What is the Brand Personality for Your Nonprofit?
Your organization’s brand personality is made up of those qualities that express who you are and what you do.
To brand your nonprofit on the Internet effectively, you must first focus on communicating three primary attributes of your organization:
- Brand personality
- Brand attributes
- Core value
These three qualities make up what is called the Brand Triangle, and your organization must understand the importance of these interconnected components if you are to be successful in getting your message across in an increasingly cluttered world.
Your organization’s brand personality is made up of those qualities that express who you are and what you do. To develop a successful brand, you must attract people using messaging (marketing) that is in tune with the manner in which they already identify with you and your mission.
Once you have been successful in attracting people to your site, your content must confirm your marketing or there will be a disconnect. When that happens, you will lose potential friends perhaps forever.
It then becomes self evident that branding = marketing + content.
How do You Make that happen?
For example, the elements that might describe your brand “personality” could be: faith based, educational in emphasis and global in scope.
As you firm up your position on the Web and increase your level of conversation with your visitors you will begin to integrate these personality traits into everything you say in your email campaigns, newsletters, year end reports, and as you talk and share with your growing list of volunteers who are now beginning to support your cause online.
Your nonprofit’s brand attributes are the values your nonprofit puts out there, and the primary benefits/features your organization provides. For example, your “attributes” may be: saving and/or changing lives, providing a place for the expression of art and culture, bringing health to those in need, providing educational materials, etc.
As you brand your nonprofit on the Internet, it is critical that you stay within these “attribute” categories. Not to do so will confuse people and dilute your message.
Many organizations produce lengthy lists of core values. And there is not worth wrong with it. However, to brand your organization successfully on the Internet…
I would encourage you to think through the single thing you promise to deliver.
Your core value is the basis of your positioning strategy that will permeate your marketing tactics and help you capture mind share of potential visitors.
Here are some examples to illustrate how organizations have distilled their core values to a single word or phrase: CLICK HERE to read the the rest of this article in full.
