Brittany Hoversten

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Tag: Marketing Strategy

  • How to Design a Stakeholder Survey That Produces Decisions, Not Just Data

    Most surveys die in a slide deck. Someone spends three weeks writing questions, the team chases responses for another month, and the results get presented once to polite nods. Then nothing changes. If you want to know how to design a stakeholder survey that actually moves a decision, the work starts long before you write question one.

    I design and analyze stakeholder surveys in my nonprofit communications work, and I’ve watched plenty of others come and go over 10 years in marketing. The pattern is consistent. The surveys that changed something were built backward from a decision. The ones that didn’t were built forward from curiosity.

    Curiosity is nice. Decisions are the job.

    Start with the decision, not the questions

    Before you open a survey tool, write one sentence: “We are running this survey so we can decide ______ by ______.”

    If you can’t fill in both blanks, you are not ready to survey anyone. You’re ready to have a meeting about what you need to decide.

    Good examples sound like this:

    • We need to decide which two of our five programs to feature in the spring campaign, by March 1.
    • We need to decide whether donors want a printed annual report or a shorter digital one, before we sign the print contract.
    • We need to decide what our staff need most from the new CRM, so we can set training priorities for the first 90 days.

    Notice what those have in common. A real choice, a real deadline and a real owner. Every question you write later should earn its place by helping make that choice.

    Name who will act on it

    Write down the person or group who will make the call. A survey with no decision owner turns into a report with no reader. If the executive director is the one deciding, get ten minutes with them before you draft anything and ask, “What would you need to see to choose A over B?” Their answer is your outline.

    How to design a stakeholder survey, step by step

    Here’s the sequence I use. It’s not fancy. It works because it forces discipline at the points where most surveys get sloppy.

    1. Write the decision statement. One sentence, as above.
    2. List the unknowns. What do you not know that is blocking the decision? Usually three to six things.
    3. Map each unknown to one or two questions. If a question doesn’t map to an unknown, cut it.
    4. Pick the audience segments that matter. Staff, board, donors, clients, partners, volunteers. Decide in advance which groups you’ll compare.
    5. Draft, then cut by a third. Your first draft is always too long. Everyone’s is.
    6. Pilot with five real people. Watch them take it if you can. Where they pause is where your wording is unclear.
    7. Plan the analysis before you launch. Sketch the chart or table you expect to show for each question. If you can’t picture it, the question is probably vague.

    Step seven is the one people skip, and it’s the one that saves you. When you sketch the output first, you catch questions that would produce data you can’t use.

    Write questions that people can actually answer

    Bad questions are the most common reason survey data is mush. A few rules I hold myself to:

    One idea per question

    “How satisfied are you with our communication and events?” is two questions pretending to be one. If someone loves your newsletter and skips every event, what are they supposed to click? Split it.

    Ask about behavior before opinion

    People are better at reporting what they did than predicting what they’d do. “In the last three months, how often did you open our email newsletter?” is more reliable than “Would you read a monthly newsletter?” Opinion questions still have a place. Just anchor them to real experience when you can.

    Keep scales consistent

    Pick one scale and stick with it across the survey. If question four uses 1 to 5 where 5 is good and question nine uses 1 to 10 where 1 is good, you’ll get errors and you won’t know where they came from.

    Use open-ended questions sparingly, and on purpose

    One or two open-ended questions are gold. Ten of them is a homework assignment. My favorite is simple: “If you could change one thing about how we work with you, what would it be?” It’s specific enough to answer and open enough to surprise you.

    Watch for loaded wording

    “How much do you value our life-changing programs?” isn’t a question. It’s a press release with a slider. Neutral wording feels less flattering to write. That’s the point.

    Get the right people to respond

    A survey is only as good as who answers it. A few practical moves:

    • Send it from a person, not a department. A note from the executive director or a program lead tends to get more attention than a generic “info@” message.
    • Tell people why it matters and how long it takes. “This takes about six minutes and will shape how we plan next year’s events” is honest and specific.
    • Close the loop in advance. Promise that you’ll share what you learned and what you’re changing. Then do it.
    • Watch your segments as responses come in. If board members have all responded and clients haven’t, adjust your outreach before you close the survey, not after.
    • Make it accessible. Mobile-friendly, plain language, and offered in the languages your stakeholders actually use.

    For client or community surveys in nonprofit settings, think hard about trust. People who rely on your services may worry that an honest answer will affect their support. Say clearly that responses are confidential and will not change anyone’s eligibility, and make sure that’s true.

    Turn results into a decision memo, not a data dump

    This is where most of the value lives, and where most of it gets lost.

    When the survey closes, resist the urge to chart every question. Go back to your decision statement. Your report should answer it on page one.

    I use a simple structure that I’ve also written about for reporting marketing metrics to a board of directors:

    1. The decision we needed to make. One sentence.
    2. What we learned. Three findings, maximum, in plain language.
    3. What we recommend. A clear choice, with the trade-off stated.
    4. What we’ll do next and when. Owners and dates.
    5. Appendix. Every chart, for the people who want it.

    Leaders don’t need forty charts. They need the three that matter and the confidence that you looked at the other thirty-seven.

    Segment before you summarize

    Overall averages hide the story. If staff rate internal communication at 3.8 and frontline staff alone rate it at 2.6, the overall number is comforting and wrong. Always cut results by the segments you chose in step four before you write a single finding.

    Pair numbers with voices

    A short quote from an open-ended response, shared with permission and without identifying details, often lands harder than a bar chart. Use one or two per finding. Not ten.

    Mistakes that sink survey results (I have made a few)

    • Surveying because it’s that time of year, not because there’s a decision.
    • Asking questions you already know the answer to, so the survey feels thorough.
    • Letting every department add “just one question” until it takes twenty minutes.
    • Changing the questions every year, so you can never compare trends.
    • Never telling respondents what happened, then wondering why next year’s response rate drops.

