Jul 31, 2022
Marketing, outreach and communications plan
Description
Introduction This project brief sets the requirements for a stocktake of our current activities and for creating a new plan. Background In March 2021, KC’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) endorsed a 3-year Strategy based on our charitable Objectives and on our collective Vision to grow provision of our music therapy services and raise awareness to help make a strong case for music therapy. Our Vision, Objectives and Strategy are are available on request as a basis for this stocktake, along with our plan which includes 6 actions we agreed to take: Seek to broaden our funded client base; Bid for grants and raise funds focussed on providing access to music therapy for potential new clients in mainstream primary schools, dementia care and mental health services; Develop the right sized and shaped KC headquarters in Winchester to enable growth and succession planning; Promote our annual conference nationally; Create and develop a diverse network of Members and Patrons across sectors and Market our brand and raise visibility by refreshing our website and social media presence and enabling our Patrons and Members to raise awareness and advocate music therapy. In March 2022, recognising the importance of action 6 as an enabler to all the other actions, our AGM endorsed a stocktake of progress of our Marketing, Outreach and Communication activities, with an aspiration to identify how to further professionalise our public image, expand the reach and impact of our activities. Actions completed so far KC were fortunate, in summer 2021 to secure two student interns. This additional, short-term resource enabled us to redesign a refreshed website and create a weekly ‘drumbeat’ of social media posts as the main outcome from an initial review of our marketing and communications. We retained some volunteering time after these internships to publish our social media postings and de-snag and partially update our new web site, both of which sit alongside our pre-existing termly newsletter managed by our core team and distributed to our existing supporters. We have also made many improvements to our ‘Handbook’, which presents our policies and procedures which is occasionally used as supporting material for grant submissions. The current situation Despite the relatively passive approach and lack of a formal plan, the actions completed so far have successfully created a positive sentiment in our existing supporters, whilst only broadening our new audience in a very slow and limited manner. Our core resource (the head office team and trustees) remains focused on growth and securing grants and our therapy team on service delivery. This means our aspirations to generate more impactful content are not being met. The requirement KC are therefore instigating this stocktake, to encompass all possible marketing, outreach and communication activities and resources, aimed at rethinking our approach in order to: create a marketing, outreach and communications plan to ensure we maintain the right messages at the right time to the right audiences; raise awareness in a broadest possible audience and generate positive sentiment and commitment amongst more supporters for our charitable objectives; based on the strong visual brand created by our existing logo and website, improve the professionalism and consistency of our marketing copy, including social media via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, our website, Handbook, letterheads, annual reports, reports to grant making bodies, newsletter, presentation and email templates; share more compelling stories about the services we provide. We will continue to be constrained by priorities, so any recommendations will need to be clear in identifying resources are required to achieve reasonable outcomes, to help trustees make decisions on subsequent changes to be made.
Skills Required
- Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Pr
- Branding
Posted on Apr 26, 2022