the strategy phase and this is where you start to hone into your key messages. Looking at who your target markets are, how you reach your potential customers and your potential stakeholders, the composition of your products and services and what that unique value proposition is. In the corporate world it tends to be called a unique selling proposition. I much prefer to use the term unique value proposition. Ultimately it's about you offering value to the people that you want to reach. It's about offering value to your client, it's about you offering value to government, if you're receiving government funding, it's about you offering value to your business partners, it's about you offering value to the volunteers and members and board members that are part of your organisation. And also offering value to staff. If your marketing strategy wants to look at becoming an employer of choice, how do you offer that value to staff so that you're able to actually make your organisation an attractive place in terms of recruitment purposes? So what are your marketing objectives? So looking at the purpose of your marketing plan and ultimately how do these objectives relate to your business plan? You need to be able to articulate these objectives. So surmise those objectives into where you want your organisation to be from a marketing perspective over 12 months, over three years, in the broader horizon up to five years as well. And a very good example from Samantha in the comments around where there is a strong competition in putting together proposals for corporate sponsorship where once again it comes down to identifying the needs that you're able to fulfil, not just in terms of what you deliver but also in how it aligns with corporate partners as well. When you're working with corporate partnerships it's around looking at a multi-pronged approach where you are able to link your key messages and your key deliverables back to what those corporate partners want to achieve as well. Marketing ultimately is collaborative. It needs to involve the entire organisation. You want to be able to target your key stakeholders. You want to be able to seek feedback. You want to be able to review your findings. You want to be able to workshop those methodologies and those outcomes so that you can ensure that goals are shared. And particularly where, as I mentioned, implementation may actually rely on others. The greater the degree of ownership over your plans and your strategic direction, the greater outcomes you're going to achieve through that implementation process. So what tools can you use? We can conduct workshops. Workshops can be very useful in the initial phases as you basically push everything on the table and work through what it is that you want to achieve. But you can also use workshops to share the research that you have identified. Some of the insights that you'll be able to analyse and what it actually means. You can review those findings and actually work with other areas of your organisation to determine what their impact actually means. Once again, surveys can be quite useful in getting a snapshot of how people view the direction of your organisation and what opportunities may exist. There was discussion before around 500 being that target figure around surveys. Ultimately it will depend on how many people you want to reach. Typically you'd want to at least a 10% response rate. So you want to make sure that you're getting something that's fairly representative. If you have membership categories, that should be 10% response rate around each of those member categories, not just your membership overall. And this is where it comes down to your market segmentation. You want to be able to drill down perhaps not just into membership categories, but what each of those demographics are in those categories as well. If you're a professional services organisation or if you're a professional association, say you're the Australia Marketing Institute, you may want to actually segment your corporate membership into the size of marketing firms. So in that case you'd want to represent a passive sample around large marketing firms versus single person consultancy versus those in between. So while they have a broad corporate membership category, you actually want to be able to break that down into each of those various segments. And this brings us to knowing where your target market is. So who are they? Why are you targeting them? Where are they? And how do you reach them? You want to be able to connect your target market to your strengths. And this might be both your current strengths, but also developing strengths as well. Ultimately that linking to your target market creates your value proposition. And that enables you to actually develop your key marketing tools to reach that target market. And your target market needs to be broader than just where targeting X people in general locality. It needs to look at those specific marketing attributes that you want to reach and those specific demographics. Is there a particular age of people that you want to reach? Is it a cohort within your general locality? Because ultimately this will shape how you respond. Looking at do you differentiate? Do you actually develop a point of difference between your competition and leverage those points of difference? And that can be particularly important in working with funding partners where you actually want to be able to stand out from the crowd and show that investing in your organisation delivers greater or more targeted outcomes than other organisations. Or do you innovate? Do you do what others do, but do