    That last one matters more than people think. Each survey trains your stakeholders on whether surveys are worth their time. If you close the loop, you build a group of people who answer honestly. If you don’t, you teach them to ignore you.

    If your survey data lives in a CRM, plan for that from the start. Survey answers get far more useful when they sit next to the rest of the relationship record. Having helped shape a Salesforce CRM rollout, I’d put that on the requirements list early. I share more of that thinking in my post on CRM implementation best practices.

    Key takeaways

    • Write a one-sentence decision statement before you write a single question.
    • Every question should map to an unknown that blocks the decision.
    • Sketch your charts before you launch, so you only collect data you can use.
    • Report the decision on page one, with three findings and a clear recommendation.
    • Close the loop with respondents every time, so they answer honestly next time.

    FAQ

    How many questions should a stakeholder survey have?

    Most stakeholder surveys work best with 10 to 15 questions and a completion time under eight minutes. If you need more, you likely have more than one decision and should consider separate, shorter surveys for each audience.

    What is the difference between a stakeholder survey and a satisfaction survey?

    A satisfaction survey measures how people feel about an experience. A stakeholder survey is built to inform a specific decision, so it asks about priorities, behaviors and trade-offs from the groups who are affected by that choice.

    How often should an organization survey its stakeholders?

    Survey each major group once or twice a year, plus targeted pulse surveys when a specific decision comes up. Keep a few core questions the same every time, so you can track trends from year to year.

    If you want to see how this kind of thinking shows up across my projects, take a look at my recent work.

    / Work with Brittany

    Have a survey coming up that needs to change something, not just fill a slide?

    Hiring a marketing leader or need a hands-on partner for a project? See how we can work together or send me a note.

  • How to Turn Your In-House Creative Team Into a Profit Center

    Every budget season, someone looks at the creative department and asks the same question: “What do we actually get for this?” If your in-house creative team can only answer with a list of projects completed, you’re on defense. You’re a cost to be managed, and costs get cut.

    I’ve been on the other side of that conversation. At Buyers Edge Platform, I launched a corporate videography service line that brought in more than $60K in its first year. It didn’t come from working harder. It came from running creative like a business inside the business.

    You don’t have to sell services externally to do this. “Profit center” can also mean proving, in dollars, what your team saves and earns. Here’s how to get there.

    Why in-house creative teams get treated as overhead

    Creative teams rarely lose budget because they’re bad at the work. They lose it because the value is invisible. A few patterns I see over and over:

    • Free work feels worthless. When requests cost the requester nothing, everything is urgent and nothing is valued.
    • No intake, no data. If requests arrive by hallway, text and email, you can’t report volume, turnaround or demand.
    • The team reports activity, not outcomes. “We made 300 assets” doesn’t mean much to a CFO.
    • Outside agencies set the benchmark. Leaders know what an agency invoice looks like. They’ve never seen one from you.

    Fix the visibility problem and the budget conversation changes.

    Step 1: Know what your in-house creative team costs and saves

    Start with a simple internal rate. Take your team’s fully loaded annual cost (salaries, benefits, software, equipment) and divide it by billable hours you can realistically deliver. That’s your cost per hour.

    Then compare it with what the same work would cost from outside vendors. Get real quotes for a few common deliverables, like a two-minute promotional video, an event photography half day or a campaign graphics package. The difference between the outside price and your internal cost is value you’re already creating. Most teams never write it down.

    Keep a running log for one quarter:

    1. Every project completed.
    2. Hours spent.
    3. What an outside vendor would have charged.
    4. The business result it supported, if known (a launch, an event, a sales deck).

    One quarter of that log is worth more than any slide about creative excellence.

    This works in nonprofits, too. You may never sell a single service, but a board that sees how much outside agency spending the creative team replaced in a year looks at that line item very differently. The question shifts from “Can we afford this team?” to “Can we afford to lose it?”

    Step 2: Productize what you already do well

    Profit centers sell products, not hours. Look at your request history and find the work that repeats. Then package it.

    What a creative product looks like

    A product has a name, a defined scope, a standard turnaround and a price (or an internal charge-back). For example:

    • Event coverage package: photo or video coverage, a highlight edit and a selects gallery delivered within a set number of business days.
    • Testimonial video: one interview, B-roll, a short edit and a social cut-down.
    • Campaign starter kit: key visual, social templates, email header and a one-page flyer.

    That’s the logic behind the videography service line I launched: a defined offering, clearly priced and easy to buy. When the package is clear, the value is obvious, both to internal teams and to paying customers.

    Pick what to say no to

    Productizing also means deciding what you won’t do. If the team spends hours on one-off requests that don’t connect to goals, the menu gives you a polite way to redirect them.

    Step 3: Build the workflow that protects margin

    Margin disappears in the gaps: unclear briefs, endless revisions, files nobody can find and approvals that sit for a week. These gaps are exactly what workflow fixes close.

    The workflow essentials:

    • One intake form that captures the goal, audience, deadline, budget owner and approver.
    • A defined revision policy, such as two rounds included and more by request.
    • Templates and a shared asset library, so nobody rebuilds what already exists.
    • A project tracker everyone can see, with status and due dates.
    • A kickoff and a wrap, even if each is five minutes.

    None of this is fancy. All of it compounds. A team that stops redoing work suddenly has capacity, and capacity is what you sell.

    Step 4: Price it, report it and grow

    Report it like a business

    Whether you charge internal departments, sell externally or just show what work would have cost, the reporting looks similar. Each quarter, report:

    • Revenue earned or charge-backs collected.
    • Cost avoided compared with outside vendors.
    • Volume and on-time delivery rate.
    • Two or three business outcomes the work supported.

    Put it on one page. Lead with dollars, then outcomes, then volume. If you need help choosing what leadership will care about, I wrote about the marketing metrics your board actually cares about, and the same rules apply here.

