Give It Up Again

It is estimated that Americans gave total charitable contributions of $260.28 billion for 2005, up 6.1 percent from the previous year. Individuals give the lion’s share, but at this time of year many companies dig deep to make charitable donations, too.

Not only is it the right thing to do, it is also the smart business thing to do. But before you go off half-cocked in a charitable frenzy, let’s take a moment to calmly consider how best to proceed.

Step one is to consider what you want your contributions to accomplish. I recommend tying giving to your brand and corporate goals. Let’s look at some examples. For my work to be appreciated there must be literate consumers. So, my giving focuses primarily on literacy. Lenscrafters has the “Give The Gift of Sight” program. Novartis supports public and private partnerships focused on the life sciences.

Another consideration is the interests of your community and company constituents. Find where your brand, your goals and community interests intersect, and you have an excellent starting point for developing your charitable program goals.

Here are some questions you may want to ask as you try to bring your charitable giving program into focus:

• What are your current business interests?
• Are there any future business needs to consider?
• What role does your company now play in the community, and how would you like to change that role?
• Are your employees concerned about a specific cause?
• Who in the community is most affected by your business?
• Are there any community issues now affecting or likely to affect your business or employees?

Old Fashioned Marketing

Every year we start seeing all the articles about what the new year will hold. Everything from politics to marketing is dissected and forecast. I like to take advantage of trends as much as anyone but you can’t let the new blind you to the tried-and-true.

You may be considering adding podcasts, blogs and local search to your marketing matrix and that is fine, if you strategically think through how they fit with your business and your audiences.

Blogging and podcasting are great tactics, but if your website has no traffic they are a waste of time, effort and resources.

Let’s get back to fundamentals. I’ve had clients who were so ADD they couldn’t sit still long enough to even think about who their best customer is. However, they got so excited about new marketing ideas that they just had to try them. Never mind that those tactics didn’t make sense for their business.

If you don’t know who your customer is, don’t bother spending money on marketing. That would be a colossal waste.

Ask and answer the fundamental questions before you go spending marketing money willy-nilly. How many audience segments do you have? Who is your best customer in each? What is your best customer’s age, employment, sex, and marital status? Do they have kids? What are their media habits? What attitudes or values affect their buying habits?

If your customer buys for business, what is her title? Is she the final decision-maker or is the decision made jointly? Who influences the sale? What industry associations do your customers join? Do they go to trade shows? Which ones?

The more you know about the customer, the easier it is for your creatives to develop relevant, original and impactful messages, and to determine the best ways and vehicles through which to disseminate your messages.

While doing this hard work may not be as much fun as podcasting, it is infinitely more important to your bottom line. And as my friend Joe Grant says, the number one rule of business is to stay in business.