While NTC ended Saturday, I want to continue sharing what I learned while there. I was glad to get into Eric Overman’s session on Integrated Development and Marketing. Click here to view his slides.

This post presents the highlights of Eric’s presentation. You can reach him directly at eric.overman@grizzard.com.

Multichannel Marketing

What is that? It is making sure your message, call to action, ask is shared on more than one on or off line channel. This requires an integrated approach to marketing and development. Creating an integrated plan means staff are not working in silos. Perhaps it means a culture change.

Capital Improvement – Planning and Building your Approach

Integrated marketing and creating a multichannel approach will take an investment in infrastructure. Use of social media is going up and will not go away. If you need to convince leadership what your ROI (Risk of Ignoring as well as Return on Investment) please refer to new reports from Convio and Blackbaud. The info has stats on impact, who, how and response rates from multichannel marketing.

• Determine what your strategic, integrated, marketing and development plan is and will be.
• Plan your budgets now.
• Find supporters who are willing to support your plan.
• Work your plan

Someone asked, “What happens when Twitter goes away?” Eric had a perfect response. If you gain loyalty (which the peeps online can be), engage your constituents and empower them to “work” for your cause – they will follow you anywhere. From Twitter to the next new thing.

Storytelling Still Rules

As I wrote in a previous post, good storytelling is key to successful integrated marketing. You will have all these channels (albeit launched carefully so you can do it well) that need feeding. So in the process of creating an integrated marketing and development plan, you have developed a message for your brand. But you want different personalities and POVs sharing that message. As in fundraising 101, people want to hear from people about people not about or from programs. Your plan should include storytelling guidelines, implementation, training.