    A word of caution on charge-backs: they change behavior, not always for the better. Charge too much and departments start buying cheap outside work that’s off brand. Start with a “shadow invoice” that shows what work would cost without actually charging it. You get the value conversation without the turf war.

    Grow without breaking the team

    When the model works, demand goes up. That’s the good problem. Grow in this order:

    1. Systematize first. Templates, checklists and presets before headcount.
    2. Use contractors for peaks. A trusted bench of freelancers gives you flex without fixed cost. In my consultancy, Highbloom Digital, I managed a distributed bench of up to 30 contractors, and the work is always better when the brief is clear and the feedback is fast.
    3. Hire for the products that sell. Let demand tell you which role to add next.

    It also helps to build a team of T-shaped marketers: people who have one deep specialty and can still pitch in across photo, video, design and web. Small teams with broad skills absorb demand spikes far better than teams of narrow specialists.

    Key takeaways

    • Creative teams get cut when their value is invisible, so make it visible in dollars.
    • Calculate your internal cost per hour and compare it with outside vendor pricing.
    • Turn repeat requests into named products with scope, turnaround and price.
    • Protect margin with intake, revision limits, templates and a shared tracker.
    • Report revenue, cost avoided and outcomes each quarter on a single page.

    FAQ

    How can an in-house creative team generate revenue?

    An in-house creative team can generate revenue by packaging repeat services, such as video, photography or design kits, and selling them to customers, partners or other business units. It can also charge internal departments for work or report the outside cost it avoids.

    Should in-house creative teams charge other departments?

    Sometimes. Charge-backs make value visible but can push departments toward cheaper outside work. A good middle step is a shadow invoice that shows what the work would cost without actually billing for it.

    What should an in-house creative team report to leadership?

    Report revenue or charge-backs, cost avoided compared with agency pricing, volume and on-time delivery, and the business outcomes the work supported. Keep it to one page and lead with dollars.

    Want to see the kind of creative this approach produces? Browse my photo and video work.

    / Work with Brittany

    Ready to turn your creative team from a cost line into a value story?

    Hiring a marketing leader or need a hands-on partner for a project? See how we can work together or send me a note.

  • How to Build a Content Calendar Your Team Will Actually Use

    Most content calendars die in week three. Someone builds a beautiful spreadsheet, color-codes every platform, fills in the first two weeks and shares it with the team. By the end of the month, it’s a graveyard of empty cells and one lonely post marked “TBD.”

    The problem usually isn’t discipline. It’s design. If you want to know how to build a content calendar that survives past the first month, build it around how your team actually works, not how a template says they should. Here’s the approach I use.

    Why most content calendars fail

    Before building a new one, it helps to know why the last one stopped getting opened. The usual culprits:

    • Too much detail too early. Planning every caption three months out guarantees most of it will be wrong by the time you get there.
    • No connection to goals. If the calendar just says “post something Tuesday,” nobody knows why the post matters.
    • No owner. Everyone can edit it, so nobody keeps it current.
    • It lives in the wrong place. A calendar in a tool your team doesn’t open daily is a calendar they’ll forget.
    • It plans output, not capacity. It assumes time that doesn’t exist.

    How to build a content calendar in six steps

    1. Start with goals and key dates

    Begin with the two or three outcomes your marketing supports this year. Then map the dates that matter: campaigns, events, program launches, fundraising pushes, holidays relevant to your audience, board meetings and annual reports.

    These become the anchors. Everything else fills in around them.

    2. Define three to five content pillars

    Pillars are the recurring themes your content returns to. For a nonprofit, they might be client impact stories, how to get help, ways to get involved, behind the scenes and organizational news. For a small business, they might be customer results, expertise, products, people and community.

    Pillars keep you from staring at a blank cell wondering what to post. They also keep your content balanced, so you’re not only asking for money or only making announcements.

    A quick test for a good pillar: could you come up with ten pieces of content for it without trying very hard? If not, it’s too narrow. Could almost anything fit under it? Then it’s too broad. Aim for themes your audience cares about and your team can talk about with real authority.

    3. Plan in layers, not all at once

    This is the part most teams get wrong. Plan at three levels of detail:

    • Annual view: Campaigns, key dates and themes by month. One page.
    • Monthly view: The main pieces of content for each week, assigned to pillars and owners.
    • Weekly view: Final copy, assets and scheduling. This is the only level that needs full detail.

    You’ll revise the monthly view often. That’s fine. A calendar is a plan, not a contract.

    4. Be honest about capacity

    Count the hours your team actually has for content. Then plan for less than that, because something unplanned always shows up. I aim to leave roughly a fifth of the time open. If you’re a team of one, that might mean two social posts a week, one email a month and one story a month. That’s a real calendar, and it beats an ambitious one that collapses by spring. If that’s your situation, my one-person marketing department playbook goes deeper on protecting your time.

    5. Choose the right home for it

    The best tool is the one your team already opens every day. That might be a shared spreadsheet, a project management tool, your CRM or the scheduling tool you already pay for. Visibility matters more than features.

    At minimum, each entry should include:

    • Publish date
    • Channel
    • Pillar
    • Topic or working title
    • Owner
    • Status: idea, drafting, in review, scheduled or published
    • Link to assets
    • Goal or call to action

    6. Assign one owner and a weekly rhythm

    One person owns the calendar. Others contribute ideas and content, but one person keeps it current and runs a short weekly check-in. Fifteen minutes is plenty: what’s going out this week, what’s stuck and what changed.

    The owner doesn’t have to create everything. Their job is to keep the calendar honest. If a piece is slipping, they move it or cut it, so the calendar always reflects reality instead of wishful thinking.

