Impact marketing

Impact marketing goes beyond the idea of impact reporting. It involves thinking critically about how you use the evidence you have about your organisation to communicate your success.

Think 'different audiences'

A standard annual report with a list of achievements attached is rarely the answer. You need to communicate your impact in a variety of formats to suit a range of audiences; telling the right people the right things in the right way. This idea is based on the principles of marketing.

For instance, the way you report to your funder, who may have a fixed reporting template that you need to follow, will be quite different to the newsletter you produce for your users, but both will want to hear how successful you've been, for different reasons. Your internal communications will also look very different, and you may want to pitch your messages in a variety of ways to particular groups inside your organisation, such as trustees, staff or volunteers.

A step-by-step guide to impact marketing

1. Agree your purpose: Who do you want to communicate your impact to, and why? "To be more accountable" is too vague an answer! What specific outcomes do you want to achieve from the exercise? In other words, what do you want each audience to do as a result of hearing from you?

2. Plan your communications:

• Think about your audiences, their role, what sort and level of information they need and want to know, what they already know about you and how they like to receive information.
• Consider your budget: what can you afford to do?
• Select your channels: get creative and choose the most appropriate format for each audience, from annual reports and AGMs, to press articles or adverts, websites and newsletters, to drama, posters, music and more.
• Decide how you will evaluate the effectiveness of your communications work against your planned outcomes.

3. Check your organisation's monitoring and evaluation systems: Do you already have the information you'll need to communicate your impact? Do you need to make changes or collect new information?

4. Collect and analyse your information and judge your organisation's success.

5. Communicate the right things, to the right people, in the right way.

6. Judge the success of your communications. Use your learning to increase the impact of your impact marketing next time!