Media Marketing and Branding

One of the most important and necessary functions for an organization, especially for nonprofit organizations, is media marketing. Media very broadly refers to the use of graphics and design, websites and other online platforms, social networks, videography, and more

Marketing broadly refers to anything that would connect the product or service to clients or investors. Of course, there can be media that are not marketing and marketing that is not media, but the vast majority of marketing today is tied to media devices, thus the convergence of the two is natural.

Branding means how something or someone is perceived in the minds of people, the market. This is a self-awareness process as well as a process that is not controlled but rather reveals itself as time goes along. A long-term dynamic, branding has everything to to with identity and internal clarity - who we are, what are we doing, and why.

Marketing and branding are inevitably and inherently an organizational process, an opportunity to involve staff members and generate creativity, participation and strategy.

Organizations often do not market properly and do not utilize their media properly.

An organization must consider its interests, its authentic identity, product and relationships, and conceive of a general branding strategy. As you understand your brand, you would conceive of a general media marketing strategy to represent the brand through a variety of media devices.

Organizations need to consider their interests, brand and strategy, and then develop their ‘online presence’, which can also may be called media strategy, integrated marketing communications, digital marketing, or internet marketing.

There are various media devices and online platforms, and their use must be coordinated and complementary. (For example, your video would have a theme that matches the organization’s values and audience and use the same graphics as those used on the website.)

Coordination is visual with colors and graphics; it is conceptual with values and character; it is strategic with regard to priorities such as promoting an operation or fundraising; and it is realistically balanced with regard to the amount of time and money invested.

1. The first step is to work with a designer to create a color scheme and logo.

2. The second step is the website (wix.com and squarespace.com are popular user-friendly platforms for creating a website, though professionals often use wordpress among other platforms). The website should present the relevant details and content of the organization, with the color scheme and logo.

3. Third, the organization should establish a social media presence (Facebook, LinkedIn, and perhaps Instagram or Twitter).

4. The fourth step of media marketing is to set up an emailing system (MailChimp and Constant Contact are popular platforms) for newsletters or blogs.

The website, social networks and the email subscription should all be connected with links, tabs and apps. For example, the email subscription option should be also on the Facebook profile.

Professional videography is expensive, but low-budget videos are often sufficient for small organizations. Videos can be uploaded to internet platforms such as YouTube or Vimeo and then posted on your website, social networks and emails, either regularly (video blogging style) or periodically (for example a new promo every year or two).

All of the above can be done in-house, as technology is easier and easier to use, but this is time consuming. It is common to outsource work to web developers (unless the website is in and of itself an operational function of the organization, such as an educational resource or social communications platform), videographers and graphic designers. Some basic graphics can be created by non-professionals with the use of websites (such as canva.com). Social media is commonly maintained in-house, which is natural because of the social aspect of social media, but the person responsible for this should be trained and have a social media strategy in order to maximize effectiveness and impact.

In the event that an organization does not have a staff member to manage these important parts of an overall communications strategy, it is easy to outsource it, although someone in the organization should make sure to integrate all aspects of media marketing to ensure that the organization’s strategic communications interests are maintained.

Once an organization develops the basic communications necessary for media marketing discussed above, it can move into more advanced actions, such as fundraising campaigns and educational or advocacy projects.

SEO (search engine optimization) is important for internet marketing, which feeds keywords to the website and improves the ratings or exposure of the site when someone conducts searches on Google. (For more information on this, look up Google adwords and Google analytics.)

It is important to check reports regularly to get an impression of the exposure of website, social network and emails, and most platforms have some sort of reporting capacity within the system to monitor this. It is advisable to revise the brand, graphics, communications and content every two years in order to maintain a modern, contemporary look.

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