it more effectively? This is going to be particularly important as we move to an increasingly competitive ground space where you will need to demonstrate that ability to deliver greater outcomes and as effectively as possible. But do you simply imitate and follow the composition? Ultimately what you want to be able to do here is create value. Because what you want is a unique value proposition that is sustainable, that provides an advantage and is able to allow you to demonstrate why it is important. It's about ensuring that that unique value proposition is respected, understood by the people that you want to target. Once again it's not just about your customers or your clientele, it's around looking at everyone else that interacts with your organisation. Volunteers, it's around why should they invest time in your organisation versus others that exist. If it's funding partners, why should they invest in your organisation relative to others? What is that competitive advantage and ensure that it does become sustainable? And this is where, and we see it all the time in the retail sector, competing solely on price becomes a very dangerous playing field. The more you compete on price, the more likely it is that others will come in and undercut you. You want to be able to demonstrate value. And value is more than just pricing, it's around the entire customer experience. Is it a customer experience that actually encourages repeat purchases or repeat interactions with your organisation? Pricing is part of that mix, but it is not just a sole determinant. As you look at, say, the level of service in an IKEA versus a high-end furniture store, you'd hope that your high-end furniture stores have a much better service process, much better interaction with you as a customer. Because if they don't, they're actually eroding part of the value that they provide. And the next time you look at purchasing furniture, it becomes a question of, well, if I'm getting the same base level of service, why wouldn't you go to IKEA versus higher-end furniture's retailers? Ultimately, it is about being consistent. Your service, the aspects that make your broader service or product delivery need to be consistent. If you're on IKEA, you mark it yourself as an IKEA and you're able to demonstrate that you get a consistent experience and this is what to expect from IKEA. If you look at high-end fashion retailers, high-end furniture retailers, you expect a higher level of service and that's part of the messaging that they typically tend to demonstrate. That's part of the overall consistency. Inconsistency creates confusion. If you're not the proper organization, it's around identifying what your called message is, what your called values are and articulating that vision. The minute you create confusion, it makes it difficult to connect funding partners with the key values that enable the delivery of your services or to connect members with the outcomes that their membership provides to your organization. It's around understanding how the target market responds to that consistency because part of that consistency interacts with your branding and enables you to demonstrate value. If you're marking yourself as an innovative organization, how does that actually translate in practice? What value does that innovation provide to your members? What value does that interaction provide to volunteers, to your staff, to board members and to others? Every form of contact that you have with a stakeholder leaves an impression and this is where consistency is critical as you work through your marketing strategies. Whether it's your website, whether it's social media, whether it's your broader marketing context around leaflets, brochures, newsletters and we conducted that poll previously looking at the mix in what people utilize. Information sessions, expos, it all leaves an impression and you need to ensure that that impression is consistent around this is who our organization is, this is the outcomes or these are the outcomes that you will receive and the value you receive if you interact with our organization. Inconsistent contact leaves an impression and that marketing mix and this is where it's particularly important to get ownership around the overall marketing impression. It is broader than just the marketing collateral. It is around telephone and email correspondence and how that is actually answered. If there's areas of your organization that tend to be unresponsive or are not responding to correspondence as positively as they otherwise could be that leaves an impression on your organization. If there's areas of your organization that are operating as silos and not enabling stakeholders to interact with your broader values then it impacts your ability to deliver outcomes. I thought it would be useful to look at content as well and this is content revolves in copy of what it is that you want to deliver and how it is communicated. Ultimately you want to know who you are targeting and be able to appeal directly to your readership. You want to be able to look at making a claim or offering advice. It's around ensuring that your headlines are able to grab attention and often the AIDA formula is the one that tends to be used. The A is standing for attention, gain attention through a headline and hold it by integrating headline into the copy of your content. Headlines that have little connection with your broader content whether it be as an article, whether it be as a newsletter or whether it be as a poster or flyer may gain attention but they won't necessarily sustain interest and this is where you want to ensure that