Cause marketing has become INCREDIBLY POPULAR during the past few years, but how can you capitalize on it?
Brian Garafalow, the CMO of Igloo Products Corp, has managed brands that have done millions in direct consumer spend, and swung by the Traffic and Conversion Summit to talk about cause marketing.
Prep Your Brand for Cause Marketing
Before diving into cause marketing, there are a few general things you need to do to maximize cause marketing. They include:
- Brand Positioning: How does the consumer perceive your brand?
- Values: What does your business value most, and how do you build your teams?
- Cause Marketing: How can you build traffic without having to pay for it?
So, these go hand in hand. You have probably thought about the cost of customer acquisition, and this is still something to think about with cause marketing.
What is this, and why should you use it?
According to CauseMarketing.com, cause marketing is a type of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in which a company’s promotional campaign has the dual purpose of increasing profitability while bettering society.
Basically, a company does well by doing good.
An Overview of Cause Marketing
Do you run a nonprofit? If so, great! You already do cause marketing!
On the other hand, if you run a corporation, you exist to make money, and cause marketing might not be second-nature.
To maximize cause marketing, several elements need to align. These include:
- Your cause must align with your charter.
- You must have the right people to market that cause.
- You must be authentic, showing your customers that you do what you say you do.
If these elements align, then you can build on cause marketing.
An Example: COVID Becomes Reality
During the second week of March, COVID became reality, and we needed to adjust. That meant cause marketing campaigns. Here is what we did:
- At Igloo, 84 percent of our business was retail, and all of them closed.
- Our online and social media traffic spiked, like most other businesses.
- We noticed that we could get more traffic with less spending, and we capitalized on that.
- We focused on helping our local community, particularly first responders. We knew they were hurting, and we helped them get what they needed.
Enter: cause marketing. We reached out to CDC Foundation (not the government organization), and we asked them to help us get the products our first responders needed to help them help the community.
How Doing Good for the Community Helps Your Business
So, we donated our time and money to help our local community by helping our first responders. Now, how could we use this to help our business? Speed is better than optimization. You need to get yourself to the market faster than anyone.
We donated 100 percent of our profits from our Playmate coolers to the COVID relief fund to support America’s healthcare workers. That got the attention of our audience.
During that time, we did some major brand-building and attracted customers for repeat purchases that drove revenue for our company. The way, you can maximize this is to build momentum and drive it. Keep track of your results, let the community know how much you have given away, and keep your brand top of mind.
