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IV
MARKETING RESOURCES
Preface
This chapter is designed to help Samaritan Centers understand what marketing means for
nonprofit organizations, and to respond to basic questions about marketing their Centers
and their services. First, what is marketing for nonprofit organizations?
In the fifth edition of their classic book, Strategic Marketing for Non-Profit
Organizations, Philip Kotler and Alan Andreasen assess the charactaeristics of
nonprofits through a series of questions:
1. Characteristic One: Is it a donative organization whose primary source of
revenue comes from donations or a commercial organization whose revenue
comes from fees for service?.
2. Characteristic Two: Is it a mutual organization controlled on a daily basis by
users, or an entrepreneurial organization controlled on a daily basis by
professional managers.
3. Characteristic Three: Is it a support organization that collects and distrubtes
donations, or an operational organization that delivers services.
Using these distinctions, Samaritan Centers are commercial, entreprenuerial, and
operational. That is, they deliver services for which they charge fees and are controlled
on a day-to-day basis by professonal managers rather than consumers/customers. And
although Centers are not controlled by their customers, their marketing emphasis should
begin with the customer, not the organization.
What Does Beginning With the Customer Mean?
It means that Centers should strive to know what customers need and want, what their
perceptions and preferences are, and what gives them satisfaction. Marketing means
using this knowledge of the customer to improve its services to better serve the customer.
What clues are there – attitudes if you will – that a Center is not doing customer-oriented
marketing? Kotler and Andreasen offer five clues:
1. The organization has an extremely high opinion of the value of its own offerings
and sees its task as promoting those offerings.
2. If consumers resist the organization’s marketing efforts it is because they don’t
understand the value of these services or they aren’t properly motivated.
According to this view, the desired outcome is to get the client to accept the
organization’s own value of itself.
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3. This approach views market research as an effort to confirm what the organization
already knows, not what the customer thinks. It is hardly worth the effort because
“we already know what’s best.”
4. Successful marketing is viewed as a means of building awareness and fostering
encouragement to use the organization’s services as the organization thinks best,
not as a way to modify what it does to better serve the customer..
5. Good marketing, then, requires communicating persuasively to consumers using a
one-size-fits-all strategy.
Kotler and Andreisen conclude that organizations that are consumer-oriented (and that
includes Samaritan Centers as we have noted) build their marketing around four basic
questions:
 To whom are we planning to market?
 Where are they and what are they like?
 What are their current perceptions, needs, and wants?
 How satisfied are our clients?
Samaritan Centers sometimes resist the notion that they are consumer-oriented because
they view themselves as a ministry, not a business. To this point we would say:
Good marketing increases your ability to minister effectively and efficiently.
Business methods in themselves are not the goal. Rather, the aim is the delivery
of services that provide the best help possible to the people you serve which is
your ministry.
Contents of This Chapter

Marketing Q & A. The concepts already noted are applied specifically to
Samaritan Centers and to counseling as the primary service product.

Public Relations. Detailed information and guidance is offered for planning
public relations, marketing the opening of a new Center, and sustaining a public
relations progams.
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Appendices. Appendix 1 presents an extensive Samaritan Awareness Campaign;
the other pieces in the Appendix are examples of documents that Centers may use.
Other Materials in the Samaritan Center Resourse Library that Bear on Marketing
In particular, consider:
 Identity as a Samaritan Center I.A
 Program Quality I.B
 Client Satisfaction I.B.3
 Why People Serve on Samaritan Center Boards I.C.4
 Recruiting an Outstanding Board of Directors I.C.11
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The Board’s Role in Understanding and Evaluating Center Services I.C.19
Five Keys to Effective Executive Leadership I.D.2
Building Staff Teamwork I.E.3
Program Appraisal I.F.5
Center Offices in Congregational settings I.G.2
Market Survey for New Branch Offices I.I.5
Five Questions Every Center Should Address I.J.1
Strategic Planning I.J.3
Financial Support for Congregations I.K.2
Use of the Samaritan Name VI.J
Reference Books
Two reference books complementing the marketing material in this notebook are
especially useful:
Strategic Marketing for Non Profit Organizations,
Philip Kotler and Alan Andreasen. Prentis Hall, Latest Edition
Building Web Sites: All-In-One Desk Reference for Dummies,
Doug Sahlin and Claudia Snell. Wiley Publishing, Latest Edition.
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The Samaritan Institute Staff (2007)
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