7 Things to Ask Before You Hire a Nonprofit Marketing Consultant
Excerpt
If you’re looking for help with your nonprofit marketing or want to hire a consultant that will really deliver, watch this episode. You’ll learn seven important questions to ask yourself and your consultant. This will help them be more effective and will help you manage your limited marketing budget well.
Summary
“Get super clear on what your expectations are, that will really help your nonprofit marketing consultant figure out the best course of action when they submit a proposal or a scope of work back to you.”
If you’re looking for help with your nonprofit marketing-communications or are preparing to hire a consultant to help with outreach, you need a clear picture of what they will accomplish for you and how it will benefit your organization.
Before you start that contracting process, take time to learn seven important questions you must ask before hiring a nonprofit marketing consultant that will help you select the right person for the work.
“You can make an incredible impact on this world without a fancy logo, without all the bells and whistles and sliders and scrolly things on your website.”
In this episode, learn what you should never start with when marketing your mission, discover the four questions you should ask every marketing-communications consultant before you hire them, and how to prepare your organization to leverage your marketing budget effectively.
Watch the video to get the full training.
If you’ve learned something from this episode, take a screenshot or post and use the hashtag #marketyourmission so I can celebrate you on social media!
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Transcript
If your nonprofit marketing consultant focuses on branding first, fire them. That's because branding is not marketing. Branding supports marketing, but it's not going to get people to donate to you. It's not gonna get people inspired to volunteer for your programs and activities. It's not going to secure that next grant. So, what do you do instead? Stay tuned as I give you seven questions to ask before you hire a nonprofit marketing consultant.
1. What is your nonprofit marketing budget?
Number one, ask yourself: what is our budget? Now, the next question that follows with that is, do you have a marketing budget? Oh, I'll talk more on this later. But at a minimum, your budget should include 5% for marketing. Now I know you're probably like, "Holy cow, Ricardo, like what the heck? There's 80% or more of my funding goes to programs and activities." Great. Remember part of those programs and activities are your staff time.
So if you are completely separating your overhead into your labor and then the expenditures on your programs and activities, remember your staff time is required to develop and deliver your programs and activities. But the budget conversation is neither here or nor there. The big question, first question you should ask yourself before hiring a nonprofit marketing consultant is, "What's my budget? How much money can I afford to spend on marketing for this entire year?" That will really help determine what that marketing consultant is able to do.
2 What are your marketing-communications goals?
The next question to ask yourself, "What are our goals?" Now I talked about setting some goals in a previous video. So check up here. But for, for the conversation that we're having today, about how to work with a nonprofit marketing consultant and what you should ask them is you've gotta show up with what you're trying to accomplish.
They will not know what the goals of your organization are. How many folks do you want to feed each week? How many students do you want to help? How many pounds of garbage do you want to fish out of the lake? How many critters do you want to save from peril? What impact do you want to make? And also what are your marketing goals? How many folks do you want to visit your website? How many of those folks do you want to sign up for your email list? How many folks do you want to donate each month? These are important questions to ask yourself.
Hey everyone, I'm Ricardo Ibarra with Market Your Mission. And after 15 years in the marketing design space, I wanted to create something just for change makers like you in the nonprofit world. I want to be the amplifier for your impact so that you can tell your story, grow your donor base and ignite a movement around your mission.
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3. What are your expectations of this marketing effort?
The third question you want to ask yourself before you hire a nonprofit marketing consultant, "What are our expectations of this marketing effort? What are we really hoping to get out of this?" Now, of course, this is built upon your budget and your goals. And so, these expectations need to be realistic. I've gone into meetings with clients who frankly wanted way more new website visitors, or email subscribers than we could possibly deliver them in the amount of time that they expected, or the amount of budget that they had, or to align with their goals. So if you can get super clear on what your expectations are, that will really help your nonprofit marketing consultant figure out the best course of action when they submit a proposal or a scope of work back to you. I've got four additional questions to ask before hiring a marketing consultant.
And these are all questions that you should be prepared to ask them.
