Hi, my name is Terry. I was looking for some assistance in marketing strategies, and Ed was really helpful — giving some great ideas on how we can promote our program and build brand awareness. I would definitely recommend giving him a call. He's done a really nice job helping me out.
Thank you so much for your help with this. I'm going to jump right into some of these ideas now while they're still fresh in my mind.
https://youtu.be/MNM3fOJJxOQ?si=sWBlEFfpiRVnuIJ9
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| Category | Strategic Detail |
|---|---|
| Client Name | Teresa (Terry) McCloskey |
| Industry | Nonprofit Healthcare / Maternal & Child Health |
| The Challenge | The Visibility Paradox: An established 24-year-old program referred to as "that nurse program" by its own funders; a $5,000 budget bias toward high-cost video ($3,600) with minimal distribution. |
| The Solution | Reallocation of budget to distribution testing, architecting an email-first nurture system, and implementing a "Pain Point" content framework using AI. |
| Certifications | HubSpot Inbound & Content (Nurture Loops), Meta Blueprint (Audience Targeting), Google Analytics (Outcome Tracking), HubSpot Email Marketing. |
| The Impact | Shifted from "Haphazard Posting" to a sustainable system. Reclaimed 10+ hours of "Staff Time" monthly via an evergreen recycling strategy. |
| The Tech | Meta Business Suite, ChatGPT (Pain Point Research), Canva (Design Templates), Google Ad Grant ($10k/month potential). |
| The Results & ROI | Transitioned from a "Transactional" service model to a "Community" model, building a permission-based audience that extends reach beyond pregnancy. |
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Teresa faced a brand awareness crisis disguised as a marketing problem. After 24 years serving Wyoming County, Nurse Family Partnership remained virtually invisible—even to the county commissioners who funded it.
"We've been in our county for about 24 years, and even our commissioners—we're a local government program—even our commissioners don't really know what our actual name is," Teresa explained. "They refer to us as 'that nurse program, what's that nurse program?' So after 20-some years, we're still struggling to get them to recognize the name and what we do exactly."
This wasn't a small nonprofit finding its footing. This was an established program with proven impact, free services, and government backing—invisible because it had never invested in systematic marketing.
The Name Recognition Gap:
Teresa referenced two programs everyone knows: "Everybody knows what WIC is, whether they're on WIC or not. Everybody knows what that D.A.R.E. program is that goes through the schools. But I would like to have some kind of recognition like that so that when you say it, somebody knows it. And when they're pregnant, they think, 'Oh, I should call them.'"
This was the standard Teresa measured against—programs so well-known they'd become cultural shorthand. Nurse Family Partnership, despite 24 years of operation, hadn't achieved fraction of that recognition.
The Target Audience Disconnect:
Teresa needed to reach women ages 15-40 (childbearing years) in Tunkhannock and surrounding Wyoming County. But her current marketing consisted of:
"I want to do it in a more thoughtful way, a more organized way, instead of the haphazard way that things seem to happen right now," Teresa admitted.
The $5,000 Grant Allocation Dilemma:
Teresa had secured a small grant—$5,000 for marketing. A media production company quoted $3,600 for a 30-second video PSA featuring live shoots with client testimonials, professional voiceovers, and multi-format editing.
This left $1,400 for "media buy"—distributing the video. Teresa envisioned running it on local TV stations and social media platforms, but had no framework for evaluating whether this budget allocation maximized impact or simply felt impressive because "professional video."
The Platform Confusion:
"A lot of young folks aren't using Facebook anymore, right?" Teresa said. "I need to look at what some of the other options are for reaching that age group. Is YouTube something? What is the best place to reach women between 15 and 40? Is it TikTok? What's the hot thing that could be the place where I should put some of our efforts?"
This revealed the underlying problem: Teresa knew she needed multi-platform presence but had no strategic framework for prioritizing platforms, allocating budget, or creating platform-appropriate content.
The Government Program Perception Problem:
Adding complexity, Nurse Family Partnership operated as local government (housed there because "that's where the grant landed"), but Teresa actively downplayed government affiliation to avoid deterring families.
"We try not to spread the word too much that we're part of local government, only because that just happens to be where our grant is," she explained. "I don't want people to feel like we're the government coming in and spying on them or children and youth spying on them."
