Marketing
Whether you’re looking to mobilize volunteers or celebrate a ribbon-cutting, effective marketing allows you to spread the work to your community.
Marketing your project will help you to develop a stronger and more recognizable presence within your neighborhood. Your marketing efforts will also ensure that you attract new volunteers and donors, keep current supporters engaged, and have a community ready to be rallied whenever you have a new event or project update.
Strategic and cohesive marketing efforts will also give you a trusted presence in your neighborhood, which will be helpful when applying for grants, securing sponsorship, or building partnerships.
Identify the unique value of your project
Before thinking about how you’re going to spread the word about your project, it’s important to take a step back and ask yourself:
- What is unique about my project?
- What impact will my project, ideally, have on the space and the community?
- What are the existing strengths and characteristics of my community that I can draw on and elevate throughout this project?
Identify your stakeholders and their connection to your project
Your stakeholders are the individuals who your project impacts and relies on. They are the foundation of your efforts, and may include your neighbors, the local community, donors, and/or the government entities in charge of permitting and grants. Once you’ve identified your stakeholders, you can start to develop compelling and tailored language for your communications materials. These talking points should succinctly summarize important and relevant information about your project, and how/why these groups of people should get involved.
Digital marketing
Sharing your project on social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Tik Tok is a great way to engage your community and spread the word about upcoming events, volunteer opportunities and more! Whether you create accounts across all or just some of these platforms, it’s important to appoint specific individuals to manage content and field questions from the community across these platforms. Social media is also a great way to conduct outreach and keep in touch with other groups who are working on similar projects across the city!
Creating a monthly newsletter is another effective way to keep your community engaged and updated on what’s happening with your project and how they can get involved.
Offline marketing
It’s important to think about places where you can share information about your project offline. Oftentimes, getting physically in front of people can be more effective and memorable than doing so online. A few offline marketing tactics to consider include:
- Having signage at your site that lets people know what’s happening and how they can get involved in volunteering and donating.
- Draft a flyer to advertise your first community meeting. Go to a busy intersection or to the park with a few friends and pass out flyers to neighbors. Utilize bulletin boards in community centers, laundromats, corner stores, cafes, churches, and any place frequented by large numbers of people who you may not be able to reach otherwise.
- Use the media: Place an announcement in your community newspaper. List any upcoming meeting times, dates, locations, and a point of contact who community members can reach out to with questions.
Continually engaging with your audience
Now that you’ve caught people’s attention, it’s important that you keep them engaged with the work that you’re doing. Retaining an already engaged audience is almost always easier than acquiring new supporters, so be sure to invest in your relationship with your existing community – whether that be through digital or offline marketing. Thanking people for their support, keeping them updated on the status of your project, and reaching out for community input are all invaluable interactions that will help keep your audience invested and supportive of your work.