    Make it easy to feed the calendar

    A calendar only works if content keeps flowing into it. A few habits that help:

    • Keep an idea backlog. A simple list where anyone can drop ideas, so planning starts with options instead of a blank page.
    • Use repeatable formats. A monthly story, a recurring tip, a staff spotlight. Formats make planning almost automatic.
    • Batch production. Shoot a month of photos in one session. Write a week of posts in one sitting.
    • Repurpose on purpose. One client story can become a blog post, an email feature, three social posts and a short video clip. Plan for that from the start instead of scrambling later.
    • Keep assets organized. If finding the right photo takes 20 minutes, your calendar will slip. A tidy, shared image library is part of your content system.

    One more thing: build in room for timely content. Leave a slot or two each month open for news, wins and moments you couldn’t have predicted. A calendar with no flexibility gets ignored the first time something real happens.

    Review what worked and adjust

    Once a month, look back before you look ahead. Check which pieces moved the outcomes you care about, not just which got the most likes. Which pillars resonated? Which channels pulled their weight? Which formats took too much work for the result?

    Then adjust next month’s plan. A few questions I ask in every review:

    1. What should we do more of?
    2. What should we stop doing?
    3. What did we skip, and did anyone notice?
    4. What’s coming up that we haven’t planned for yet?

    Over time, the calendar gets smarter because it’s built on your own data. If you report to leadership or a board, these reviews feed straight into the outcome-based reporting I described in marketing metrics your board actually cares about.

    Key takeaways

    • Content calendars usually fail from bad design, not lack of discipline.
    • Anchor the calendar to goals and key dates, then fill it with three to five content pillars.
    • Plan in layers: annual themes, monthly priorities and detailed weekly execution.
    • Plan for less than your full capacity, and give the calendar one clear owner.
    • Review monthly against outcomes and adjust.

    Frequently asked questions

    How do you build a content calendar?

    Start with your goals and key dates, define three to five content pillars, then plan in layers: an annual view of themes, a monthly view of main content and a weekly view with final copy and scheduling. Assign one owner and review monthly.

    What should be included in a content calendar?

    Each entry should include the publish date, channel, content pillar, topic, owner, status, a link to assets and the goal or call to action.

    How far ahead should you plan a content calendar?

    Plan themes and major campaigns a year ahead, main content a month ahead and detailed posts one to two weeks ahead. That balance gives direction without locking you into plans that will change.

    / Work with Brittany

    Want a content system your team will actually stick with?

    Hiring a marketing leader or need a hands-on partner for a project? See how we can work together or send me a note.

  • Marketing Metrics for Board of Directors Meetings: What Boards Actually Care About

    Picture the board packet. Forty pages of financials, program reports and committee minutes, and somewhere in the middle, a marketing slide with follower counts, website sessions and an email open rate. Board members glance at it, nod and move on. Nobody asks a question. That’s the problem.

    When marketing metrics for board of directors meetings are built around activity instead of outcomes, the board can’t use them. And when the board can’t use them, marketing starts to look like overhead. I’ve advised an executive team and a Board directly, and what I learned is simple: boards don’t need more data from marketing. They need the right data, framed around the decisions they’re responsible for.

    What boards are actually responsible for

    Start here, because it shapes everything else. A board’s job is governance: mission, strategy, financial health, risk and leadership oversight. They are not there to manage your Instagram.

    So every metric you bring them should help answer at least one of these questions:

    • Are we advancing the mission?
    • Are we financially sustainable?
    • Is our reputation healthy, and are we managing risk?
    • Is the strategy working, or do we need to change course?

    If a metric doesn’t help answer one of those, it belongs in your team dashboard, not the board report.

    This also changes how you talk about marketing. You’re not reporting on what the team did. You’re reporting on what the organization gained, what it risked and what it should decide next. That framing alone can change how a board sees the marketing budget.

    The marketing metrics for board of directors that matter

    Here’s the short list I’d build from. You won’t need all of them. Pick the five to seven that map to your strategic plan.

    Mission and growth

    • Program inquiries or enrollments tied to marketing. How many people sought services, applied or signed up, and where they came from.
    • New donors, members or customers, compared with the same period last year.
    • Volunteer recruitment. Sign-ups, and how many actually showed up.

    Financial health

    • Revenue influenced by marketing. Online donations, event revenue, campaign totals or sales tied to specific campaigns.
    • Cost per acquisition. What it costs to gain a new donor, client or customer through marketing channels.
    • Retention. Donor retention, membership renewals or repeat customers. Boards understand instinctively that keeping people matters as much as finding new ones.

    Reputation and risk

    • Stakeholder sentiment. Survey results from clients, donors, partners or staff. I design and analyze stakeholder surveys in my current role, and a few well-chosen questions asked consistently can tell a board more than a pile of social stats.
    • Media coverage and tone. Not just how many stories ran, but whether they were positive, neutral or negative.
    • Issues and response time. Any reputational issues that came up and how quickly they were handled.

    Strategic health

    • Audience growth in priority segments. Not total followers. Growth among the specific people your strategy targets.
    • Reach on owned channels. Website traffic and email list growth, framed as assets the organization controls instead of renting from a platform.

    Metrics to keep out of the board report

    These aren’t useless. They’re just not board-level. Keep them in your team dashboard:

    • Likes, impressions and follower counts on their own
    • Email open rates without context
    • Posting frequency
    • Page views with no link to an outcome
    • Anything you have to explain for more than 30 seconds

    Vanity metrics aren’t evil. They’re early signals, and your team should watch them. But a board that keeps seeing “impressions are up” with no connection to mission or money learns to tune marketing out.

    How to present marketing metrics to a board

    The format matters as much as the numbers. Here’s the structure I recommend:

    1. Lead with one sentence. “Marketing is on track to meet our volunteer goal and behind on monthly donors.” Board members should know the headline before they see a chart.
    2. Show five to seven metrics, max, on one page. Use the same metrics every time so the board can see trends.
    3. Always show a comparison. Against goal, against last year or against last quarter. A number without context is trivia.
    4. Add one story. One client, donor or volunteer story, shared with consent, that shows what the numbers mean in a real life.
    5. Name the risk or decision. “We need to decide whether to fund a second campaign this spring” gives the board something to govern.
    6. Put the details in an appendix. Let curious board members dig in without making everyone else wade through it.

