Charities Are Brands, Too!

With around 3,000 brand messages every day showering on us from companies with multi-million pound budgets, how can non-profit companies make the most of their brands to face such fierce competition? There are over 200,000 registered charities in the UK - all which have similar values and rely on the generosity of the general public. To stand out in this crowd, Work Interactive helps companies integrate their branding into with a positive online presence.

So what exactly is a brand? A brand is "Any visible sign or device used by a business enterprise to identify its goods and distinguish them from those made or carried by others" - Encyclopaedia Britannica. In other words, your organization's brand is everything that represents it (the personality, mission and values) and helps differentiate it from other organizations. A clearly articulated brand should then make the overall message clear to the target market, which in turn increases the likelihood that potential supporters will back the organization.

With all marketing tasks, defining the target market is the key stage - by forming a relationship and ensuring the brand appeals to your target audience will provide your organization with the first step in realizing your online presence. A good brand will form from consistent messages, committed marketing efforts, good experiences and positively reinforced images stemming from your organization over time. In short, if the public don't understand what the brand stands for, they cannot be expected to buy into its essence.

Charities now find themselves running more and more like businesses - they set performance targets and employ professionals to work within the organization. So it only makes sense that charities and non-profit organizations start to market themselves in a similar way. While the cost of marketing, in terms of time and cash, may seem prohibitive, the cost of not being recognized may be much more severe.

If you're building your website from scratch, Work Interactive take the organization's branding as the key element in design. Tone, values and personality is embedded from the beginning and the website's functionality is fully customized to the organizations needs.

Email Marketing is an amazing tool that will enhance your relationship with your existing customers, enhance customer loyalty and increase repeat business. It is one of the most cost effective approaches you can take to distribute information. Work Interactive have developed an innovative point and click email marketing solution through its sister company; Mail Interactive. This allows you to send your email marketing campaign and newsletters to your readers without any HTML or technical knowledge.

Search engine optimization is also a major service to consider for charities and non-profit organizations. It has become the most important technique to drive quality visitors into your site. Work Interactive have developed an innovative search engine optimisation strategy which can make the difference between your business succeeding online and the rest of your online competition. Our experienced SEO team will optimize your site with an ethical search engine optimisation which is the most cost-effective way of generating serious number of visitors into your site.

Posted : 9 Nov 2009 by Emily Garrick : Back to Tips And Advice on November 2009

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