the content actually appeals to people's emotions and creates a sense of people understanding these are the outcomes I'll be able to achieve because that enables you to then leverage desire where you actually want to be able to persuade your readership to respond and true to action because ultimately every item that you create you want to actually demonstrate the actions that you want someone to undertake. If it's attending an event, it's around actually delivering those delivering people to those events. If it's around recruiting board members, it's around recruiting people into the board. Effective design is around understanding your medium, knowing your audience and being able to devote that response. Where design works is where it's integrated in and enhancing copy. Your marketing needs to... Your marketing tools need to be able to deliver an integrated outcome. So copy needs to integrate with design and while you may have a number of different people working on those various aspects ensure that there is an overall project management that enables an integration and this brings us to the delivery phase and this is where we're putting everything together. So what actions will achieve your strategies and how does it actually help achieve the strategies that you have identified? Most importantly, how is it measured? Every form of marketing is measurable. So you can identify the metrics that you want to measure. In the online world, it does tend to be relatively easy to undertake. You've got tools like Google Analytics, Google Alerts for news articles and obviously you can measure the sharing of content on social media. In the offline world, you can use codes within marketing materials, so posters, brochures. You can use specialized telephone numbers to track inquiries through a specific promotion or simply ask. But make sure you're able to get those that measure ability because that allows you to measure the outcomes that you want to deliver. A marketing plan needs to include an implementation schedule. So identify the steps that are required for each action and ultimately knowing who is responsible and the resources that are required. Both the human resources in terms of personnel but also the financial resources. Once again, it comes back to time frames. Identify each action that is required to achieve that strategy. If it's an event, look at each step that is required to deliver that event. From when posters need to be produced, through to when invites to VIPs need to be issued, to when the media needs to be contacted, through to the actual event itself. If you're seeking grant, find those relevant funding bodies and once again align it with the value that you're providing. If you're looking at media, the media is an audience for your event. Ultimately comes down to finding that relevance angle. We've covered events but make sure that events are planned in advance and that implementation schedule is critical for events. It's not just around the event itself. It's what you do in the lead-up to the event and importantly what you deliver after the event. If you have sponsors who assist make sure that you interact with them after the event. Thank you to those sponsors. Provide an opportunity to distribute photographs or videos of the event. Treat those sponsors as carefully as you did during the event so that you can hopefully recruit them should you hold that event in the future. Where sponsorship ties in with event management is actually leveraging existing or future events. The more you keep those sponsors on sign the easier it is to get them in future years. Social media is around extending the reach of your online presence. Ensure that you integrate it with your website and do understand who it is that you want to reach. Ultimately it's about utilizing the right tools for the right purpose and each of these might be outcomes that you've identified through your marketing strategy. In your implementation schedule if you're looking at social media it's around actually identifying your content. What content will you actually distribute on social media? What interactions do you want with that content and using the right tools for the right purpose? If you want to build an online community you can use Facebook. If you want to deliver video you can use YouTube. If you want to interact with the younger demographic it's particularly useful. Marketing needs to respond to change. So compare results to expectation. Understand why outcomes deviated. What has changed? And is it actually a problem? If results are different to your expectations note that but is it actually a problem in terms of what is actually being delivered? And then looking at each of those three phases in your implementation marketing requires strategy. So undertake research to understand the markets that you want to reach. Know what it is that you want to achieve and plan your implementation. Be able to measure those results and be able to articulate any deviations that have occurred. Ensure that you're able to track results both online and offline. Happy to take any questions and conclude today's webinar. Hopefully I've had a chance to answer any feedback as it's come through. So this is now an opportunity to deliver on any final questions that people may have. Excellent. Thank you for that. So yes, if anyone does have any questions please feel free to type them down into the messages box in the bottom left hand corner. And also there's just bringing this up now. There's just a survey up here that we would like you to complete just in response to today's event. Thank you, Alex. I'd just like to hand it