Marketing channels

This page outlines various marketing channels that can be used to promote our work and giving examples or each and tips and ideas about how they can be used. It can be used in conjuction with our target audience when planning marketing actions.

A marketing action will often take place across multiple channels, e.g. we might right a case study on the CiviCRM website and then promote is on our website and on our linked in page.

If you think an important channel is missing, let us know.

Talks

These could be online or at real world events.

For all talks:

• prefer demos and interaction to slides, screenshots and verbal explanations
• use branded Third Sector Design presentation templates
• include an introduction slide for you and for Third Sector Design
• include a call to action slide tailored to the segment

Case studies

A 30 to 45 minute talk when we go through some work that we have done for a client. Case studies can be appropriate for all our segments depending on the content of the case study.

The aim is to show through an example the kind of ways that CiviCRM can help - to explain what it can do and inspire people to use it. From a marketing perspective, it is a way to showcase our skills and the impact we’ve had for clients, so that potential clients are inspired to work with us and feel confident in our ability to meet their needs.

Case studies are especially effective when we present together with the client. From an explanatory perspective, it is helpful for the audience to hear about the aims of the organisation, the challenges they faced, and the approach they took directly from someone that works at the organisation. From a marketing perspective, it reflects well on us that we’re able to get a client to present with us, and highlights a healthy and happy working relationship.

Some tips when creating a case study slide deck:

• describe the business case first (what are the clients aims and objectives, what was the challenge they were facing, what impact did we have). Then dig into the ‘how’ - the approach we took and any technical details.

Examples:

• Building a volunteer application portal for Support Through Court
• Creating an extension to manage shares in community enterprises for Sharenergy

Introductory sessions

A 30 to 45 minute talk introducing a topic (e.g. our preferred toolkit or some aspect of it) for people that are unaware of it. The primary aim is to teach people about the topic and how it can help them. At the same time, it is a good opportunity to market our services in this area.

These sessions make sense for the unaware and aware segments. We don’t need to cater to people that are already using the thing we are talking about.

Some tips when creating a topic focused slide deck:

• where possible, use real world examples from our client work, referencing the name of the client, the challenge they were facing, and how our work helped as a way of promoting our work and to prompt them to get in contact.

Examples:

• Introduction to Reporting in CiviCRM
• How to integrate CiviCRM and WordPress

Lightning talks

Lightning talks are a series of very short presentations - typically 5-10 minutes - that skip through formalities in order to fit in as much content on a variety of topics as possible. As such it is considered 'bad taste' to spend any time talking about yourself and your company.

That said, it is reasonable to include a call to action slide at the end of the presentation that has your name, company and a simple way to get in contact if you want to learn more.

Examples

• The pretty workflow extension
• How to simplify the contact summary screen
• Making CiviCRM environmentally sustainable

Conferences

Conferences offer various ways that we can market ourselves, including:

• Talks (see above)
• Stands / booths
• Sponsorship
• Swag (stickers, clothes, etc.)
• Ask an expert sessions
• Volunteering

Since conferences offer many different opportunities to promote our services, and are often organised well in advance, it pays to plan ahead of time and ensure we are making the most of the event.

From a marketing perspective, we should select the conferences that we want to attend based on the audience that we want to target.

Conferences can often be quite commercial with expensive tickets and sponsorship prices, especially for service providers, so we’d want to make sure that they were worth the expense to attend, and ensure that we are prepared to make the most of the investment.

Examples

• CiviCamps
• WordCamps
• Tech conferences (FOSDEM)
• Aspiration Non profit software development summit
• Third Sector Conference

Stands

In the past, we have organised a CiviCRM stand at some conferences in partnership with other friendly CivICRM providers. It is helpful to share costs as they can be quite expensive. We haven’t generated a huge amount of interest from stands alone but they might make sense in some circumstances and as a way to reinforce other conference activities such as speaking.

Sponsorship

Depending on the price, sponsorship is a good way to promote our services, especially to larger clients that want to work with bigger organisations (who will in general have a larger budget).

It’s helpful to think about the best way to stand out as a conference sponsor. e.g. you could ask to be the lunch sponsor. You might have a speaking opportunity you can take advantage of.

