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Here's our third and final post from consultants who helped facilitate a series of Idea Swaps for small staff executives recently. Here, Sue Bowman from The Haefer Group summarizes the points emerging from discussions on how to market when resources are scarce.

When hosting the discussions at my table, I started the dialogue with a question: What about marketing keeps you up at night? The small staff execs who participated in this round of discussions had two common and related anxieties: 1. they wear multiple hats--only one of which was a marketing hat; and 2. they had very limited budgets.

The easy answer that addressed each of these stressors is for small staff execs to rely on one of the popular marketing packages to send frequent e-mails to their members, emphasizing the features of the organization. After two hours of discussion with three separate groups of small staff execs, we determined that perhaps the easy answer wasn't necessarily the correct answer. Instead, it turned out that the following concepts are more likely to produce better marketing strategies and fewer panic attacks.

Heavily Promote Member Only Benefits
Members and prospects need to understand how your organization:

• Makes them smarter


• Saves them money


• Makes their lives easier

Understand Key Metrics
It's tough to market smarter if you don't know where your successes are coming from. Look at return on investment from various marketing channels. Understand who's coming, who's leaving, and why it's happening.

Maximize Your Use of Volunteers to Help the Organization Market
Have members and volunteer leaders contact prospects/renewing members to focus on value--from a members' perspective. Make sure EVERYONE knows the value elevator speech. Reward success with publicity and recognition.

Segment Messaging
In the case of e-mail marketing, change up your messaging in your typical contacts. Segment, segment, segment! Target vulnerable members, like those in the first several years of membership.

Build Your PR Program
Do some research, look at related sites on the internet to build press contacts. Keep the flow of information going.

Use Social Media Discriminately
Everyone agreed that there are many opportunities to market organizations using social media--including LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, and Twitter. The challenges that presented themselves included the time commitment, keeping content fresh, and competing organizational priorities. The majority of participants thought it was best to focus on one element and do it well.

Easy isn't always the way to go. There is no silver bullet to marketing success. But these strategies should help you sleep just a little bit better.