non profits and online segmenting

I thought the ‘Segmenting the Market’ article was interesting in that it showed the importance of breaking down the general public into segments and demographics in order to pinpoint who to target in marketing. For online marketing, specifically in websites, marketing must be geared toward whatever group of people will most likely be interested in the product or service. If you are trying to sell a children’s book, for example, apart from the ability to put the book in the shopping cart for purchase, you would includes eye-catching, colorful graphics or drawings, maybe online games, sounds and effects. This would attract children to the website, and hopefully to the book. But who buys the book? Parents. So, the website needs to be adult-friendly as well, maybe with a synopsis of the book, information on why kids should read it, directions on how or where to buy it, and online coupons or deals for cheaper transactions. Here it would be good to include a spot for parents to type in an email address to receive info for upcoming events or future books. For products, it seems like it would be much easier to attract people to websites or blogs because people are trying to find that specific product or something like it,

For non-profit organizations, trying to attract the target demographic to a website might be harder because people, personally affected by the organization or not, would be unlikely to visit a website simply designed to inform the public of the organization. People need to be personally affected, interested, or involved in the organization. One way to increase awareness of an organization on the website would be a blog: readers could look up archives as well as keep up-to-date on personally stories of staff, volunteers, or even those being helped within the community. A photo gallery could have the same affect, showing what the organization has done in the past. These help the public feel more personally attached to the website because they see/read stories about real people and the real situations the organization takes on. But to hold the attention of these people, marketing outside the internet is also necessary for non-profits.

The article about marketing in the arts had many good ideas for spreading the word about arts events. While many of these would be costly like the “Restaurant, show, limo packages for patrons,” others could be very useful, and cheap, for non-profits. Some ideas that were particularly useful were: speaking at events, benefit tie ins, media co-sponsorship, and developing relationships with community stores. Because non-profits do not offer a product or service that appeals to the audience that easily yields profits, they have to work much harder within the community, not just online, to gather a larger audience that feels an obligation to the organization. This in turn should draw in more visitors to the website, more volunteers, and more donations in the long run.