Be sure your marketing materials reflect why your business is a better choice over another, even a nonprofit.
For-profit companies are wise not to ignore nonprofit businesses in their market segment. Just because nonprofits are not in business solely to boost their bottom line, they still need to do the same things a for-profit business does, such as marketing, customer service and advertising, to gain market share and make money to run their organizations and serve their constituents. Even the high school football team wants to tempt drivers to come to their Saturday car wash instead of using the chain car wash business a mile down the road.
Instructions
1. Book an appropriate-sized conference room and invite key company players to a meeting of around one hour, perhaps over lunch. Talk with them about your concerns about losing market share to nonprofits. Use as an example a specific nonprofit that you feel overlaps with your business's market.
2. Instruct attendees to spend time over the next couple of weeks compiling lists of nonprofit organizations that they consider to be in the same market as your company. They should plan to come to the next meeting prepared to review these lists and to give a brief description of each nonprofit on their list. Have someone attend the meeting whose job it is to transcribe these companies into a spreadsheet.
3. Go through each company listed to explain how the nonprofit listed is in competition with your company and what makes them in the same market. Be specific when describing market segments, such as: "young professionals between the age of 24 and 28 who have just entered the job market after gaining a college degree" or "mid-career couples who own homes and have disposable income."
4. Decide what specific ways your company competes with these nonprofits for your key designated market. If you sell decorative garden fountains, for example, you may be competing for the same disposable, home-decor funds of those mid-career individuals as the nonprofit art gallery around the corner. If your business is an outdoor fun center with a water park, you may be competing for the family entertainment dollars as the nonprofit outdoor environmental museum across town.
5. Discuss what differentiates you from the nonprofit competition. Then discuss how you can make those distinctions prominent in all of your marketing materials, from printed brochures to Yellow Pages ads to your Facebook page. Include all of this information on your spreadsheet.
Tags: your business, your company, market share, marketing materials, same market