Bryan Feller Associates recently helped Marc Pro launch a new ad campaign to cyclists. The ad campaign was tied to it’s sponsorship of the United Healthcare Pro Cycling Team. The sponsorship, the ad, and the landing page all had a unified message giving Marc Pro a strong value proposition to a very specific audience.

The Landing Page

The Ad forwarded to a cycling-specific landing page along with a coupon code that allowed Marc Pro to track the end-to-end effectiveness of the ad. The landing page is shown below…

In an economic recession, its more critical than ever that nonprofits have strong strategic marketing initiatives in place. Path of Life Ministries is a Christian non-profit community agency committed to serving the greater Riverside homeless, challenged youth and family population with the goal of rescuing, restoring and rebuilding lives in their community. Recently, the ministry found itself on the receiving end of major cuts in government funding. In order to keep its family shelter open, and keep 850 in families off the street, the organization needed to enlist the financial help of a broad base of churches, private donors, business, and government officials. Path of Life asked Bryan Feller Associates to help them tackle this challenge.

The Solutions:

Funding Crisis Intervention

In response to imminent funding cuts, Bryan Feller Associates helped the executive team plan a series of key meetings with key influencers in the city. Full color conversation guides were written and designed for each meeting targeting the specific issues that were most important to individual influencers. Not only did these guides serve as conversation prompters, but they also helped to reposition Path of Life from a homeless services organization to an organization focused on self sustainability through social enterprise.

Strategic Marketing Campaign

As solutions to the finding crises began to emerge, Bryan Feller Associates sought develop a strategic marketing campaign that would build new channels for fundraising through a video newsletter and a new website. The monthly video newsletter focused short, 3-minute, stories of lives that had been rescued, restored, and rebuilt through the efforts of the ministry. These videos were syndicated through email and social media on a monthly basis to the ministries list of over 1000 churches, business leaders, volunteers, and government people. Below are some examples of these videos:

Website Development

As part of the content marketing initiative, Bryan Feller Associates also rebuilt the ministry’s website. Rather than simply creating an online brochure, the website was created to be the hub of the ministry’s content marketing and social media campaigns. It was also built with strong engagement points that encouraged people to donate, volunteer, and take s tour of the ministry via contact forms throughout the site.

Building Organizational Capacity

Bryan Feller Associates helped Path of Life build capacity as an organization with several management consulting initiatives, including:

• Customer Relationship Management
• Assisting with the development of a volunteer management process
• Technology and process consulting
• Key staff selection and coaching of key executives

Building Sustainable Income through Social Enterprise

As part the strategic marketing initiative, Bryan Feller Associates helped Path of Life create a plan for developing social enterprise businesses. Getting people into a permanent state of self-reliance takes more than food and shelter. It takes job development opportunities. For this reason, Path of Life partners with Bryan Feller Associates to help ideate, develop and execute the launch of several social enterprise businesses including a bakery and a thrift store. These businesses are also key to increase the ministry’s sustainability and reduce their dependence on government revenue to fund operations. They also work with local businesses to develop joint training programs to help move their guests into the workforce.

Results

Through prayer and strong communications initiative, Path of Life was able to avert all of the proposed budget cuts in 2012. In addition, the marketing infrastructure that was developed opened up a completely new communications channel for Path of Life. Not only did the new content marketing campaign raise donation revenue, it continues to open up new possibilities for collaboration with churches, business, and government. Finally, the content marketing program created a low cost vehicle for Path of Life to raise awareness and revenue for its new social enterprise ventures like a new bakery and a thrift store.