    Tools help, but they’re secondary. I build reports in Power BI and pull from Google Analytics, Search Console and CRM data. A clean one-page summary in a slide or document works fine if the thinking is clear. A gorgeous dashboard with muddy thinking doesn’t.

    Connect every metric to the strategic plan

    The most useful thing you can do is tie each board metric to a goal in the strategic plan. When I was Director of Communications, Technology and Data at Tri-County Action Program, I built a five-year technology plan that identified $350K in savings. It landed with leadership because it spoke the board’s language: cost, risk, sustainability and mission.

    Marketing works the same way. When the social, newsletter and website work I led there grew engagement across every channel, the point wasn’t the numbers. It was what more reach meant: more people finding services and more supporters finding ways to help.

    A few habits keep that connection tight:

    • Write the strategic goal next to each metric in the report.
    • Retire metrics when the strategy changes. Don’t keep reporting a number just because you always have.
    • Ask the board chair or a committee member once a year whether the report helps them make decisions. Then listen.

    If you’re a communications leader, this is where strategic communications earns its seat at the table. I wrote about that distinction in strategic communications vs. marketing. And if you’re the only marketer in the building, a lighter monthly version of this report is one of the best ways to show your value, a point I made in the one-person marketing department playbook.

    Key takeaways

    • Boards govern mission, money, reputation and strategy. Build your metrics around those.
    • Choose five to seven metrics that map to the strategic plan, and keep them consistent.
    • Keep vanity metrics in your team dashboard, not the board packet.
    • Lead with a headline, show comparisons, add one story and name a decision.
    • Frame results in the board’s language: outcomes, cost, risk and sustainability.

    Frequently asked questions

    What marketing metrics should be reported to a board of directors?

    Report metrics tied to mission, finances, reputation and strategy, such as new donors or clients, revenue influenced by marketing, cost per acquisition, retention, stakeholder sentiment and growth in priority audiences.

    How often should marketing report to the board?

    Most boards benefit from a short marketing summary at each regular meeting, often quarterly, using the same metrics every time so trends are easy to spot. A deeper annual review can tie results back to the strategic plan.

    Should social media metrics be included in board reports?

    Only when they connect to an outcome the board cares about, such as growth in a priority audience or traffic that led to donations or sign-ups. Standalone likes and follower counts belong in a team dashboard.

    / Work with Brittany

    Want marketing reports your leadership and board will actually use?

    Hiring a marketing leader or need a hands-on partner for a project? See how we can work together or send me a note.

  • Strategic Communications vs. Marketing: Why Leaders Need Both

    Here’s a pattern I’ve seen in more than one organization. A crisis hits, or a big change is coming, and leadership turns to the marketing team and asks, “Can you put out a post?” The rest of the year, those same leaders treat marketing as the people who make flyers.

    That gap is the strategic communications vs. marketing question in a nutshell. Most organizations blur the two, then wonder why their messaging feels reactive and their campaigns feel disconnected from the mission. They’re related. They’re not the same. And leaders need both, on purpose.

    I’ve worn both hats, sometimes in the same week. Here’s how I separate them, and why the separation matters.

    Strategic communications vs. marketing: the short version

    Marketing is about driving action from a defined audience: buy, donate, register, enroll, volunteer or apply. It’s measured by response and conversion.

    Strategic communications is about building and protecting understanding, trust and reputation across all of an organization’s stakeholders: staff, board, funders, partners, media, regulators and the community. It’s measured by alignment, reputation and how well the organization holds up under pressure.

    A simple way to hold the difference:

    • Marketing asks: “How do we get this audience to take this action?”
    • Strategic communications asks: “What do all of our stakeholders need to understand and believe about us, and how do we keep that true over time?”

    Marketing sells the program. Strategic communications makes sure the organization behind it is credible enough to sell.

    Where they overlap (and where they collide)

    They share a lot of tools: writing, design, social media, video and the website. That’s why they get lumped together, and why the same person often produces both.

    The collisions happen when the goals compete. A few examples:

    • Marketing wants a bold, urgent campaign. Communications knows a sensitive partner conversation is underway and the wrong tone could cause damage.
    • Communications wants a careful, measured statement on a hard issue. Marketing knows the audience will scroll right past it.
    • Marketing wants to feature a client’s story to boost a fundraising push. Communications is weighing that person’s privacy and dignity.

    None of those are wrong instincts. They just need someone with the authority and context to weigh them. When nobody owns that call, the loudest deadline wins.

    Who should make the call

    In most organizations, the tie-breaker should be whoever is accountable for reputation, usually the communications lead working directly with the executive director or CEO. That doesn’t mean communications always wins. It means the person deciding can see the whole picture, not just this week’s campaign.

    A quick gut check I use before anything sensitive goes out:

    • Would we be comfortable if a funder, a client and a reporter all saw this on the same day?
    • Does it match what we’ve already told staff and the board?
    • If it’s misread, do we have a plan for the follow-up?
    • Is the person or community being featured better off, or just more visible?

    If any answer feels shaky, slow down. A campaign can usually wait a day. Trust takes much longer to rebuild.

    Why leaders need both

    Marketing without strategic communications

    You get activity without alignment. Campaigns perform, but the story drifts. Staff hear about new initiatives on social media first. A press inquiry lands and nobody knows who answers it. The brand looks polished on the outside and feels confusing on the inside.

    Strategic communications without marketing

    You get alignment without growth. Everyone understands the mission, the board is well informed and the statements are careful. But nobody new hears about you. Enrollment, donations or sales stay flat because nobody is asking audiences to act.

