Episode 109 | Marketing Mission-Driven Businesses with Celina Shands

EPISODE 109

Marketing Mission-Driven Businesses

With Celina Shands

When you’re running a mission-driven business, marketing is about more than just landing new clients–it’s about getting your message out to more people. Celina Shands is an expert at helping her clients tell their brand story and communicate their value to potential customers, partners, and funders.

As CEO of Full Capacity Marketing, Celina is the 2017 Marketing CEO of the Year in the Pacific Coast USA, a former American Marketing Association Marketer of the Year, and a two-time Women Who Mean Business finalist. For the past 25 years, she’s been a strong advocate for workforce education and economic development missions.

As a communications expert, Celina has helped more than 500 workforce development and K-12/post-secondary education organizations build high-performing outreach campaigns that empower vulnerable populations, students and job seekers to embrace their potential.

Finding the Best Marketing Strategy for Your Business

After 25+ years experience in workforce development and marketing, Celina says she still follows the same process with all of her agency clients.

The first step is to sit down and define what problem the business is trying to solve in the market and what their unique selling proposition is. From there, the agency performs market research to understand the psychographics of the client’s target audience. Customers are inundated with marketing messages so it’s essential to use data to cut through the nose.

The last step is to add outreach strategies, which may involve a new website with search engine optimization (SEO), paid ads, or PR. The best strategy will depend on where your ideal client spends their time online.

Relationship-Building and Word-of-Mouth

Born and raised in North Carolina, Celina approaches business like a true southerner by putting relationships first. Up to 97% of her agency clients come from word-of-mouth referrals.

From the early days of her business, Celina has prioritized her sense of mission and helping others. She built her network through email outreach, phone calls, and speaking at conferences. To this day, the company has never run an advertising campaign. Instead, Celina shares information freely with her audience through email newsletters, blogs, and ebooks. This educational approach has resulted in long-term, repeat customers–many of whom have become like family.

Tips for Running a Remote Team

Celina’s agency is fully remote and has been from the beginning–something she sees as an inherent advantage. Not only does working remotely save on overhead costs, but it also promotes greater communication between team members. Celina’s team works across several different time zones, but she’s flexible on when her employees work, as long as they continue to deliver results.

Although these days there are many tools for remote work, technology alone isn’t enough to ensure the success of your virtual team. It’s equally as important for the CEO to set the tone and culture. You need to have systems and processes in place, and communicate clear expectations at the start of every project. Establishing key milestones will help keep everyone on track, and your team will appreciate having the freedom to work on their own schedule.

Enjoy this episode with CEO and Marketing Expert Celina Shands…

Quotes

“The reason why we’re called Full Capacity Marketing is because I want each of our clients to be at full capacity long after our contract concludes.”

“If you position yourself as a partner versus a vendor, you have more opportunities that come in. That’s why we do things like ebooks, teaching, and things of that nature. Whether you work with us or not, we want you to succeed, especially in those missions.”

“I can’t say we’ve had all this success intentionally. We set the course as best as possible and then go with the flow and see what opportunities come up.”

“PR strategies are fantastic for entrepreneurs–getting them out there, getting their voice, and having a connection in the community.”

“How does your business not only solve a problem, but connect to a bigger mission that is of value and relevance in the community or the markets that you serve?”

“My grandma always said, ‘No one can argue with results.’”

“There’s room for everybody. It’s not a competitive thing, even though you’re trying to be unique in your own way. It’s really about being authentic.”