Literacy Basics - Community Literacy of Ontario

The Wants and Needs of Literacy Agencies

If you have any experience of marketing, you will know that wants and needs play an important role in determining the most effective marketing strategies. In designing this marketing module, Community Literacy of Ontario is responding to the wants of its members who requested more marketing tools and strategies. Here are some of the needs we face as literacy agencies that want to better market our programs.

We need to learn to think marketing before anything else

For many agencies, marketing is a modest line in the budget both in terms of time and money. In reality, our marketing plan should come before budgeting and determine how we will expend our resources. Planning our marketing guarantees a more efficient use of resources and a more targeted, effective program.

We need to connect marketing with our other strategic endeavours

Marketing, like Continuous Improvement Performance Management System (CIPMS) and strategic planning, is a way of being more focused and intentional about things we already do. Marketing is strategic thinking that targets our efforts for optimal outcomes for our agencies.

We need to know what we are doing right and build on it

Community Literacy of Ontario's marketing research shows that community-based agencies are using innovative outreach and promotions to connect with new learners and involve our communities. Nonetheless, business and non-profit marketers can teach us more about the methods we use and increase their value.

We need tools to help us

It is all very well to be ready and willing to market our agencies, but how do we go about it? The user-friendly marketing circle introduced in this online training module is a no-jargon and commonsense framework for our literacy programs. This simple and straightforward tool will help us to plan our marketing strategies for our agency's specific markets.

We need to practise our marketing skills

Thinking “marketing first” takes practice. This module contains examples and tools that will help you to see how marketing is a learned skill that is highly relevant to what we do.

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The Marketing Challenge

Collectively, adult literacy in Ontario faces many challenges. We are spread too thin and dragged in too many directions. With recent changes that find us rubbing shoulders with employment agencies, we are re-assessing our role and purpose in the literacy field and in our communities.

It is no longer enough to say that we offer adult literacy. We need to unpack this message so that our community understands that we are meeting their vital needs and wants. Marketing can achieve this.

Prospective learners who want to move on to further training and education or employment do not always see our purpose in this process. They have very specific needs and goals we can help them to meet if we can only get them through our doors. Marketing can do this.

Community literacy sometimes finds itself in an isolated position. We do not have a larger organization to house, support and identify us. In order to survive and flourish, we form relationships and partnerships within our communities. We can forge meaningful relationships and make ourselves known to the wider community through marketing.

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