MPH Agency is an industry leader within the cause marketing and public affairs advocacy space. Understanding how to evolve commercial marketing tactics and tools to apply to the public affairs space and specifically to your issue or awareness challenge is a specialty of our team at MPH Agency and what our STAMPS Solutions are designed to do.
Effective cause marketing requires more than a social media account. The constant evolution of the algorithms that decide visibility on social media means marketers need to be keenly aware of how their content is prioritized. In relation to cause marketing, social media platforms have started to de-prioritize a lot of cause and issue content.
A recent article took a look at these tools from the perspective of commercial marketing, Social Media Marketing — Why the world went gaga and never looked back. While this is interesting, I wanted to share some insights on these tools from the perspective of cause and issue marketing.
In cause marketing we don’t need you to buy our product, we don’t need our tracking pixels to carry you through to your shopping cart. We need you to make that commitment to invest. Specifically, we need you to invest in our message with the currency of your time.
If you think getting someone to commit money to your product or cause is hard, try asking for people's time. Every volunteer manager out there would gladly change places with the fundraisers. Understanding that we are competing for users' time and energy means we have to work more at making a value argument right out of the gate.
If ever there was an example of the double edged sword, it’s social media in public affairs. The ability to build digital connections and communities is unparalleled, the platforms - by design - connect people with similar interests and opinions to each other. If you have any organic popularity it is easy to build your audience. The other side of that sword is that it is extremely difficult to push through into those communities if you are not part of them. Marketing to these quasi-closed communities takes extensive connection, understanding, perspective, and time.
Issue awareness isn’t just half of our battle, it’s very often the entire battle. This is an area that there is overlap with the commercial marketing world. “However, you cannot build brand awareness overnight. Consistent effort in the long term helps build trust and authority in the marketplace, and it also helps to humanize the brand.” In short, you need to start early. A digital cause movement can not be generated in days or even weeks. It will take months of growth and adhering to a cause marketing plan to build the online presence and following you need for your goals.
Economical
Unlike commercial marketing, cause and issue marketing can cost as much or more than other marketing channels. The rules and processes around issue campaigns on social media means that social media can not be your own source of lead generation. It needs to be part of a comprehensive strategy. The average CPC (cost per click) on Facebook in September 2022 was $0.92, but in the awareness space the CPC is now over $2.32. Cost for conversion (ie. signed up, engaged, mobilized) is now at an average of $19.68. Building multi-channel engagement plans is the only way to bring that cost down.
Customer Service
Businesses are now providing customer service via social media, whether its twitter DMs, Facebook chat, or even WhatsApp as their primary customer service channel. This is an area that cause marketing needs to evolve into, and quickly. The consumer market sets the public's expectations for responsiveness and customer service. The public expects your social platforms to be two-way communication vehicles, with replies and response times measured in minutes not days.
Word-of-mouth publicity
“TikTok made me buy it” has entered our lexicon. The validation from peers, whether it's your own social network or online reviews drive such a large portion of business that there is definitely a cause marketing equivalent. Public affairs and politics have always used “endorsements” as part of their promotion strategy. Now, celebrity (or niche-celebrity) endorsements have less and less value. Peer endorsements are what drives conversion.
Boosts sales (aka Boots engagement)
With billions of active users each month, regardless of where you are or what cause you are advocating for, most of your target audience is on social media. Any efforts to promote or develop your cause will need a robust social media presence, it's essentially the stamp of legitimacy. Yet, the nature of public affairs means that real world conversion is needed, not just online slacktivism. While social media is required it can not be the only, or even the dominant channel of activation.
Next week we will look at how video can be used to simplify your story and message, no matter how technical, to your stakeholders.
