How to Market – Your Hospice Marketing “To-Do List”
Working with hospices large and small—from the established to the brand new, ME&V fundraising advisers have observed the key organizational elements that successful hospices have in common. Here are three critical marketing functions that thriving hospices have well in-hand:

• Marketing Goals
• Hospice Branding
• Opening Donor Doors
• Yearly Marketing Calendar
• Marketing Plan

 I. Established Marketing Goals
It’s likely that you have a defined mission and vision for your nonprofit hospice. To help you fulfill them, it’s also important to set marketing goals. For most hospices, two important marketing goals will be to:

1. Establish or reinforce your unique brand in the community
2. Increase the number of referrals that build your census

Here are a few ideas to help you develop the tools to achieve your goals:

• Schedule a half-day staff retreat to focus your thoughts solely on marketing
• Establish a separate marketing budget with dollars set aside to reach your target audiences
• Develop a simple message or phrase underlying all that you do to set you apart from for-profit hospice organizations
• Brainstorm ways to reach your referral market in a consistent manner at least once each month throughout the year

II. An Established Hospice Brand
The “brand” of your hospice is essentially the sum total of how each person in your service area feels about your organization. While nonprofit organizations have limited funds, it’s essential to realize that the tools and techniques used in branding can “sell” your hospice to potential donors. Branding techniques can also impact referrals and the choices made by families in your community.

Here are the basics to help you go about building an effective brand:
Know Your Audience – Find out exactly what people really know and think about your hospice. Use e-mail or phone surveys, focus groups or direct mail questionnaires. You can even gather this information through your Web site. Aim to get the opinions of at least 100 individuals from your target audience — and more if you can. Put your findings in writing to establish the percentage of people that have heard of you, if they know what you do, what else they know about you, whether their feeling is positive or negative and if they consider themselves a potential future donor.

Evaluate Your Brand Name - Ideally, your hospice name should hold both a promise and an emotional appeal. Don’t change it if it does both already. However, if your name is a source of confusion, it may need tweaking or the addition of words that will help explain who you are.

Define Your Target Audience– Think about those you serve or want to persuade and write down a point-by-point description of them. Include their demographics and socio-economic characteristics. This is your target audience, and you should plan all of your branding activities with your target audience in mind.

Develop a Relevant Message – Capsulize your purpose into one word that you’d like your audience to remember when they think of your hospice. Integrate all your branding activities so that they help build upon that word. In one sentence, also describe the benefit you provide and why you’re unique for the target audience you serve.

Then, prune this benefit statement down to no more than eight words—five or four is better. Finally, incorporate these words, or “tagline” as a standard element in your logo or name. Don’t let your tagline promise more than you can deliver, but don’t understate the value of your cause, either.

Check Your Logo and Color – There’s no need to change a strong logo. However, your logo and your color(s) always reflect on you, and they will impact how people view your hospice. So if most stakeholders believe your logo doesn’t represent your organization’s name or purpose very well, it may be time to revamp it.

Be Consistent in Its Use
Once you have a logo and a tagline you’re proud to use, make sure it appears in true form on everything that’s printed and anything that represents your hospice to the public. Familiarity with your colors and the frequent, consistent appearance of your logo and tagline will help families trust you and help build donor familiarity with your cause.

Remember Branding in Every Interaction – As you expand your hospice communications beyond your tagline through advertising, special events and other branding activities, try to be consistent in the message you deliver and strive for increasing the frequency of its appearance.

Live Your Message
Beyond the external opportunities, your organization must also live the message you are communicating internally. Everyone on staff must cooperate by staying loyal to the message, keeping it honest, simple and relevant. Likewise, there are also several keys to open the door for future opportunities with your donors and constituents . . .

Keys to Opening Donor Doors

• Positive Experiences – Make each donor interaction a positive one, and remember to train your volunteers about your organization, its mission and your message – before they represent you.
• Financial Integrity – Be clear and forthright to donors about your expenditures, but avoid overloading them with too much information.
• Frequent Thank You’s – Always thank each donor seven times—via e-mails, newsletters, newspaper articles, birthday cards and other tools. You must nurture relationships frequently to help assure donations in the future.
• Listen – Know what donors say about your organization. Extract their opinions through surveys, direct mail or e-mail. And try to act on suggestions and comments you receive.
• Create Donor “Owners” – While giving is a personal thing, successful branding of your hospice can create and enhance those personal relationships. Branding is a great aid in courting donors because it helps build familiarity. When donors know you, they’ll get involved, and start taking ownership—which leads to giving. And that’s why branding is so critical in developing donor support for your hospice.

III. A Yearly Marketing Calendar
For the core of your calendar, plan activities to capitalize on the extra attention and awareness during times of national recognition for health-related causes or celebratory events. For most nonprofit hospices, these natural promotional periods include:

• National Hospice/Palliative Care Month (November)
• National Family Caregivers Month (November)
• National Nurses Week (May 6-12)
• Holidays: Christmas, Easter, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day and Thanksgiving
• National Volunteer Week (late April or early May)
• Counseling Awareness Month (April)
• National Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month (November)

Use the calendar templates in your word processing or desktop publishing software to indicate the timeframe of your hospice’s promotional events and advertising efforts. Make sure each staff member has a copy of the calendar so everyone on your team is informed, knowledgeable and on the same page.

Develop Your Complete Hospice Marketing Plan
Successful organizations usually have a specific written plan for marketing. For the guidance you need to create a great marketing plan, get the Hospice Master Marketing Plan. It’s available in downloadable form and it’s FREE with your qualifying order from HospiceADEASY.