'Tis the season for businesses to feast on holiday-fueled revenue, but are you getting the most out of the holidays with those sales strategies you've used year after year? If you're wondering what else you can do to boost sales for the last little bit of the year, consider "cause marketing."
Cause marketing is a fresh approach and is gaining traction because it can increase trust and loyalty from customers, ultimately leading to more sales. Not to mention the warm fuzzies you'll get when helping your community! But Cause marketing isn't just for the holidays. You could also partner up with a non-profit before January 1st to get some added tax write-offs, or plan a cause-marketing event any time of year when your sales aren't meeting expectations.
According to a 2013 corporate social responsibility study done by Cone Communications and Echo Global, "91% of global consumers say they are likely to switch brands to one associated with a good cause given comparable price and quality."
Cause marketing has been adopted by major brands such as Gillette, Walgreens, Wells Fargo and many others.
Interested in giving it a go? Here are three campaign ideas that your business can use to get on the cause marketing band wagon:
Vote to sponsor a pet
Canine Active is a company specializing in pain relief for dogs. With their Sponsor-A-Pet campaign, they're letting their audience (who are most likely the type to tear up at the thought of a homeless pet) choose a pet that the company will sponsor while living in a shelter. The campaign is collecting valuable user data that the company can use later down the road to send coupons to, newsletters, and announcements of future campaigns, all the while boasting their do-gooder business approach ultimately winning customers for life.
Make a Pinterest Board and enter it to win
A unique and clever campaign hosted by Capital BlueCross and benefiting classrooms in the CapitalBlueCross service areas is the My Fearless Classroom Pinterest Contest. Teachers are able to enter to win a $250 gift card to use for classroom supplies as well as extra goodies for the whole class by creating a Pinterest Board based on Pins for creating a healthy classroom. With such a clever campaign, Capital BlueCross is boosting their reputation and building trust with a targeted audience by hosting their campaign on Pinterest as well as benefiting kids and classrooms.
Vote for a non-profit to win
Windsor Court Hotel has partnered with 30 non-Profits in its 30 Ways to Give Back campaign which will certainly be beneficial for the winning non-profit, but for Windsor Court as well. Participants are asked to vote for 1 of 30 non-profits for the organization they'd like to see win an event at the hotel. The prize is valued at $10,000! Windsor Court will benefit from this campaign because not one, but 30 non-profits are directing their constituents to the campaign to vote (that's 30 times the exposure you'd get than working with just one organization). During their down time, event space is likely to go unbooked and event staff may have just been twiddling their thumbs. Instead, Windsor Hotel will put it to good use and give a worthy non-profit the arena they need to host an event and raise dollars for their mission. A cherry on top for Windsor Hotel would be the PR from assisting said non-profit in raising those funds.
Reach out to the non-profits in your community and give cause marketing a try. Let us know your great ideas for campaigns run with community partners.