Marketing

Posted: September 9th, 2013

Marketing

Name:

Course:

Date:

Marketing

Question 2

Non-profit organizations are business organizations that exist with the purpose of serving some public purpose without much emphasis on making massive income. Thus, they enjoy some benefits from the government and would not be designed for profit making (entrepreneur 2012). One of the main differences she should expect exists in the sources of funds. Profit-making organizations make funds from revenues, loans from banks, and from shareholders or owners of the business. This money is supposed to return in the form of profits (Agard 2010). On the other hand, not for profit organizations are not in a position to make an enormous profit. Thus, paying a loan would not be possible. Therefore, she will have to request for funds from other sources such as corporations, government, individuals and foundations. This means there is a limit to what amount of funds they can access since it is not supposed to be refunded. It will depend on the willingness of the providers of funds and their success, as well. While in a profit-making organization, she competed for customers within the market while in a not for profit organization she will compete for funding and donations from other corporations and organizations, as well as government.

Another difference she must expect exists in the purpose of the organization and ways in which it fulfills its marketing goals. The marketing goals of a not for profit organization are meant to promote the funding organization while benefiting in their mission. She will have to focus on branding the nonprofit organization in order to get a chance to serve the public. While advertising for nonprofit organization, she will seek to communicate her mission and goal to the community in order to gain recognition (Entrepreneur 2001). A nonprofit will rely on the knowledge of the consumer about what its mission is. This way, consumers might be interested in promoting the mission through buying their goods. This will be in contrast to her job in a profit making organization where she focused on the features that come with the products in order to appeal to consumers (Hyojin 2002, 54). This is because she will have to position the nonprofit organization to the consumers to prove it would be the better option for the value to gain.

Additionally, she should expect the nonprofit organizations to receive some exemptions from the federal government. Because of the nonprofit organization mission to serve public issues, non-profit organizations are given some exemptions from paying income tax (Hopkins 2006). Additionally, they might be exempted from property and sales income, as well. The other difference exists from how profit is treated between the two organizations. Within profit making organizations, profit is split between the owners as dividends while for sole proprietorship profit goes to the owner. For non-profit organizations, any time they make some profits after having paid all their bills and expenses, it goes towards enhancing the mission of the company. The above are some of the differences she might encounter in a nonprofit organization.

 Question 3

Advertising for non-profit making organization is quite different from advertising within profit-making organizations. Profit making organizations seek to advertise their goods and position them to appeal to more customers while not-for-profit organizations will seek to advertise their mission. As a marketing director of a non-profit making organization, I would advertise with a focus of creating more awareness on issues of unhealthy eating habits. Thus, in my mission to promote healthy eating for school going children, I would focus on educating parents, educators as well as children, on the importance of healthy eating (Lamb, Hair, and McDaniel, 2008).

The message is the focus in this mission. Thus, in my advertising mission, I would make use of provocative messages. For instance, I could use billboards, with the message such as ‘could you prevent your child the risk of overweight or obesity?’ Additionally, on billboards and advertisement mediums, I would use bright appealing pictures to attract masses. The pictures would be focused on promoting healthy eating through pictures of children eating healthy foods such as vegetables.

In order to ensure that as much people get the message, a research on the target market will be particularly beneficial. Such a message cannot be directed to adults without children since it would not make much sense. Secondly, I would research on the desired outcome for this mission, which is having young school going children using healthy feeding habits. With such information, it would be easy to recognize what could be done. The third step to consider would be developing some brochures with information collected from the research of the first two steps. The brochures would describe the importance of healthy eating habits for children. Brochures could carry more information than other advertisement mediums would (Lake 2012).

The next step would be considering the cheaper means of this mission since funds could be limited. Thus, a part from brochures and billboards if possible, social media would suffice considering its low costs. Social media such as Twitter and Facebook offer convenient ways of reaching out to masses across geographical borders at exceptionally low costs. Thus, they are quite credible for this mission. Social media additionally allows for feedback, so one could always know if people are responding to the advertisement. Especially for courses that people find dear to them and those that are of major concern such as weight, social media would be ideal since it would allow people to open up as well and share information between them (Wymer, Knowlesand and Gomes 2006). Additionally, I would create a website where people who view the advertisements on the billboards, brochures and social websites can visit for detailed information concerning the mission. Websites are influential since majority of people seek information about organizations from the internet (Pakroo 2009. In order to succeed in such a mission, I would collaborate with other organizations, both private and public in order to do a joint advertising (Levinson, Adkins and Forbes 2010).

