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6. Dismissing branding. This is the belief that an organization is good enough as is and doesn’t need branding.
To avoid or fix these branding mistakes, Shaw recommended the following tips:
1. Boost campaign or audience effectiveness. Ask yourself: What are the key strategic elements that our brand will achieve in X amount of time? Can our clients communicate our key differences from other organizations similar to ours to other people? Can our employees do any better? Think about your brand and then think about your outreach efforts and other tactics. Are they aligned?
2. Achieve economic success. Does each fiscal decision the CFO makes align with your organization’s purpose? Complicated messages are expensive to brand. If you are a high-end organization, do you have the funding to support that? If there is a discrepancy here, consider revising your brand presentation so you aren’t forced to spend extra money to keep up appearances.
3. Perfect the art of simplicity to avoid others asking if your brand makes sense. If you, your staff or your donors can’t explain your brand easily or quickly, revisit it. Practice your elevator speech. Make it strong. Consistency of brand helps define; frequency helps people remember.
Creating loyalty among constituents has a lot to do with the effectiveness of an organization’s brand, but also is about rewarding people for supporting your cause. Shaw said that creating loyalty with donors can be achieved by brand recognition, financial/in-kind rewards, discounts/special treatment and excellent service.
The bottom line is that different audiences respond in different ways to a brand. Shaw recommended organizations consider how clients, collaborators, vendors, employees and donors each react to the brand.
“Each is loyal in a different way,” she said. “Craft your loyalty tactics to take advantage of the differences in these audiences, and watch your retention and loyalty grow.”
Catherine Shaw talks more about branding in a video at www.fundraisingsuccessmag.com
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