Stickers

Stickers are a popular way to promote our work. We have a standard sticker sheet that promotes CiviCRM and 3SD. We can also get our illustrator to design custom stickers at a fairly reasonable price so they can be personalised to a particular audience (e.g. CiviCRM and WordPress stickers, or 20th anniversary stickers).

Clothes

Clothes are also a good way to promote our work (e.g. T-shirts and socks), though we’d only want to get this made if we’re sure that people will wear them and if they are ethically produced.

Panels and ‘ask an expert’ sessions

These are a good way to meet with people who are in need of help. The idea is that people get paired up with people that can help them with specific problems. We have attended these kinds of sessions in the past that were badly facilitated. Offering to facilitate one of these sessions is a good way to get to know lots of people who are looking for someone to help them make better use of CiviCRM.

Volunteering

There are typically lots of volunteering opportunities available at conferences. Some of which require commitment ahead of time (e.g. organising sessions) and some of which are just on the day, like being a session announcer or room monitor. They can be a good way to network with other conference attendees.

It’s important to be aware of the amount of time that volunteering requires, and to place a limit on the amount of time we commit to volunteering per event, and per year.

Meetups

Meetups are regular events where like minded people get together to learn and network around a certain topic, e.g. fundraising, non profit technology, CiviCRM, etc. They are a good place to market our services. They can be online or in person or ‘hybrid. We should select appropriate meetups to attend based on the target audience we want to reach. We might also put resources into organising our own meetups or sponsoring meetups.

Meetups are a good place for talks (see above). They are also a good place for networking and promoting our services on a one-to-one basis.

Directories

We promote our services in various directories including:

• The CiviCRM experts listing - as part of our CiviCRM partnership (CiviCRM aware)
• Dovetail - free (CiviCRM unaware)

Some other examples of directories:

• Memberwise (we were listed here in 2021-2022 and paid an annual fee of £399) (CiviCRM unaware)
• Agencies for Good directory (although might be more aimed at freelancers)
• Become a CiviCRM Spark Sponsor ($120/year) (visible to Spark subscribers)
• Become a CiviAcademy Sponsor ($120/year) (visible to CiviAcademy subscribers)
• Be promoted on the CiviAcademy Dashboard ($360/year)

Website

Our website aims to cater to all of our target audiences and contains a variety of pages and posts aimed at them.

We aim to write at least one showcase per quarter and two or three blog posts per quarter about our work. We may also consider having a ‘guest blogger’ to promote a subject, project or collaboration we are involved with. Once they have been written, we should promote them on LinkedIn.

While it is important to keep our website content up to date with good content so that it gives a good impression to anyone that is considering working with us, it is also important to bear in mind that it doesn’t receive a huge amount of traffic and that other platforms, for example https://www.dovetail.network/partnerships and https://civicrm.org/blog are a better way to spread the word (see Blogging on external sites). These posts then link back to appropriate landing pages on our website.

Blogging on external sites

We can blog on external websites about the work that we have done and with any tips or tricks. For example, we might write a blog post with tips for keeping your CiviCRM site in good condition. This kind of marketing is often known as content marketing.

All posts on external sites should focus on providing something of value to their audience and also include a call to action (typically a link to an appropriate landing page on our website).

Here is a list of places that we should consider blogging:

• https://civicrm.org/blog to reach people that are already aware of CiviCRM and might be interested in developing extensions, contributing back, etc.
• CiviCRM case studies / success stories **Note: a requirement for being listed as an ‘Implementor’ expert type on CiviCRM’s partner listing is to submit one case study OR four success stories per year
• https://www.dovetail.network/partnerships to showcase our work to a wider audience

Social media

We have a LinkedIn account and a Facebook account. These are the only social media platforms that we spend time on. When carrying out marketing activities via other channels, consider also posting to LinkedIn and Facebook to generate more interest in the action.

Direct approach

We can identify organisations that we would like to work with and who we think would be a good fit for our services and reach out to them. Where possible, we should do so via an introduction from someone in our network rather than cold calling.

Partners

There are may organisations that offer complementary services to ourselves, for example, marketing or fundraising professionals. We should explore ways in which we could work in partnership with them to market our services.

Newsletter

We send a regular newsletter to clients and other subscribers highlighting recent success stories, ways in which we can help, and other useful tips. A newsletter is a good way to remind existing clients of different ways in which we can help them.