over to you to wrap up while people are typing their questions away and also just provide some insights into the special offer that you would like to alert people to today. Fantastic. As part of our vicinity marketing's race for existing we believe that success starts with strategy. And as you have gathered through today's presentation your service is around strategic marketing planning. So looking at how you can actually utilize your strategic outcome to deliver the results you need to achieve. You've obviously heard from myself but our leadership team also consists of Natalia Pereira who's our Innovation Director and who has been monitoring today's content. But what we'd like to do to demonstrate that linkage between success and technology is to provide an offer around our marketing self-assessment. This is a new product that we're in the process of launching. It's normally retailed for about $550 but if you email me your details then we'll gladly provide you with a free opportunity to actually complete that marketing self-assessment. And that enables you to actually go through a number of elements that we've covered through today's presentation. Great. Thank you. Now we have a question from Trudy so it's more in relation to a query regarding market size and competitors. So how can Trudy find out revenue levels of her competitors when they are portrayed to be limited because they didn't actually publish their results? A lot of that comes to a grasp understanding what average turnover tends to be but also then looking at some of those specifics as well and look some of that can just come down to specific competitive research. You know, as part of a marketing plan you may actually want to look... you may actually want to contact those competitors directly and gain an insight into what their revenue levels are. We actually worked with a not-for-profit social enterprise that was in the process of launching a not-for-profit real estate agency and we actually undertook some of that direct competitor analysis and we were able to gain some insight into what those turnover levels were and those revenue levels were and also their overall sales process and that was able to inform us in terms of targets and the sales process that this new agency would need to provide. It's actually one of the questions that is answered through the marketing self-assessment as well. Any other questions? I see a few people typing. Miriam, get slides will be made available and please feel free to send your details to me directly and I'll make sure that they're directly available. Redback will also make the audio presentation components available as well. That's correct. So just keep a look out within your inbox over the next 48 hours for that email and you will actually receive a recording, a PDF version of the slides and then also the contact details to Alex and the guys over at Syndicate Marketing. And yes, please do feel free to contact us. The marketing self-assessment is definitely available it will allow you to actually develop a lot of the theory that we've discussed in today's webinar and enable you to start documenting each of those aspects. I see there's a couple of questions cycling through so we should have time for one more. Yeah, I think they're just in relation to the slides and the download. But if anyone does have any questions we tend to find once people leave webinars they tend to think of questions that are the next 24 to 48 hours. So please feel free to let us know on Weekend Direct, you're straight to Alex or you have his details. And I just like to thank Alex for his time today at Syndicate Marketing always great insights from you guys over there. And as you know both Syndicate Marketing and Red Back Conference support all of our charities and not for profits and here's just a few links to our Charity Spotlight for June which is red kite and their workplace give-in month. So we encourage you to take a look at their site what they're all about and to get involved great cause and we like to support them as much as possible so hopefully you can all get on board as well. So John's just mentioned something on self-assessment, marketing self-assessment. So can we just go back to that slide before we leave Alex? Certainly. There it is. Excellent. I've also included my email address in the comments. Basically that self-assessment will let you complete each of the sections that we have developed in today's presentation. It will provide a good reinforcement to each of the slides that have been delivered and enable you to start putting some of those thoughts onto paper. The hardest place to start with marketing is actually documenting those thoughts. Often they'll be in our heads. This is a tool that enables you to start documenting it and to start enabling that collaborative process with other areas of your organisation. That brings us to the end so thank you everyone for joining and thank you everyone for being so interactive and engaged and we do hope to see you at future sessions so keep a lookout for those invitations and thank you Alex once again and enjoy the rest of your day everybody. Always a pleasure. My email address is included in the comments so happy to take other questions as well. Thanks everybody. Thanks for all the questions being thought of after the presentation concludes. So please keep the communications going. Part of what we want to do is expand the discussion around what marketing is and enable the organisation to gain a greater insight into how marketing can actually be utilised. So feel free to keep the conversation going. Thanks everybody. Have a great day.