What Makes a Great Social Impact Marketing Team?

Designing Tomorrow: Creative Strategies for Social Impact

What makes an EXCEPTIONAL social impact marketing team?

Often, when we get this question from clients, they are trying to determine what ROLES to hire for.

But that’s putting the cart before the horse. Instead, it’s best to think about the QUALITIES and CULTURE of a successful marketing philosophy for your brand.

Because you can build a highly-skilled marketing team and still totally flop if:

↳ You don’t have vision as a brand

↳ You don’t let them create BOLD, scroll-stopping content

↳ You micro-manage and add arduous approval processes

In today’s episode of Designing Tomorrow, Eric distill’s what he’s seen work the best when building out your in-house marketing team at your social impact org.

And at the end, he outlines how he would structure the marketing department for social impact orgs at different sizes.

Jonathan STRONGLY disagrees with his recommendations at first, but starts to come around towards the end. Eric hopes to get him eventually.

Watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

Episode Highlights

• [02:15] - The importance of brand strategy
• [05:05] - Knowing your audience deeply
• [07:55] - Creating scroll-stopping content
• [13:42] - Balancing cadence and quality
• [17:14] - Evaluation and curiosity in marketing
• [20:45] - The role of leadership in marketing success
• [22:47] - Building marketing teams across different organizational sizes
• [24:26] - The role of content in marketing
• [28:06] - In-house capacity vs. agency support
• [31:54] - Challenges of scaling a marketing team

Quotes:

• "You have to understand who you're talking to. Who are you actually speaking to, who's reading this?" - Jonathan Hicken
• "If you start to just do marketing... and just putting content out there for the sake of putting content out there, but there's not a solid brand strategy... you're kind of setting yourself up for failure." - Eric Ressler
• "At the end of the day, if you or your marketing team are not spending time with the people that you're serving... you're never going to get it." - Jonathan Hicken
• "We need to find ways to get more creative and more emotional, sometimes more fun with our content, even if that feels intuitively wrong." - Eric Ressler

Resources:

• Rethinking Your Unhealthy Relationship with Social Impact Marketing
• Is Your Social Impact Marketing Strategy Built on a Strong Foundation or a House of Cards?
• Podcast - We Are For Good — Nonprofit Trends That Matter in 2023: Marketing is Mission
• Marketing Isn’t Overhead, It’s an Impact Multiplier
• Ethical Storytelling Resource - Maria Bryan Creative

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Luvut

1. Building a Successful Marketing Team (00:00:00)

2. Mastering Social Impact Marketing Principles (00:06:16)

3. Effective Marketing Team Dynamics and Coordination (00:15:31)

4. Marketing and Fundraising Synergies (00:21:11)

5. Strategic Marketing Team Building (00:28:47)