Nonprofits have to compete harder than ever to win the attention of a media-saturated public. That's why it's crucial for nonprofits to develop strategic messaging.
Strategic messaging is a focused attempt to reach an audience with a clear, consistent message. It keeps you in control of your message and uses your organization's resources to its best advantage. Strategic messaging helps you say it right – every time – to your audiences.
Previous Project
501creative facilitated a brainstorming session with the Foster and Adoptive Care Coalition staff and board to develop a new tagline. From that initial session, 10 taglines were created, and one was selected by Coalition leadership. The tagline, “For every child, a place to call home,” helped boost communication efforts, but the board and staff were still struggling with an elevator speech. It was difficult for them to describe what the organization did quickly and easily.
We held another brainstorming session to explore this issue, and from that developed a branding statement. The statement outlined competitive benefits, the main message, the elevator speech, and how that speech could be tailored to specific audiences.
Solving this issue was a huge relief for the Coalition, which had been struggling with this problem for a while. After the branding statement, we hosted a communications audit to determine what changes needed to be made to current materials to incorporate the new messaging. The staff is working on implementing those changes, and developed a branding standards guide to keep everything consistent.
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