Question 4

Advertising has undergone numerous changes and advancement due to the advent of newer technology such as email. Emails are electronic mails used for communication. They are received instantly by the recipient, unlike traditional letters (Groves 2009). With emails, some level of personal attachment with the customer is achieved since it is addressed to them directly. Email marketing is considered a direct form of marketing with emails being the main form of communication where one sends messages to audiences. In the modern world, emails are the most preferred forma of communicating messages between businesses and customers since it is instant. It only takes the time one uses to draft the message. It can be sent to many at one time, therefore saving time as well as money (Brown 2007).

Emails gave rise to the spam emails that are referred to unsolicited commercial mails. Spam messages are emails that recipients do not have to solicit their email addresses in order to receive mails from the sender. Rather, the sender just forwards the messages to any email that might receive the message. Many companies have resulted to spam mails as a way of reaching out to many people as they possibly can to promote their businesses. However, for zoo fundraising, some people are targeted as well as institutions (Kinnard 2002). If spam messages are used to advertise or promote a zoo fundraising, there is no guarantee that it will reach the intended audience. Spam messages are not targeted to anybody, which makes it hard to find out whether it goes to the targeted audience. According to Jenkins (2008), many people and organizations are using filter software to filter spam messages and put them in the spam folder where they will never need to read them. Additionally, many people reject them since they do not know the email address. Statistics show that only a small portion of emails sent through spam is read. Majority are rejected while others are filtered to the spam folder. This makes it hard for a zoo to reach the targeted audience and guests for the fundraising.

Furthermore, many people do not like spam emails, and this could send the wrong reputation of the company to people. Majority of people consider spam emails advertisements annoying and inconveniencing as well, which might lead to many people sending in complaints asking the zoo to stop sending the spam emails. This would mean that such people would not want to attend such a fundraising. This could further call for bad reputation through word of mouth from complaining consumers. Additionally, there is likelihood that other disadvantages such as violating CAN-SPAM Act would cause the organization further loss through fines (Lewis 2002). This would be very unwelcome since it would further ruin the reputation of the zoo. There are cases of people going to court for such issues, where many people have been fined huge amounts of money for every violation. Reaching out to many people is the goal of advertising. However, when it is accompanied by such problems and risks, it is not worth as long as there is another strategy for advertising.

References

Agard, A. Kathryn. 2010. Leadership in Nonprofit Organizations: A Reference Handbook, Volume 1. New York: SAGE.

Brown, C. Bruce. 2007. The Complete Guide to E-Mail Marketing: How to Create Successful, Spam-Free Campaigns to Reach Your Target Audience and Increase Sales, Volume 978, Issues 1-60045. Springfield, VA: Atlantic Publishing Company.

Entrepreneur. 2011. Nonprofit Corporation. http://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/term/82592.html

Entrepreneur. 2001. Nonprofit vs. Traditional Business Plans. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/46258

Groves, Eric. 2009. The Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing. New York, N.Y: John Wiley & Sons.

Hopkins R. Bruce. 2006. The Tax Law of Unrelated Business for Nonprofit Organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Hyojin, Kim. 2002. Branding of Nonprofit Organizations: a potential solution for a competitive market. Journal of Public Affairs, 14: 47-55. http://www.docstoc.com/docs/20047178/BRANDING-OF-NONPROFIT-ORGANIZATIONS  

Jenkins, Simms.2008. The Truth about Email Marketing. Mumbai: FT Press

Kinnard, Shannon. 2002. Marketing with E-Mail: A Spam-Free Guide to Increasing Sales, Building Loyalty, and Increasing Awareness. New Jersey: Maximum Press

Lake, Laura. 2012. Eight Basic Steps to Marketing Your Nonprofit Organization. http://marketing.about.com/cs/nonprofitmrktg/a/8stepnonprofit.htm 

Lamb, W. Charles, Hair, F. Joseph and McDaniel, Carl. 2008. Marketing. New York: Cengage Learning

Levinson Jay Conrad, Adkins, Frank and Forbes, Chris. 2010. Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits. Pittsburgh, PA: Entrepreneur Press

Lewis, G. Herschell. 2002. Effective E-Mail Marketing: The Complete Guide to Creating Successful Campaigns. New York, NY: AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn

Pakroo, Peri. 2009. Starting & Building a Nonprofit: A Practical Guide. Pittsburgh, PA: Nolo

Wymer, Walter, Knowles, Patricia and Gomes, Roger. 2006. Nonprofit Marketing: Marketing Management for Charitable and Nongovernmental Organizations. New York: SAGE.