Most Outreach Campaigns Make the Same 3 Mistakes

I was recently asked to review the outreach materials for a mid-sized nonprofit. It was a school, and they’d recently produced a video and doubled their social media efforts. But the results were disappointing, and they were feeling discouraged. School enrollments are dropping nationwide, but especially quickly in the Bay Area.

It didn’t take long to spot where improvements could have been made to their campaign, because I come across these same three mistakes all the time. The production quality of the video was great— good pacing, nice variety, clear audio, lovely colors. But the message was vague, and despite the warm sentiments and glowing comments— meaningless. To the audience. Because of the same three mistakes.

We’ve heard the first bit of advice hundreds of times: define your audience. The problem is precision and clarity. Often, companies and organizations will say, “our message is important for everyone.” Unfortunately, this results in messages that aren’t very effective for anyone. In this case, the school’s video was aimed at parents, with a slight emphasis on parents of kindergarteners. While this seems specific, it’s not. Kindergarten parents decide where they’re children will go to school; sixth grade parents will decide with their kids. The communication to each of these groups is different— which in turn means who appears on screen is different; what appears on screen is different; the music is different, and the editing style is different. By eighth grade the kids are driving the choice and the parents are desperately trying to steer the conversation. This school needed different videos for each audience.

Knowing precisely who your talking to makes correcting the second mistake easier. For video communication to be effective, you have to identify and address the obstacle that holds your audience back. In the school video, it felt like the obstacle was simply not knowing the school existed. To be honest, there’s a fair amount of truth to that assessment. But the video— any video— solves that problem by default. It’s a wasted opportunity. For a private school, the fear of how much it will cost prevents many kindergarten parents from seriously considering the option. How reassuring would it be to know that two-thirds of families in the school receive financial aid that brings down the cost below what they were paying for daycare? When you are precise with your audience, and take the time to understand them, the obstacles and the messaging becomes clear.

If you can make some headway with the barriers, it increases the effectiveness of highlighting the value and opportunity you’re offering. Again, this message must be specific to your audience. Parents of kindergarten aged kids are very focused on having their kids accepted and supported, that they develop an interest in learning, and that their kids get a head start on academics. This is significantly different than the focus of sixth graders (who want great friendships and adventure), and sixth grade parents (who want teaching brilliance). If you try to pack all of these desires into one video— acceptance, support, curiosity, friendship, adventure, academic/start, academic/brilliance— you end up with a somewhat vague, watered-down message that lacks impact for everyone.

People in the nonprofit world generally dislike marketing-speak and corporate terminology. We don’t have to use it. The approach here is simple: talk to one group of people at a time, understand their pain and fears, and offer them realistic hope. On the one hand, it’s odd to realize that these three simple ingredients are missing from the majority of videos I review for companies. On the other, it’s important to realize that this process of identifying, clarifying, and transforming information into visual messaging isn’t intuitive, nor is it the process of distilling data points. It doesn’t come naturally, and it can’t be effectively done by artificial intelligence.