For Life Marketing: Digital Marketing for Pregnancy Centers
How to Get Board Buy-In on Marketing Goals
Start simple and focus on explaining clearly. If you offer too much information at once, especially to people unfamiliar with marketing, you risk confusing and overwhelming them.
Focus on 3 things: your challenge, proposed solution, and expected outcome.
For instance, not enough women are finding your pregnancy center and making appointments. To solve this problem, you are proposing to revamp your website and run digital ads to make sure your center ranks higher in Google search results. Be clear about how this will ensure more women make appointments and come to your center to receive services.
Once you’ve created a clear picture in the board’s mind of your problem, intentions, and future success, you can go into further detail to ensure their confidence in your plan.
Before a board agrees to spend money in a new way, they’ll want to know if your project helps accomplish the broader organization goals, that you have a workable plan, and what might go wrong. Here are some ways to address each of these areas, so you can move forward smoothly.
The Big Picture
Align your marketing goals with the board’s goals.
If the board has decided that they need to revamp and strengthen the existing offerings at your pregnancy care center, and you propose a marketing plan that aims to bring a huge number of new clients in the door, your plan will likely fall on deaf ears. Make sure to work as a team.
Prepare to persuade.
Some board members may not feel like marketing is necessary or that they could better use the funds elsewhere. Others may just find the topic too intimidating to tackle. Explain why marketing is necessary and what problem it will help solve. If your center has done marketing in the past, make sure to emphasize the success of past campaigns, and why you think your planned campaign will meet with similar success.
Make your plan detailed, realistic, and measurable.
The Plan
Create clear goals and a strategy to get there. Don’t forget your S.M.A.R.T. goals!
Offer a detailed plan for your use of technology such as different platforms or channels. Provide research that backs up the efficacy of this plan and the expected ROI.
Propose a realistic and specific budget with breakdowns by campaign, channel or other ways that make sense.
Create a detailed timeframe for implementation. This will help you stay on track with your goals and give the board a clearer picture of your steps and when they can start to expect results.
The Assurances
Address potential challenges and risks.
The members of your board will imagine how your plan can go wrong – that’s part of their job – to safeguard the finances entrusted to them. Address the risks upfront and share how you plan to deal with problems if they arise. You will demonstrate that you are realistic about the project, proactive, and wise.
Plan to keep the board updated.
Keep track of metrics and results and meet regularly with the board to show them your progress, and that you want to keep them in the loop. Be willing to show them not just what’s working, but what isn’t working and how you are adjusting your strategy accordingly. Listen to their feedback.
Your Next Steps
Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself for the sake of clarity. As you close your presentation, reiterate the 3 main ideas you opened with: the problem, your solution, and the happy outcome! You’ll leave the board with clarity, certainty, and positivity.
Good luck, and God bless your efforts! Reach out to For Life Marketing with any questions. We’re here to help you succeed in your mission.
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For Life Marketing is based in Birmingham, Alabama and would be honored to serve your pregnancy center anywhere in the United States.
We build and maintain pregnancy center websites and offer digital marketing services like: search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (like Google Ads), social posts, social marketing (like Facebook Ads), lead generation, and email marketing.