    Both, working together

    You get a clear story that holds up under pressure, and campaigns that move people because they’re built on that story. That’s the goal.

    When I was Director of Communications, Technology and Data at Tri-County Action Program, a big part of the job was advising the executive team and the Board. That’s strategic communications: deciding what stakeholders needed to understand, in what order and from whom. I finished a rebrand already underway there, and the social, newsletter and website work I led grew engagement across every channel. That was the marketing side doing its job on top of a clearer story.

    Today, as Marketing Specialist at Catholic Charities of the Diocese of St. Cloud, I spend real time on work that never shows up in a campaign report: stakeholder surveys, CRM planning, how client stories are told and how internal teams talk about the work. Those choices shape what the marketing can credibly say.

    How to set up both on a small team

    You don’t need two departments. You need two clear jobs, even if one person holds both. Here’s how I’d set it up:

    1. Write down the core narrative. Three to five sentences on who you are, why you matter and what’s changing. Both disciplines draw from it. If you’ve never pressure-tested yours, a one-week brand audit is a good place to start.
    2. Map stakeholders, not just audiences. Customers and donors are audiences. Staff, board, funders, partners and the community are stakeholders. List what each group needs to know and who tells them.
    3. Give communications a seat with leadership. The person responsible for reputation needs to hear about decisions before they’re announced, not after.
    4. Set a simple escalation rule. Decide in advance which topics get communications review before anything goes out. Safety, finances, legal matters, partnerships and clients’ personal stories are a good starting list.
    5. Measure each one honestly. Track conversions and reach for marketing. Track internal understanding, stakeholder feedback, media tone and issue response time for communications.
    6. Plan on one calendar. Campaign launches and major announcements should live in the same place, so neither side surprises the other.

    How to tell which one you need right now

    If you’re a leader deciding where to invest next, ask yourself:

    • Are our campaigns performing, but our staff and board are confused? Invest in strategic communications.
    • Is our story clear, but our growth is flat? Invest in marketing.
    • Are we weak at both? Start with communications. A clear story makes every marketing dollar work harder.

    Then look for someone who can do both and knows the difference. That person is rarer than they should be. You can read more about my background in strategic communications and marketing on the About page.

    Key takeaways

    • Marketing drives action from defined audiences. Strategic communications builds understanding and trust across all stakeholders.
    • They share tools but have different goals, and those goals sometimes collide.
    • Someone with authority and context needs to own the tradeoffs.
    • Small teams can run both with a core narrative, a stakeholder map, an escalation rule and a shared calendar.
    • If you’re weak at both, start with communications.

    Frequently asked questions

    What is the difference between strategic communications and marketing?

    Marketing focuses on persuading specific audiences to take an action, such as buying, donating or enrolling. Strategic communications focuses on building understanding, trust and reputation with all stakeholders, including staff, board, partners, media and the community.

    Can one person handle strategic communications and marketing?

    Yes. On many small teams, one person does both. It works best when that person has access to leadership decisions, a written core narrative and clear rules about which topics need extra review before anything goes public.

    Which should an organization invest in first?

    If the organization’s story is unclear or inconsistent, invest in strategic communications first. A clear, credible narrative makes marketing campaigns more effective and less risky.

    / Work with Brittany

    Need someone who can protect your reputation and still grow your audience?

    Hiring a marketing leader or need a hands-on partner for a project? See how we can work together or send me a note.

  • Brand Audit Checklist: How to Run a Brand Audit in One Week

    You can usually tell a brand needs an audit before anyone says the word. There are three versions of the logo in the shared drive. The website says one thing, the brochure says another and the social bios say a third. Ask five staff members what the organization does and you’ll hear five answers.

    None of that is a disaster. It’s drift, and every brand drifts. A brand audit checklist turns that vague sense of “something’s off” into a specific list of fixes. It also doesn’t need a full quarter and a consultant’s retainer. With focus and a clear plan, you can run a useful audit in one week.

    Here’s the checklist I use, day by day.

    What a brand audit is (and what it isn’t)

    A brand audit is an honest look at how your brand shows up in the world compared with how you intend it to show up. That’s it. You’re measuring the gap between the brand you describe in meetings and the brand people actually experience.

    It is not a rebrand. Most audits end with a list of repairs, not a new logo. Sometimes the findings point to a bigger change, and that’s fine, but walk in assuming you’re fixing, not replacing. It keeps everyone calmer and the work more honest.

    It also isn’t just a design critique. Visual consistency matters, but the most expensive brand problems are usually about message and experience: what you say, who you say it to and whether the experience matches the promise.

    Before you start: gather your materials

    Spend an hour before Day 1 pulling these together. It saves you from scavenger hunts later.

    • Your current brand guidelines, if they exist, and the date they were last updated
    • Master logo files, plus any color, font and template files
    • The 10 to 20 materials people use most: brochures, one-pagers, slide decks, email templates, signage and forms
    • Admin or view access to your website, social accounts, Google Analytics and Search Console
    • A shared spreadsheet with columns for touchpoint, owner, audience, issue, impact, effort and fix
    • Two or three people willing to give you 20 minutes of candid feedback

    Set your scope, too. One brand, its main audiences and its main channels. If you have sub-brands or programs, note them, but audit the parent brand first.

    The one-week brand audit checklist

    Day 1: Inventory every touchpoint

    You can’t audit what you can’t see. Today is about finding everything.

    • List every place your brand appears: website, social profiles, email, print, signage, vehicles, apparel, event materials, partner websites, directories and review sites.
    • Search your organization’s name and note what shows up on the first page of results.
    • Check your Google Business Profile and other listings for old logos, addresses and phone numbers.
    • Note who owns each touchpoint. Orphaned touchpoints are where drift lives.

    By the end of Day 1, your spreadsheet should feel uncomfortably long. That’s normal.

