Charity Marketing – How to engage with your donors and other stakeholders
It wasn’t that long ago that the school of thought for charitable (or ‘not for profit’) organisations was that an entirely different approach to marketing was needed than in the ‘for profit’ sector. However, this is firmly not the case anymore, with marketing for all successful organisations being centred on the importance of audience engagement. In this blog, we’ll outline the considerations that need to be taken into account for charities, who need to engage with a more complex stakeholder matrix, not simply customers.
Stakeholders
For the purpose of charity marketing, a stakeholder is an individual, group or organisation which has an interest in a charity fulfilling its mission. These can include the following groups:
- Beneficiaries; the people or parties that benefit from the charity’s work.
- Donors; those who help the charity.
- The Community; the surrounding community who generally has an interest in how the charity is achieving its mission.
- Volunteers; often a charity relies on committed, passionate volunteers to fulfil the work they do.
So, the term stakeholder covers everyone connected to a charity and all of them are vitally important to the organisation achieving its goal. The stakeholders’ level of involvement and activism differs according to their role, and so it is extremely important that they are engaged and remain committed to your charity’s work and purpose. From a marketing perspective, this can be achieved in a number of different ways.
Creating Differentiation
Similar to a commercial organisation that needs to make its products and services appeal to its customers, your charity still needs to stand out in the eyes of its stakeholders, especially those groups who are looking to donate income, or time, to the cause. This might be individuals or families with disposable income, or commercial organisations who may wish to get involved with fundraising. Either way, competition in the charitable sector is fierce with many charities competing to gain donations and support from fundraising initiatives. Charities therefore need a clear message and to create a differentiation in order to stand out from the crowd. This can be achieved through strong messaging, a visually compelling brand, high-impact content and communications, to name a few.
The human touch
Bringing the mission of the charity to life is key to engaging stakeholders. A faceless approach won’t encourage them to ‘buy in’ to what your charity is trying to achieve and will do little to build a long-term, sustainable brand. The idea of creating meaningful content which invokes emotions, is one way of approaching the development of content and communications. This can be achieved through using materials written directly by the people your charity is supporting and which builds a picture of what you are trying to achieve, or have achieved. Content of this kind is authentic, emotive and high-impact, therefore capturing the attention of different stakeholders.
Mix it up
It goes without saying that different individuals and organisations across your various stakeholder groups will engage with different types of communications, content, formats and delivery. In an age of increasing levels of personalisation and customisation, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t tend to be successful and so it’s important for content and communications to be developed with the needs, preferences and likely responses of the audience in mind. The content and materials you develop should therefore cover a range of different formats, such as written blogs, films and graphics; all hosted on your website to continually reinforce your brand message.
More bang for your buck
The content that you develop should be thought of as multi-purpose. Resource (by which we mean time and money) for a charity is precious – arguably more so than any other organisation. Every pound spent producing marketing content needs to count. The content you produce should not only sit on your charity’s website, but can also be used to communicate with your audience and power your social media efforts – attracting likes, followers, shares and in doing so take your charity’s message even further.
There is also the opportunity to be proactive with the content and use it as the foundation of regular communications with each of your stakeholders, for example via email marketing campaigns and newsletter updates. Using content in different ways makes it work harder for you, and reinforces your charity’s vision and mission through regular, consistent communications.
If you are a charity and would like to speak to us about marketing, and communicating more effectively with your stakeholders, get in touch.
