Seth Godin has noticed something: More people are doing marketing badly. Because anyone can do it — but being able to do it doesn’t means you can do it well. Or even kinda okay. And there’s no certification or standards. If you want to be a doctor, you have to jump through a lot of hoops to show you have what it takes to be a doctor. Want to be marketer? Here’s your computer!
Seth recommends these steps for self-training in marketing:
- Notice what is working in the real world and try to figure out why. Apply it to your work. Repeat.
- Learn to see, to discern the difference between good and bad, between useful and merely comfortable.
- And after you learn, speak up. Noticing doesn’t work if you don’t care and if you don’t take action.
For fundraisers, I’d add one more step: Be a donor. If you aren’t participating in the asking-giving dance, you fundamentally don’t grasp what’s happening.
Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 35 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you’ll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com.
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