Happy Friday UpEffect Tribe! To celebrate the coming weekend, we’re sharing some of our 100% success rate secrets with a video from our own head of marketing – Annie Brown. In our last marketing post, we talked about WHY marketing is different for social enterprises. Now we will show you HOW to market your ethical and sustainable product or service successfully.
Annie has worked as a marketing strategist and content writer for over 7 years, previously working with organizations such as Planned Parenthood and Grameen Bank. She is currently a guest lecturer at University of California San Diego’s Rady School of Management.
In the following video, Annie explains the importance of developing a brand for your social enterprise. A brand is much more than just fonts and colors (although that is important too!) – it is the visual and written embodiment of your enterprise’s mission, and therefore a key aspect to not only acquiring customers, but also fulfilling your promise to the communities you serve.
Large corporations have the ability to take weeks, sometimes months to fully develop a precise brand. Startups, especially those with a social mission, must constantly be moving forward and very seldom have time to explore different branding options or your precise voice. Instead, we suggest a forward-motion try and test method, where your brand is constantly evolving but in a structured way. For example, you can test different visuals on two different landing pages and compare click-through-rates.
Whether you have 10 million dollars funding or no funding yet, we highly suggest taking a couple hours – a day if possible – to sit down and think about who your company represents, and how you can visualize and embody your message through copy, posts, photographs and video content.
Below is the template that Annie utilizes in the video. Take some time to fill this out for yourself and see what you come up with!
Branding Template Purpose
To guide the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content and manage content as a business asset.
To draw and develop the larger story that an organization tells to engage an audience, using content to drive profitable behaviors.
Build strong relationships with users and potential clients through brand management by developing a consistent visual and textual tone throughout web, social media, apps and all interactions with customers.
Vision: To increase the number of social enterprises and make an exponential impact on communities and the planet.
Mission: Project specific: To get 250 downloads of our new ebook and help entrepreneurs be more effective at crowdfunding
Voice: compassionate, intelligent, driven
Message: Project specific: Free Ebook! 👉🏽: “Everything You Need to Know to Successfully Crowdfund: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs” 
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Targets & Tone: Depending on audience and project, tone will change to appeal to their specific needs and therefore provide customized value
Branded Content
What topics can we talk about in depth and with authority?
How do the above topics translate into things people actually want to read/watch?
With every post, ask: What does it mean for my brand? Does it align with our vision?
Organizational Purpose
Functional: To provide an easy, supportive crowdfunding platform and personalized coaching that ensures funding success for social enterprises.
Intentional: To fund and support social entrepreneurs in order to increase their impact.
Flexibility
Remain flexible to stay relevant. Flexibility in the brand will allow you to distinguish ourselves from competitors as well as adjust to speak to specific audiences.
Emotional Connection
Use emotional triggers in branding to strengthen customer relationships and foster loyalty.
Execution
What are priorities for improvement?
What kinds of content are most useful and where should these go?
How much content and when to post?
Stay tuned here to the UpEffect Blog for more marketing and crowdfunding tips! In the mean time, check out our services page to learn how our marketing and business development experts can help you to increase your revenue and impact.
