The goal of marketing your project is to raise awareness and build strong stakeholder support by saying how your project is unique. The use of a distinctive name or an image to promote public awareness of your work is called branding.
 
The Five Building Blocks to branding and marketing your project are:

• What - What the project will do?
• How - How the project will do this?
• Why - Why is the project important?
• When - When will the project start and end?
• Who - Who is the project target?

With this information, you can develop a simple project marketing plan and strategies to market it. Some of the key actions of the plan include:

• Create a logo embodying the project, make it simple and visually memorable.  Use it consistently in all the project materials. You may choose an acronym derived from the name of the project to help simplify communications.
• Develop the core message or “story” of the project, describing how the goals of the project will address the needs of the beneficiaries.
• Spread awareness about the project: Early in the life of the project, identify the channels to spread information about the project.
• Create a website for outreach and development and to publicize the project efforts to donors and stakeholders.
• Develop a video or documentary highlighting the project work and showcase it to the local community.
• Publish Project newsletters.  Meant for marketing purposes, a newsletter should always focus on positive news.

Marketing the project is an integrated communications-based process through which beneficiaries, partners, local authorities, and communities discover that existing needs and wants may be satisfied by the products and services of the project. Marketing the project helps increase its visibility among other initiatives in the community, particularly when most communities may be receiving support from various organizations; therefore, projects compete for attention. By properly marketing the benefits of the project, the community will have better information to make decisions.

A critical element of the marketing plan is the development of a compelling simple story describing the goals of the project in a way that will get people excited about it as it sounds relevant to them, and they will be able to easily remember it.  This message will attract stakeholders to the project; but if the story is not appealing, people won't get involved. A good story depicting a shared purpose attracts people who share this vision and are willing to work to make it real. 

Marketing is not a one-time event, but a continuous effort. A common mistake is to make short marketing efforts, rather than sustainable marketing. Marketing for the long-term and consistently engaging people with the project means that the project is always seeking ways to connect with its stakeholders all the time and not only at the start of the project. Repeated and effective marketing ensures that the project remains in the minds of its intended beneficiaries. This is the long run that would help in establishing trust. Trust is created over a long period of time, and marketing is an effective way of establishing it. As a final step, monitor the effectiveness of the marketing plan, make appropriate changes, and adjust as necessary to improve the impact of the message.

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