Cause marketing for startups
Enjoy the benefits of cause marketing without hurting your economics!
What's Cause Marketing?
American Express used the term in 1983 to describe its campaign to raise money for the Statue of Liberty’s restoration. American Express donated one cent to the restoration every time someone used its charge card. As a result, the Restoration Fund raised over $1.7 million and American Express card use rose 27%.
Technically speaking, Making contribution to Social Causes based on product sales/ user actions is called Cause Marketing.
It is definitely a different animal than traditional marketing. When it’s done right, it can literally change the world for the better! Consider this – 358.4 million dollar is the amount of money America’s retail brand’s check out cause campaigns raised in 2012 (source), on the other side it takes <15Rs. to feed a hungry Indian kid.
What’s in for startups?
Brands are attracted to cause marketing by consumer attitude research that consistently indicates users would prefer brands that support good causes for example
“More than 9-in-10 millennials would switch brands to one associated with a cause” #CONECommunicationCSRstudy
Against conventional brands, startups are usually brands in making with thin operating margins, so I jotted down some cool ideas to execute cause marketing for your startup without hurting the economics. (by either optimizing existing spends/ or increasing revenue)
CHARITY CHECK-OUT
Against the conventional method of “part of profit/revenue goes to charity”; “ADD CHARITY” helps you increase transaction size, enables complete transparency as the user chooses where his money should go, along with the aforementioned benefits of cause marketing, all without hampering the usual check out funnel.
CHARITY COUPONS
Online discounts are an inevitable habit of Indian users. Factually, all major Indian online transactions happen at the USP of low price/ discount, which is completely rational in most cases as the user should enjoy the benefits of low operating cost of digital players against other brick & mortar retailers.
Charity Coupons can help you increase engagement, identify loyal cause followers (by switching charities), and reach sales target in time (valid till x month!), all while driving phenomenal growth for the society.
CHARITY CHECK-INS (For location based brands)
The greatest opportunity for generating consumer engagement on Social Media lies in harnessing the power and influence of everyday Facebook users (micro influencers) who drive high News Feed engagement among their network when they publish original content (much more efficient than paid ads), facebook check-ins are one of the most efficient ways to create engagement for location based brands.
Brands can easily A/B Test a small fraction of their existing Facebook advertising budget through Charity Check-ins; Charity check-ins act as a personal referral (from user to user), helps brands optimize their footfall to check-in ratio, and bring down ad cost by huge margin.
Doing Good is Good Business! For any kind of cause marketing consultancy/ campaign designing – [email protected]