    Day 2: Check visual consistency

    Now lay it all out side by side. Physically, if you can. Print the top materials and tape them to a wall. Patterns jump out fast.

    • Is the logo current, correctly proportioned and given enough space?
    • Are colors consistent, or are there five slightly different blues?
    • Are fonts consistent across print, web and slides?
    • Do photos feel like they belong to the same organization? Are they real, current and representative?
    • Are templates being used, or is everyone building from scratch?

    That last one matters more than people think. If staff are building from scratch, the problem usually isn’t discipline. It’s access. Give people good templates and most consistency problems shrink on their own.

    Day 3: Audit messaging and voice

    Read everything out loud. Seriously. Your ear catches what your eye skips.

    • Does your mission or positioning statement appear the same way everywhere?
    • Is there one clear, plain-language description of what you do that fits in a sentence?
    • Does the voice match from website to email to social, or does it change depending on who wrote it?
    • Is the language written for your audience or for your internal org chart? Look for jargon, acronyms and program names nobody outside the building understands.
    • Do your calls to action ask people to do something specific?

    Flag every place where a stranger would be confused. Those are your highest-value fixes.

    Day 4: Listen to audiences and look at the data

    Now find out how the brand is received, not just how it’s presented.

    • Ask two or three staff, board members or customers, “How would you describe us to a friend?” Write down their exact words.
    • Read your reviews, comments and messages from the past six months. Look for patterns, good and bad.
    • Check Google Analytics for top landing pages, where visitors come from and which key pages people leave quickly.
    • Check Search Console for the search terms people use to find you. They’re often very different from the words you use to describe yourself.
    • Compare social engagement across platforms. Where does your audience actually respond?

    The gap between how people describe you and how you describe yourself is often the most useful finding in the whole audit.

    Day 5: Score, prioritize and present

    Don’t hand leadership a spreadsheet with 140 rows. Hand them a decision. The next section shows how.

    How to score what you find

    Give every issue two scores from 1 to 3:

    1. Impact: How much does this confuse or turn off your audience? A wrong phone number on your top listing is a 3. A slightly off shade of blue on an internal form is a 1.
    2. Effort: How hard is it to fix? Updating a social bio is a 1. Rebuilding the website is a 3.

    Then sort. High impact, low effort goes first. That’s your quick-win list, and you can often knock most of it out in the next two weeks. High impact, high effort becomes your project list for the next quarter or year. Low impact, high effort goes on a “someday” list, and that’s okay.

    Present it on one page: what you found, the three biggest themes, the quick wins already underway and the two or three projects you recommend. Leaders say yes faster when they can see the path.

    What to do after the audit

    An audit that sits in a folder is just an expensive opinion. A few things keep the momentum going:

    • Fix the quick wins immediately. Visible progress builds trust for the bigger asks.
    • Update or create your brand guidelines. Keep them short. A few pages people actually read beat a 60-page PDF nobody opens.
    • Build templates for the things people make most often. This is the single best defense against future drift.
    • Organize your files. A clean, shared home for logos, photos and templates prevents half of your Day 2 problems.
    • Schedule the next audit. A lighter version once a year keeps drift from building up again.

    Brand consistency also depends on the people doing the work. If one person covers brand, social, web and video, they need range to hold it all together. I wrote more about that in why t-shaped marketers fit small teams so well. If you want to see what this kind of cleanup looks like in practice, browse my brand and marketing work.

    Key takeaways

    • A brand audit measures the gap between how you intend to show up and how people experience you.
    • Gather materials and set scope before Day 1 so the week stays focused.
    • Work through touchpoints, visuals, messaging and audience perception, one per day.
    • Score each issue on impact and effort, then lead with quick wins.
    • Prevent future drift with short guidelines, good templates and organized files.

    Frequently asked questions

    What should a brand audit checklist include?

    A brand audit checklist should cover every touchpoint, visual consistency, messaging and voice, audience perception and performance data. Log each issue with an owner, an impact score, an effort score and a recommended fix.

    How long does a brand audit take?

    A focused brand audit for a small or mid-sized organization can be done in about one week. Larger organizations with many sub-brands or locations may need several weeks, but the same steps apply.

    How often should you do a brand audit?

    Once a year is a good rhythm for a light audit, plus a deeper one before any major rebrand, merger, new strategic plan or website redesign.

    / Work with Brittany

    Want a clear-eyed look at how your brand is really showing up?

    Hiring a marketing leader or need a hands-on partner for a project? See how we can work together or send me a note.

  • The T-Shaped Marketer: Why Breadth Plus Depth Wins

    Most marketing job descriptions I read are really three jobs stapled together. Brand, social, video, web, analytics and maybe “some CRM work.” Hiring managers know it’s a lot. They post it anyway, because that’s the work.

    The people who thrive in those roles aren’t generalists who dabble, and they aren’t specialists who refuse to touch anything outside their lane. They’re t-shaped marketers: broad enough to do the work across channels, deep enough in one or two areas to set direction. After 10+ years in marketing, I’m convinced the t-shaped marketer is the most useful person on a modern team, especially a small one.

    Here’s what that shape looks like, why it works, and how to build it or hire for it.

    What a t-shaped marketer actually is

    Picture the letter T. The horizontal bar is breadth: the range of skills you can pick up and use competently. The vertical bar is depth: the one or two disciplines where you’re the person others come to for judgment, not just execution.

    The idea isn’t new. Versions of it have floated around management and design circles for decades. But marketing has changed enough that it deserves a fresh look.

    A few distinctions matter:

    • Breadth is not dabbling. You should be able to ship real work across the bar, not just talk about it. If video is on your resume, you should be able to plan a shoot and cut a usable piece.
    • Depth is not a job title. It’s where your judgment is trusted when the stakes are high and the answer isn’t obvious.
    • The bars connect. The value lives in the overlap. A strategist who understands how a video gets made writes better briefs. An analyst who has built a website asks better questions about traffic.

