Kidpower International
Organization
Kidpower Teenpower Fullpower International (Kidpower) teaches people of all ages and abilities how to stay safe, act wisely, and believe in themselves. Their programs provide positive prevention strategies and teach skills to protect children and teens from bullying, violence, and abuse. Reviews of their programs by academics and professionals have been uniformly positive. For twenty-five years, Kidpower has served over three million children, teens, and adults through in-person workshops and educational resources.
Situation
Kidpower feels that its programs are becoming even more relevant with the widespread publicity concerning bullying, child abuse, and abduction attempts. Kidpower would like to be more aggressive in marketing, but lack the expertise to effectively market its publications, leverage social media, and generate favorable publicity. The organization is looking for ways to monetize their extensive publications library while bringing the safety skills they teach to a larger audience. They are particularly interested in embedding their materials and philosophy into schools and organizations serving their target markets, such as 4H or the Girl Scouts. They are also considering the possibility of licensing or franchising learning packages to expand the delivery system.
Project Objectives
Kidpower asked for an ACT team to assist in evaluating ways to increase revenues from its products and educational resources distinct from grants and classroom/workshop fees in order to diversify its funding.
Project Overview
The ACT team’s project consisted of the following steps:
- A benchmark analysis of organizations with a mission, products, and/or operating model similar to Kidpower to help inform a marketing approach that Kidpower can utilize to assess its opportunities
- An in-depth review of Kidpower’s existing products, book sales, website, and other revenue-generating activities
- The application of the marketing approach to examine opportunities to increase book sales, monetize the use of Kidpower educational resources and other intellectual property on the Kidpower website, increase licensing revenue, and add sponsorship as a source of non-core revenue
Key Recommendations
- Create a robust sponsorship/partnership program that has:
- clear and understandable definitions and objectives for “sponsor” and “partner,”
- an external emphasis on public relations and image building,
- the Board taking a lead role in identifying and engaging professional and business peers as potential sponsor/partners and organizing special events,
- funding for staff and other resources necessary to build and manage such programs,
- and incorporated website changes necessary to support such an external marketing focus.
- Redesign website
- Convert from a focus on information sharing to a focus on sales and marketing
- Develop a site map that gets to both core and non-core products as well as sponsor/partner information using consistent narratives with as few clicks as possible
- Collect the data necessary to assess and evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the website and its compliance with site objectives
- Review book and content sales
- Implement upgrades to website proposed by project team to provide sales focus and collection of sales data
- Analyze the competitiveness of the current content portfolio
- Streamline book and content library to provide marketing focus on a few high interest documents which can promote the remainder of the library
- If website redesign results in significant increase in activity and retention, perform business analysis to determine the value of implementing a paid membership program
- Pursue licensing agreements only when opportunities present themselves from:
- an existing sponsor/partner relationship,
- or an inquiry from another organization
- Begin planning for Kidpower 2.0
- Develop communications capabilities utilizing all forms of social media to attract, identify, track, and follow up with potential and existing customers
- Develop and implement a strategic plan to add the digital online delivery of all educational services and products to remote customers (both groups and individuals)
- Determine how to restructure the workshop content to preserve the value of Kidpower’s experiential, practical training as it transitions a portion of its services to online delivery
Key Conclusions
- Non-core earned revenue is not likely to increase materially without substantial investments in marketing and website redesign. There is no easy fix, but such investments have the potential for a positive impact on the sale and delivery of Kidpower products and services.
- The sale of current library content on either an individual report or subscription basis is particularly problematic. There is no evidence that either would succeed in this market.
- Licensing is not likely to provide an opportunity for measurable revenue.
- Sponsorships/partnerships have significant potential to increase donations and public awareness of Kidpower.
- Website improvements are critical to maintain core program success, improve brand, build sponsor/partner relationships, and maintain and hopefully increase book and content sales.
- Competition is moving to the online delivery of training programs as it seeks to expand its geographical and consumer reach. Kidpower will also have to develop this capability in order to protect its existing program revenue and provide for core and non-core revenue growth.
Final Report Outline
- Benchmark analysis
- Review of Kidpower
- What this means for Kidpower
- Marketing approach
- Recommendations