Marketing Guidelines

Purpose

Provide guidelines to project leaders on how to market their activities and the use of the different marketing tools available at Ihsan

Guidelines for marketing events:

• • For best results, please start marketing your event at least 4 weeks in advance (the earlier the better)

  • It is important when marketing events to utilize the existing Ihsan pool and to ensure that your effort feeds into that same pool

Check list for marketing events:

• 1. Four weeks in advance:

     1. Write down the information about the event in a document (what is the event about, who should be attending, why should they attend, when is the event, how can people participate or respond to the event). Make sure you write clearly and thoroughly

     2. If you will seek sponsors for the event, make sure to inform the president of the organization

     3. Prepare registration forms if needed and mechanisms to receive payments

        1. Work with the treasury to set up online payments for your event

     4. Inform the administrative assistants on how to respond to people asking about the event

     5. Work with the branding coordinator to prepare an event flyer or poster

     6. It is preferred to get one or two more people to take a second look at your flyer or information (include required sections)

     7. Add the event on the Ihsan Google Calendar

     8. Create an event on the Ihsan Facebook page (do not create it under your personal account)

     9. The event will be picked automatically on the Website from both the Google calendar and the Facebook page

     10. The event will be added to the upcoming events section in the weekly newsletter

     11. Share the event on Facebook and encourage all project leaders to share the event as well

     12. Hang the poster on the two bulletin boards at Ihsan

     13. Put copies of the flyer at the different tables next to the mosque and at the entrance

     14. Consider making a video trailer or teaser about the event (we have great small studio and excellent video capabilities) – Work with the branding coordinator

  2. Three weeks in advance:

• • 1. Send personalized emails to people that you know

    2. Ask project leaders to send personalized emails to people they know (give them a draft of what they should send)

    3. Create a Google excel sheet to track the rsvp for the event if needed

    4. Upload the video to the Ihsan youtube page and share it on the Ihsan Facebook page – work with the branding coordinator on that.

• 3. Two weeks in advance:

• • 1. Prepare an email about the event to be sent to all entire Ihsan email list. Work with the person managing the list

    2. If you need to capture the event with video, please arrange with the branding coordinator

• 4. One week in advance

• • 1. Send an email to those who rsvp to the event to remind them and give them more details if needed

    2. Prepare a feedback form and make copies to get feedback from the attendees. There are four essential questions but you can add if you want:

       1. What went right at the event?

       2. What went wrong?

       3. What can we do to improve

       4. Overall, how do you rate the event (scale of 1 to 5 where 5 is most favorable and 1 is least favorable and 3 is neutral)

• 5. Day of event

• • 1. Make sure you take quality pictures. Pictures = thousands words, so make sure you take pictures that expresses the following:

       1. The emotions of the people participating in the event

       2. The diversity of the people participating

       3. The number of the people participating (take shots that include faces without empty spaces)

    2. Make sure you collect contact information from new people, who are not already on our lists

    3. Distribute the feedback forms (make pens available) and collect as many as you can

• 6. After the event

• • 1. On the event excel sheet, write the results of the feedback

    2. Create an Album with the event name on Facebook and upload all pictures (the ones that meets the criteria above in 5.a) – the album will be automatically picked up by the Website and the weekly newsletter

    3. Share the feedback results with the project leaders

    4. Send any emails or contact information collected to the person responsible for the newsletter to add to the list

    5. Complete the event scorecard and email it to the project leaders, if this was the last event of the project.

    6. Make sure you follow the project closing steps in the operation manual, if this was the last event of the project