This created messaging tension: how do you build institutional credibility without triggering government skepticism?
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I redirected Teresa's marketing strategy away from expensive video production toward sustainable, community-driven digital infrastructure that would generate ongoing visibility rather than a single 30-second ad campaign.
Teresa's initial plan allocated 72% of budget ($3,600) to video production, leaving only 28% ($1,400) for actually getting that video seen. I challenged this allocation during our consultation.
The Cost-Benefit Analysis:
"How much of the budget do you think will go into the video itself?" I asked.
"The quote I got was $3,600," Teresa replied.
"For 30 seconds?" I responded, surprised.
"Is that a lot? Too much? Too little?" Teresa asked, revealing she had no benchmark for evaluating the quote.
The DIY Alternative:
"Can't you have the moms pick up their cell phone, give them a script, and have them read that out, then just use those in the commercials?" I suggested. "I'm just trying to save your costs."
"I just want to make sure it's looking professional," Teresa countered. "I don't know if it would if we did that. They're going to do voiceovers and put it all together. And there's a matter of how much time I have and having knowledge of the software."
This was the classic nonprofit trap: conflating "professional" with "expensive third-party production" rather than "well-executed with available tools." I didn't push the DIY route further (Teresa had legitimate capacity constraints), but planted the seed that production costs could be flexible.
The Redirect to Distribution:
"I think you have about $1,400 left, roughly, after the video," I calculated. "I would just put that into Facebook ads—Facebook and Instagram ads—as well as maybe try out TikTok ads. You want to test out with those videos, test out with different offers."
This reframed the grant: instead of "make expensive video, hope it works," the strategy became "test multiple ad variations across platforms, learn what resonates, optimize."
Rather than directing ads to service sign-up (transactional, one-time conversion), I recommended building an email list as the primary conversion goal.
The Email-First Strategy:
"If I were you, I would probably just link them to your newsletter," I advised. "Once you have their email, you can always market back to them. Chances are moms are going to have other kids in the future, they're going to recommend to fellow moms, and they're also going to stay connected as they go through the journey of motherhood."
Why Email Trumps Immediate Service Sign-Up:
"The journey of motherhood isn't linear—you don't just give birth and that's it," I explained. "You give birth, you raise the child. You want to be in touch with people who have kids at nine years old, eight years old, seven years old—it's all a journey and all of them want to connect."
This addressed Teresa's stated goal: "Maybe somebody's not pregnant now, but when they find out six months from now that they are—or their wife is, or their daughter is—they think, 'Oh, we should call them' because they've heard of us."
Email list allows nurture. Facebook post seen once, forgotten. Email stays in inbox, gets forwarded, builds familiarity over time.
The Contact Form Strategy:
I outlined a strategic contact form design capturing qualification data, not just contact info:
"That's how you're going to collect the information you need when you run the ads," I explained. "From there on, you're going to focus on your email list to build up on that while also building up on social media."
According to Campaign Monitor's nonprofit email benchmarking data, email generates $42 ROI for every $1 spent—far exceeding paid social media's typical $2-5 ROI. For resource-constrained nonprofits, email list building isn't optional; it's strategic necessity.
Teresa's current social media felt haphazard because she had no content framework. I introduced pain point-driven content strategy using ChatGPT as ideation tool.
The Pain Point Framework:
"I will open up ChatGPT, give it your demographics, and ask it to define about 10 to 15 pain points that they have," I explained. "You might find maybe something around health, something around loneliness, maybe something around the mothers themselves—like you put on some weight, how do you deal with that, it affects your self-esteem."
Cross-Demographic Pain Point Mapping:
"Expand it across demographics," I continued. "A mom who is maybe 38, 40 is very different from a mom in her 20s versus a teen mom who is navigating school as well as motherhood. You want to define it across demographics in terms of age and also across the pain points. That's how you're going to create content."
Example Pain Point Categories:
"That covers everything for content because you just want to talk on these pain points and people are going to resonate," I said.
This gave Teresa systematic content creation: instead of "what should I post?" becoming weekly crisis, she'd have 10-15 pain point themes rotating across 3-5 demographic segments—generating 30-75 content ideas from single ChatGPT session.
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