MIXED MEDIA

CREATIVE IDEAS FOR MARKETING,
PUBLIC RELATIONS AND WORKING WITH THE MEDIA

Marketing Plans
Made Easy

No matter what size budget or staff, your agency can use marketing techniques to
enhance the agency image, generate more users, and jump-start promotions.

BY MARK SCHNEIDERMAN AND DIANE HARDY

Some say "the community" is your audience, but it goes deeper than that.

The marketing plan. One hears these three words and a chill goes down the spine, followed by thoughts such as "my agency's too small to have a marketing plan," or "we don't have money in the budget for marketing."

Regardless of staff size or budget, your agency can use marketing strategies to enhance your agency's image, generate more users, and jump-start promotions.

Following are tips from the Skokie Park District's 25-page marketing plan, produced at the boards request last year.

Research comes first

Do not be afraid to do market research on a number of different levels and formats. Ask random residents (check the phone book and make cold calls) to stop by one evening to discuss why they are not using your agency's services. Offer a nice dinner as an incentive. Skokie conducted seven such "focus groups" of non-users, users, ethnic users, and ethnic non-users, to find out what we were lacking. Create detailed minutes or tape recordings of these round-table sessions for review.

Skokie also used "man-on-the-street" surveys, whereby park representatives spent a few days in front of the library, Village Hall, major shopping malls and restaurants, probing answers from random residents. In addition, a comprehensive survey was designed in-house and sent to 5,000 randomly chosen residents with an overwhelming 10 percent response rate. The survey questions covered everything from communications in the mail to how they view the registration process to what classes from a checklist interested them. The results were tabulated by a local marketing service and the response, although prominently favorable, gave us the basis for our plan.

Who is your target user audience?

Some say "the community" is your audience, but it goes deeper than that. Skokie's audiences are families looking for recreational opportunities; working adults interested in self-help, sports, extracurricular stress-relievers; ethnic communities looking for specific leisure options; and seniors trying to stay active and enhance their "golden years." A final, often-overlooked audience is the teenager looking for alternatives to hanging around at the mall and getting in trouble. You may need to separate these audiences and write different marketing strategies for each of them.

Put the wheels in motion

What do you do first? Many articles and books, such as The Marketing Plan (American Management Association, 1992), can take you through a step-by- step process of producing a marketing plan. Following are three initial steps from Skokie's plan that should help you develop yours.

1. Determine your marketing mission statement. What are you trying to achieve with this major plan? More registration? Better financial returns? Public awareness? Keep this mission statement separate from the district's; this is a marketing plan, not your overall park district mission.

2. Coordinate a planning team. Involve someone

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MARKETING PLANS MADE EASY

from your finance, front-line, administration, recreation and marketing departments. This makes a good blend. You need dedicated people to help develop this plan with you. You cannot do it alone. Through this staff team, you'll discover customer complaints, resident requests and other issues you never knew about. A staff team can be your best method for analyzing survey data.

3. Set communications objectives and strategies, using research conclusions and trends. Divide up your goals into categories such as advertising, public relations, and media. Then brainstorm meaningful objectives and strategies to reach your goals. For example, research from focus groups and surveys pointed out that program costs were a reason they might choose not to participate. A resulting objective was, "Establish methods to reduce charging higher fees."

Resulting strategies included coupons in local, senior and ethnic newsletters; sampling (various classes now last 3 to 5 weeks, versus 6 to 8 weeks (keeping the classes affordable and not costly because they last half the time); incentives such as "Bring a friend, get in free" (if they bring a friend to a specific class, they're able to reap the rewards of a complimentary visit).

MARK SCHNEIDERMAN
is the assistant director or the Skokie Park District

DIANE HARDY
is the marketing coordinator for the Skokie Park District.

"Secrets" from the Skokie Marketing Plan Don't skip the SWOT In Marketing 101, you learn never to skip over the SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Detail what your strong points are and what needs to be fixed. This is the basis of the plan. For example, more than 52 percent of survey respondents said Skokie Park District had excellent or good community support and a strong leadership image in the community. That is a strengdi. Working adults said times and days of classes were incompatible with their schedules. This is a weakness. What are your SWOTS? Re-attract inactive users Skokie found that it isn't paying enough attention to the inactive user—someone who took a class once or twice, yet never returned. Objectives included sending a friendly letter fellow-up with a coupon, mailing a postcard called "We Miss You," inviting them back, and making phone follow-ups. These personal tactics go a long way! Stay clear of roadblocks Attitude is everything. If you're a "This- won't-work" or "I-can't-do-that" marketer, pure in the wrong field. There are so many opportunities waiting for you; all you need to do is seek them. Two ingredients—passion for your work and resourcefulness—play big roles in marketing your agency. Believe that yes, there IS a way, and you're shrewd and dedicated enough to get what you want. For example, Skokie Park District wanted to participate in the national "TV Tune-Out Week," but an attractive kit for our community wasn't in the budget. Three calls to local banks helped generate some funds. However, we needed to sell 400 kits to break even. We decided to take a risk. We publicized the kits for $1 and in three days, a whopping 750 kits were sold, thanks to an excited front-line staff, flyers in all the private and public schools, and good signage across town. The event not only was profitable, but it also helped place the agency in a leadership position with this cause- related endeavor. Interns ore gold mines As the workload built up, we realized that we needed a part-time worker to help with the ambitious marketing plan. Without funds in the budget for a full-time staff person, hiring an intern was the next best thing. So we faxed and mailed flyers for a PR internship opening to school newspapers. Hiring a college-age communications major was the best investment we ever made. The intern receives a small stipend for doing various jobs (proofreading, mailing press releases, writing features, etc.) and in return, we do our best to train her for a future in the field. If you hire an intern, pay dose attention to his or her needs (offer resume assistance, make portfolio suggestions, encourage meaningful press releases, critique and edit constantly). You're getting inexpensive help; they're feeding off of your expertise. Partnerships pay, costs defrayed To help onset the cost of marketing plan promotions, Skokie discovered a way to bring $3,000 in each season. It's called making "business partnerships" through your programming guide. The park district will never call it "advertising" because we're taking a product and matching it with a class. For example, if Jack's Arts Supplies wants to place an ad in our brochure, it is strategically placed on the art class page. A discount is also offered from the business partner. In the end, everybody is happy (the reader, the business owner and the agency). Skokie also hired a local roaster's student to solicit ad sales on a commission basis. He was charismatic, passionate, and brought in good money. On a shelf = down the drain There's nothing more frustrating than a marketing plan that collects dust on a shelf. Why create the plan, get the necessary approval, then shelve it? Make a calendar— month by month or week by week—for the next year. Assign tasks for each time frame and prioritize. Remember, all good plans are flexible and frequently need to be updated. — Diane Hardy

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