Creating a strategic marketing plan is one of the essential tools needed for the success of achieving longevity within any organisation’s existence.
Many Board of Trustee’s and Art Manager’s within non-for-profit organisations still hold on to the myth that creating a marketing plan is mainly for profit organisations and is not a first priority within many arts organisations, as their mission is not based on extrinsic values such as profit, but intrinsic values such as product excellence.
As a result, many board members within the arts fail to efficiently manage and resource non-for-profit organisations well. While art organisations must meet their mission of excellence, must also acknowledge the reality and importance of developing an efficient and productive plan to produce a mission of stability and success. Therefore, can the myth and war of applications and tools employed by profit organisations finally be accepted and settled within non-for-profit organisations?
GETTING STARTED
The importance of building a business mission is often misunderstood by many board members . This may be due to the complexities of the day to day distractions and overwhelming demands of short term intrinsic activities such as product or programme excellence or the pressures of daily goals and deadlines needed to be met – producing short term success.
However, defining the organisation’s mission is the foundation and the starting point of ensuring the success of any framework implemented by top management within an organisation. A clear mission also prevents the whole organisation from getting too tied up in the short comings of delivering short term excellence and focusing on the broader objectives.
ANALYSING
An efficient framework strategy is meaningless without a company objective and an objective without a strategy is a wish (or dream).
Therefore, since goals or objectives and strategies interlink, it is essential to carry out an internal and external environmental analysis after creating a mission to determine the objectives before deciding a strategic framework that would be effective enough to create meaningful results shown in Fig 1.
STRATEGISING
Having an effective but inefficient approach to planning for example, is known as ‘survival’. This means that although attaining short term goals can be effective for a while, can become ineffective and inefficient once various organisational changes occur that are not within management’s control, creating a ‘slow death’ and ultimately yielding unproductive results in the long term shown in Fig 2.
