Three nonprofit marketing terms that should be obsolete
- Sun, January 09 2011
- Filed under: Marketing essentials
Some of the words we use most in nonprofit marketing and fundraising don’t reflect how we should be doing business. Here are three. Which terms would you add?
1. Audience: Audience is a word that implies we’re talking and everyone else is listening. But no one in the year 2011 behaves as an audience member, passively taking in our messages. In fact, our “audience” expects US to listen to THEM. I think better words are “partners” and “community.”
2. Cultivation: As John Haydon pointed out the other day, your donor is not a tomato plant. Cultivation encourages farmer and harvest thinking rather than relationship building.
3. Message strategy: As someone who has used this term hundreds of times, I am realizing “message strategy” reeks of a broadcast mentality. I am going to start saying “engagement strategy” instead. It’s how we should be looking at the world.
Comments
Katya,
I strongly agree with your reasoning. But here’s my issue in changing these terms—yes, someone has to lead with the more accurate terms but so many folks we’re engaging right now - who want to dialogue with us - don’t understand community (but understand audience) or engagement strategy (but understand message platform).
I think it’s important to transition to these important replacement terms, by integrating the old as you use the new. To ensure broadest understanding.
What strategies can you suggest to smooth the transition?
Best,
Nancy
Katya, the headline of your post in my Google Alert definitely caught my attention! I ditto what Nancy’s says about your reasoning. However, the same rationale can also apply to for-profits in the new world of social media.
Although the term, “audience” may have originally applied to individuals that marketers targeted for specific outbound messaging, it can still generically refer to any target market. Can’t we engage with audiences?
“Cultivation” can also refer to nurturing “customer” relationships, or cultivating a brand.
I do wish marketers in all sectors could agree on these new meanings and terms so we could all use them consistently.
I think that audience is one of the most nonprofit marketing terms that should be obsolete. Thanks 
Nancy’s interpretation is good: each term should be replaced in due time at the appropriate level of social maturity in each organization. At the infantile stage, I frequently use farming metaphors like “cultivation” in opposition to hunting. Just as we transitioned from a nomadic society, chasing our prey with spears and press releases, some have realized the value of slowing down, planting seeds of permission-based engagement and cultivating relationships in our own back yards.
I agree with the comments above. I do believe that cultivating has a somewhat agricultural sound to it but I like the idea that we “cultivate” relationships. Relationships do take planting, watering and nurturing to gorw. The term does provide a vivid image of doing just that.
I know when I teach my nonprofit marketing classes there is also a great struggle with the word “marketing” in the nonprofit world. I know this is primarily because the word sounds too “business” or “corporate.” However, I continue to use that term purposefully to show nonprofits that they do need to operate like a business to be successful. I try to explain to them that marketing and public relations really fall under the category of the nonprofit term “community outreach.” This is a word that hits home more easily and resonates as nonprofits can often apply for grants for “community development” vs “marketing.” At the end of the day, it is about understanding processes more than using specific words.
Interesting thoughts, Katya. Although, “audience” pre-19th century used to mean partners and community. In this case, it is not really the term that is the problem, how we are relating is the problem.
I completely agree with the thoughts on “cultivation” and “message strategy.” There is no “person” involved when such generic and sterile language is used.
In any case, relationships and building relationships needs to be at the forefront again.