Create an Effective Cause Marketing Campaign

See­ing an increase in the need for cause mar­ket­ing? This is all you need to know how to. We’re expe­ri­enc­ing an amaz­ing shift in the world, as peo­ple become more engaged than they’ve been in a long time. From school kids to senior cit­i­zens, grass roots activism and cause-relat­ed groups are crop­ping up in answer to con­cerns, local­ly, nation­al­ly and glob­al­ly. Whether you’re start­ing up a cause or are part of an estab­lished one, this is an extreme­ly fer­tile time of real oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate aware­ness… and turn it into ACTION. You can do that with the right cause mar­ket­ing campaign.

Won­der­ing where to start with your cause mar­ket­ing cam­paign? This blog has every­thing you need!

How to create an effective cause marketing campaign

First you have to know what you want to accom­plish with a cam­paign, ie: bring atten­tion to an issue, raise funds, edu­cate peo­ple, change behav­iors or pol­i­cy. Know­ing your goal helps direct your mes­sag­ing and design approach.

To illus­trate these con­cepts, NCD cre­at­ed a cam­paign graph­ics to raise aware­ness of the issues coral reefs are fac­ing — that cli­mate change is “bleach­ing” and killing the coral and how that affects our ecosys­tem. Pantone’s Col­or of the year, Liv­ing Coral, was actu­al­ly inspired by the sit­u­a­tion, and in turn, fed our ideas for the campaign.

1. Create a Compelling Headline

Your cam­paign head­line should be short but impact­ful, aimed at real­ly con­nect­ing with your audi­ence. So many of us scroll through social media and click on and off web­sites at light­ning speed. What head­line would make you stop? Focus on that as you craft yours, mak­ing sure it also serves your ulti­mate goal.

2. Select the Right Visuals 

Next, address visu­als — whether pho­tos, a video, or info­graph­ics — with the goal of deeply tap­ping into the emo­tions that con­nect your audi­ence with your cause. Avoid cheesy or staged look­ing pic­tures and clut­tered info­graph­ics with text too small to read.

You can edit images to cre­ate a pro­found impact. Here’s an exam­ple of what we did.

We start­ed with an image of actu­al coral bleach­ing (cour­tesy of The Ocean Agency).

Then, we mod­i­fied the image by mak­ing the water a lit­tle more murky to fur­ther show our impact on our oceans and coral reefs. After that, we added a human touch­ing the corals show­ing the before and after to illus­trate the impact we have on our corals and our selves.

To add more impact, we added large bold type with a thought pro­vok­ing mes­sage. And cre­at­ed a cus­tom badge for the campaign.

Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Tip: Max­i­mize the return on your efforts by cre­at­ing mul­ti-pur­pose mar­ket­ing pieces, ie: a square graph­ic that will fit into most SM platforms.

3. Share Your Cause Marketing Campaign 

Social Media is a free, wide­spread and imme­di­ate way to get your cam­paign seen! Use the right com­bi­na­tion of plan­ning, visu­als and mes­sage to bol­ster the poten­tial for it to be shared by many.

Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Tip: How do you man­age with so many plat­forms? Pick the 2–3 that will make the biggest splash and do those WELL. Be sure to have all posts (and pro­files) send peo­ple to your web­site where they can learn a lot more). 

If your cam­paign has a print­ed com­po­nent, you can still encour­age peo­ple to learn more and spread the word. Be sure to clear­ly com­mu­ni­cate how they can do that ie: a QR code, web url, phone num­ber. Keep your copy short but pow­er­ful and max­i­mize your sup­port­ing visuals. 

4. Involve Your Community 

Cre­ate hash­tags that will help cast your caus­es’ net the fur­thest, and ask every­one to help spread aware­ness by shar­ing your graph­ics using a spe­cif­ic hash­tag con­nect­ed to your campaign.

5. Inspire Action Towards Your Cause

Whether your cause is new or estab­lished, the ulti­mate goal is to gen­er­ate action! Once you reach peo­ple, you want to inspire them to vol­un­teer, donate, offer resources and con­tacts, and spread your good word. This is the truest mea­sure of an effec­tive cause mar­ket­ing cam­paign.  

It’s a very spe­cial time of rich oppor­tu­ni­ty to do good. Because Nicte Cre­ative Design is val­ues-based, we work with these prin­ci­ples every day and are here to assist with every aspect of your campaign.

• Want help get­ting started?
• Have a cam­paign but are hit­ting snags or need to fine tune?
• Estab­lished but tak­ing it to the next level?

CONTACT US and we’ll get right back to you. Our mis­sion is to help yours succeed!

Start giv­ing right now! Want to help oth­ers? We do! Start right now by click­ing one of the SHARE but­tons below to get this infor­ma­tion out to every­one with a cause so they can do more good! Thanks!!