    Why breadth matters on small teams

    On a small team, nobody hands you a tidy lane. Monday is a board report. Tuesday is a broken donation form. Wednesday is a photo shoot. Thursday someone needs a flyer by noon, and Friday you’re explaining to leadership why the newsletter open rate dipped.

    Breadth is what keeps that week from falling apart. Three practical reasons:

    1. Fewer handoffs. Every handoff is a chance for the idea to get diluted, delayed or lost. When one person can write the copy, design the graphic and schedule the post, the work stays coherent.
    2. Better briefs when you do outsource. You don’t have to be the best videographer in the state to hire one well. But you do need to know what a shot list is, how long editing really takes and what “make it pop” will cost you.
    3. Fewer vendor surprises. If you understand how a website is built, nobody can tell you a simple change requires a six-week project without you raising an eyebrow.

    I learned this early. My web design and development background means I don’t just use tools like WordPress, HTML and Figma. I can build with them. That changes the conversation with developers, agencies and IT teams. I’m not asking for magic. I’m asking for specific things.

    Why depth keeps breadth from turning into chaos

    Here’s the hard truth about pure generalists: they get busy, not better. Without a deep core, a broad marketer ends up as the department’s order-taker. Lots of output. Very little direction.

    Depth is what gives breadth a point of view. It’s the part of the T that asks “Should we do this at all?” before anyone asks “How fast can we do this?”

    Depth shows up in moments like these:

    • Leadership wants to post a reaction to a news story, and you know whether that helps or hurts the organization’s reputation.
    • The dashboard says traffic is up, and you know whether that traffic actually matters.
    • Someone wants AI to write every social post, and you know where it saves time and where it creates risk.

    Breadth gets the work done. Depth makes sure it’s the right work.

    My T, as a working example

    I’ll use myself here, because it’s the example I know best and it shows how the shape plays out in real jobs.

    The horizontal bar

    Content creation, branding, design, digital assets, social media, photography, videography, web and marketing technology. I’ve used all of these across nonprofit, agency and corporate roles. At Buyers Edge Platform, that breadth let me launch a corporate videography service line that brought in more than $60K in its first year, and lead a company-wide digital asset management rollout. Neither was purely a “video person” project or a “systems person” project. They were both.

    The vertical bar

    Strategic communications, analytics and AI. This is where I set direction. At Tri-County Action Program, I advised the executive team and the Board, built a five-year technology plan that identified $350K in savings, led a six-month transition to outsourced IT and finished a rebrand already underway. That’s depth doing its job: deciding what matters, then using breadth to deliver it.

    AI sits in my vertical bar, but I treat it as one tool among many. It’s useful when you know what good looks like. It’s risky when you don’t. That’s exactly why depth matters.

    If you want the longer version, my background and experience are on the About page.

    How to build (or hire) a t-shaped marketer

    If you’re building your own T

    You don’t build a T by collecting certifications at random. You build it on purpose. Here’s what I’d recommend to any marketer five or ten years in:

    1. Map your current shape honestly. List every skill you use. Mark each one “I can teach this,” “I can ship this” or “I can talk about this.” Only the first two count.
    2. Pick your vertical bar. Choose one or two disciplines where you want leaders to trust your judgment. Pick based on what you love and what organizations struggle to find, not what’s trendy this quarter.
    3. Fill the gaps that slow you down. Look at your last six months. Where did you wait on someone else, or ship something weaker because you didn’t know the craft? That’s your next horizontal skill.
    4. Build, don’t just use. Make a landing page. Set up a dashboard. Edit a short video start to finish. Building teaches you where the real constraints are.
    5. Back your depth with formal learning where it counts. I’m working toward a B.A. in Integrated Studies at St. Cloud State University (online, expected spring 2028), focused on strategic communications, business economics and marketing, because I wanted my vertical bar backed by more than experience.
    6. Show the connections. In interviews and reviews, don’t just list skills. Explain how one made you better at another.

    If you’re hiring one

    A resume full of tool names won’t tell you much. Ask questions that reveal both bars:

    • “Walk me through a project where you did the strategy and the execution. What would have gone differently if you’d only owned one of those?”
    • “What’s something you can build yourself that most marketers have to outsource?”
    • “Where do people come to you for a judgment call, not a deliverable?”
    • “Tell me about a time you told leadership not to do something. What happened?”

    Look for people who can show you the work, explain the reasoning and admit what they’d hand off. A good t-shaped marketer knows where their bar ends. You can see how that looks in practice in my portfolio of marketing work.

    Key takeaways

    • A t-shaped marketer pairs real breadth across channels with deep expertise in one or two areas.
    • Breadth cuts handoffs, improves briefs and protects you from vendor surprises.
    • Depth gives the work direction, so a broad marketer doesn’t become an order-taker.
    • Build your T on purpose: map it, pick your depth, fill the gaps that slow you down and build things.
    • When hiring, ask for judgment calls, not just tool lists.

    Frequently asked questions

    What is a t-shaped marketer?

    A t-shaped marketer has working skills across many marketing disciplines, such as content, design, social, video and web, plus deep expertise in one or two areas, such as strategy or analytics. The breadth handles execution. The depth sets direction.

    Is it better to be a specialist or a generalist in marketing?

    For most small and mid-sized teams, neither extreme is ideal. Specialists can struggle when the job spans many channels, and pure generalists can lack the judgment to set direction. The t-shaped model combines both.

    How do I become a t-shaped marketer?

    Map the skills you can actually ship, choose one or two areas to go deep in, and add new skills based on where you get stuck most often. Building real projects teaches faster than collecting certificates.

    / Work with Brittany

    Need a marketer who can set the strategy and still build the thing?

    Hiring a marketing leader or need a hands-on partner for a project? See how we can work together or send me a note.