I love teaching. No scratch that. I love seeing people learn.
That moment when a student “gets it”? When they realize, “Hey, I can do this marketing thing! I can use words to get lots and lots of people engaged in the awesome work my organization is doing. That rocks!”? Unlike any other.
And that’s why I never get tired of teaching the Claxon Method™. It is the cornerstone of everything I teach, in fact. It helps students (and by “students”, I mean my graduate students at the Evans school, yes, but also nonprofit professionals who come to my training, or attend Claxon University, or work with me one-on-one) avoid the dreaded Shiny Object Syndrome. (I’m sorry, did someone say “Instagram”?)
The Claxon Method™ is simple and straight-forward. Know why? Because simple works.
Before you start working on a fundraising appeal, a brochure, website copy, or talking points for your gala, stop and ask (and answer) these three questions in order:
- WHAT does success look like?
- WHO do we need to reach in order to be successful?
- HOW are we going to reach our ideal supporters?
You can totally do that, right? Simple.
The logic of the Claxon Method™ is as follows: You must always start with the end in mind. It might be increasing donor retention or growing your board or promoting a new program. The job of your marketing is to advance you toward whatever your goal may be.
With a goal clearly in mind, you can then figure out for whom you are optimizing. As alluring as it seems, “the general public” is not a target audience. Not everyone will care equally about your cause and/or be in a position to advance you toward your goal.
Audience identification allows you to select messaging and mechanisms that will resonate with a particular target audience. It will also prevent you from projecting, i.e. assuming, for instance, the words that resonate with them are the same ones that will resonate with their target audience. This is a costly, and all too frequent, mistake.
Once you have identified your goal and audience, you can figure out how to reach them. Which boils to: which words will you use and where will you put them?
Marketing can get unruly. There are so many options these days. Stick to this method and you’ll get results. Serious results. I promise.
Want to master the Claxon Method™? Check out our on-line class at Claxon University, where we offer a 30 day no-questions-asked money back guarantee. What do you have to lose?!
Post Readability Stats: Reading Ease: 71.9, Grade Level: 5.7