4. What are the responsibilities of each party?
Number four, "What responsibilities will each party have?" You know, working with a, with a marketing consultant is a two-way street. Anybody who tells you otherwise and says, oh, "I'm gonna get this information. I'm gonna go over here and I'm gonna disappear. And I'll come back to you in a month or two months or three months. And presto-change-o have a big reveal." No, you don't wanna work with them. You want somebody who can clearly explain exactly what they will accomplish and your part in it because there's no one who knows your mission better than you. There's no one more tuned in and tapped in to what's going on with the people you serve, than you, your staff, your circle of support. So that marketing consultant needs to understand what their responsibilities will be and clearly communicate to you.
Hey, if they need you to sit down on camera and talk about your programs and services every week, great, you need to know that. If they are expecting that your team will take photos at every event, select the best photos and send that to them with, uh, some details about the event so that they can post to your social media. Fantastic. That's a responsibility you need to know upfront because marketing takes time. And if you've got the blessing of having the budget to be able to hire a nonprofit marketing consultant, fantastic. Congratulations. Now use that budget wisely and identifying those responsibilities upfront will be the best way for you to be a great steward of the money that you've been entrusted with.
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If you're enjoying what you're watching here, I'd love to invite you to Market Your Mission Monthly. Every month I go live teaching and training on the latest nonprofit digital marketing topics, everything from website design to content creation, to how to put together an incredible annual report, annual campaigns, email marketing, you name it, find out more about this really affordable training option just for changemakers like you at marketyourmission.co/monthly.
5. What is the timeline for this project?
The next question to ask before you hire a nonprofit marketing consultant is all about that precious resource that we all seem to have so little of, and that is time. What is the timeline for this project? What is their engagement going to look like? And what can you expect along that timeline? Now, granted, there's always gonna be a ramp up period. There's gonna be a, a content creation period, a time where you've gotta gather everything. You've gotta get your ducks in a row, maybe schedule interviews or take photos. But then once that marketing activity starts, what is the cadence? What is the regularity? As I've talked about in past videos, consistency is a huge factor for the success of any sort of marketing communications effort. So understanding and asking your potential nonprofit marketing consultant, what the timeline is going to be like, that's gonna save you so many headaches later because it ensures that everyone stays on track.
And you can break that down from a long term vision of maybe a year to quarterly, to monthly, to weekly goals, which will inform your day to day activities. So whether you are a small nonprofit with one person wearing all the hats, way to go you, or a larger organization where you've got someone doing communications or someone doing development, or someone doing fundraising, great, having that timeline will make everyone's lives so much easier because of course things get done when they have a deadline.
6. What is the project methodology?
The next question to ask before you hire your nonprofit marketing consultant, what's their methodology. I talked about this at the top of the video. If they wanna start with making a big, beautiful, pretty brand, and that's their main focus for your marketing, that isn't someone who's been in the trenches enough to understand that you can have an incredible impact in the world without a beautiful logo.
And this is coming from somebody who's been a graphic designer and a branding expert and a marketer for 15 plus years. You can make an incredible impact on this world without a fancy logo, without all the bells and whistles and sliders and scrolly things on your website. You just need messaging. You need consistent action and you need to connect to the hearts and the values of the people you're trying to reach. So ask them about their methodology. "What are we starting with and why, where have you learned this information and why, how is this going to have a positive impact on my organization?" Ask them about their methodology that should align with the timeline so that you see, oh, wow, we're doing content creation up first. Oh, we're identifying our key messages here. Oh, awesome. Okay, great. Oh, we're gonna develop a package for inspiring donors. Awesome. We're gonna do X, Y, and Z. Great. Make sure you get that methodology.
7. What has the consultant accomplished for other clients?
And the final question to ask your nonprofit marketing consultant is what have they done in the past that brought success to the folks that they worked with.
Again, I've seen some things in my industry, and I want to ensure that you are getting someone who really understands the nonprofit landscape. It's different than selling products and services. And so you need to have, you need to find a nonprofit marketing consultant who understands aspiration-based marketing, values-based marketing, and how to create messages that really connect with people's hearts and inspire them to take action. That's my hope to you. So I hope these seven questions to ask before you hire a nonprofit marketing consultant have helped you!
Remember, today is a great day to SHINE. So go out and serve with heart integrity, nerve, and excellence. I'll see you in the next video.