Billboards on When You Work at a Nonprofit Tumblr

From my all-time favorite Tumblr, When You Work at a Nonprofit

Board or executives telling you that you need a billboard, or ads on Pandora or NPR or some other expensive form of advertising?

Aside from the fact that you probably can’t afford that, would it work even if you could?

In response to suggestions (or demands) like this, I suggest you go into what I call the “Three Basic Marketing Questions Mode.”  

1. Who is the targeted group for this communication?

2. What is our message to that group of people?

3. What is the best communications channel to reach that group with that message?

This is ALWAYS your fall back position, my marketing friends, when you are left speechless by “brilliant” and “helpful” marketing suggestions from others.

Billboards, radio spots, and any other form of advertising are possible answers to the third question — and very expensive ones.

But before you can even consider them, back yourself up and answer #1 and #2. If you don’t know the answer, clearly and confidently, you don’t need to be wasting time on expensive answers to #3.