My friend Erica Mills (that’s her on the right with the dementedly determined grin) does communications for small businesses and nonprofits. I talked with her this week about, well, lots of stuff, but one thing that stood out to me was the degree to which she really has to hand-hold people through their fundamental business plan before she can even start on a communications strategy. I have the same issue with nonprofits and technology. Here’s Erica on “marketing your essence, not your everything” at the Northwest Enterprising Moms Conference.
That chart she’s standing in front of is her “1, 2, 3 Marketing Tree” (pdf). You should fill this out before you even think about hiring someone to work on your tech or communications.
There are many resources for small businesses to build a business plan, and nonprofits should take advantage of them. It’s especially important for nonprofits going through Founder’s Syndrome. It takes a lot of time to define your organization on such a granular basis, but it makes the services that Erica and I provide much more valuable to your organization. If you don’t have a goal, we can’t build a strategy.
