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Archive | nonprofit marketing

Marketing Mix: the 4 P’s

        By Tom Peterson Not too long ago many nonprofits looked askance at the idea of marketing. In the mid-nineties, an organization I worked with was raising about $3 million a year from what we would today call marketing. Some colleagues—particularly Michael Cervino, who had helped grow Habitat for Humanity—and I had […]

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Tererai, the improbable story of Oprah’s “favorite guest”

How one guy’s simple goal, and one woman’s determination led to Oprah’s “all-time favorite guest”   By Tom Peterson Ray White’s 30-year journalism career and passion for the cause made him a great, though unassuming, leader of public relations much of the time I was at Heifer International. While the team was small—Ray, an associate, […]

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Call to Action: specific, compelling, doable

  Be clear about what you want people to do.    By Tom Peterson Al Gore’s 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth gives an inside look at a presentation the former vice president made more than a thousand times. After two hours of information alerting the audience to the crisis of climate change, Gore ends with […]

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Target audience: Focus your communications efforts

      By Tom Peterson  Who is your target audience? Each student in my class—marketing for nonprofits and social change at the Clinton School of Public Service—creates a marketing plan for a real organization. They work on it all semester. As the weeks progress we go over their work, and almost every year, no […]

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80/20 Rule, use the Law of the Vital Few for greater impact

      You’ve already know about the 80/20 rule so this is a reminder—because four-out-of-five times it will help you focus on what’s important. In 1906 economist Vilfredo Pareto was studying land ownership in Italy and found that 20 percent of the people owned 80 percent of the land. The remaining 80 percent of […]

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Aspiration Marketing

Click HERE for Tom Peterson’s New Book!     By Tom Peterson  From his Los Angeles podcasting garage Marc Maron recently interviewed President Barack Obama. “When I ran in 2008 there were those posters out there: ‘Hope’ and ‘Change,’” Obama said. “Those are capturing aspirations about where we should be going—a society that’s more just, […]

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