Cause-Related Marketing — When and How to Use It

We live in an age of buy­er con­scious­ness where trans­paren­cy is vital to every bot­tom line. Sim­ply put, con­sumers are con­cerned about their own impact on soci­ety and the impact of the com­pa­nies they pur­chase from. Because of this, con­sumers expect brands to be social­ly responsible. 

As a mat­ter of fact, sta­tis­tics show that 70% of con­sumers want to know more about the stance of spe­cif­ic brands on envi­ron­men­tal and social issues, and a con­sid­er­able 46% of con­sumers pay atten­tion to the actions of these brands per­tain­ing to social and eco­log­i­cal topics. 

Because of this, many com­pa­nies have start­ed pur­su­ing cause-relat­ed mar­ket­ing, which involves col­lab­o­ra­tion between non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions and prof­it-ori­ent­ed busi­ness enti­ties for a com­mon ben­e­fit. In this con­text, cause-relat­ed mar­ket­ing may mean join­ing forces to adver­tise and orga­nize a social or char­i­ta­ble campaign.

For the most part, these col­lab­o­ra­tions with non­prof­it enti­ties can boost the cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty of prof­it-ori­ent­ed busi­ness­es, while non­prof­its will be able to cre­ate more awareness.

New con­sumer gen­er­a­tions are embrac­ing new val­ues where ethics and sus­tain­abil­i­ty play cru­cial roles. As such, cause mar­ket­ing strate­gies are becom­ing more crit­i­cal for brands who want to keep up.

That said, the expert team at Rosy Strate­gies cre­at­ed this ulti­mate guide with the best cause mar­ket­ing cam­paigns and more.

The Benefits of Cause Marketing

With­out a doubt, the most appar­ent ben­e­fit of such cam­paigns is a boost in brand aware­ness for prof­it-ori­ent­ed com­pa­nies and more expo­sure for non­prof­it part­ners. The lat­ter orga­ni­za­tions usu­al­ly have lim­it­ed mar­ket­ing bud­gets, so hav­ing a larg­er part­ner beside them can help get the word out more efficiently.

On the oth­er hand, the cor­po­rate part­ner will be able to:

• Improve their social/corporate image 
• Ful­fill the con­sumer demand for being social­ly responsible
• Build bet­ter rela­tion­ships with­in the community
• Improve brand image/loyalty
• Boost employ­ee morale
• Stand out in the cor­po­rate world

Building Cause Marketing Strategies

The best cause mar­ket­ing cam­paigns all have one thing in com­mon: prop­er strate­gic mar­ket­ing plan­ning. Every mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy needs to be care­ful­ly planned to yield the pre­ferred results, and cause-relat­ed mar­ket­ing is no excep­tion. Here, part­ners will also need to con­sid­er the pref­er­ences and needs of each oth­er, as max­i­miz­ing the ben­e­fits of both par­ties is the main aim, apart from aid­ing the cause.

Step One: Identifying the Cause

Good cause mar­ket­ing strate­gies will almost always reflect the val­ues of your cus­tomers and your com­pa­ny. On that note, it also makes the entire effort more cred­i­ble if cor­po­ra­tions col­lab­o­rate with non­prof­its with things in com­mon. Not to say that two entire­ly dif­fer­ent part­ners can’t cre­ate a good cam­paign, but a com­mon denom­i­na­tor will often make things more credible. 

When iden­ti­fy­ing a cause, busi­ness­es should look for the pref­er­ences and con­cerns of their audi­ence. That said, con­struct­ing a cam­paign around cus­tomer val­ues to help non­prof­its can do won­ders in increas­ing brand loyalty.

How Do You Want to Contribute? 

In most cas­es, mon­ey will seem as the most obvi­ous con­tri­bu­tion, but there are oth­er ways com­pa­nies can help a spe­cif­ic cause. As a mat­ter of fact, some­times, mon­ey may even seem lazy and disin­gen­u­ous in the eyes of con­sumers. The best cause mar­ket­ing cam­paigns are filled with cre­ativ­i­ty and may include:

• Pro­vid­ing free video ser­vices for char­i­ty events
• Free email campaigns
• Event plan­ning
• Ideas for adver­tis­ing campaigns
• Print and copy­writ­ing for social media
• Product/service dona­tions
• Free pho­tog­ra­phy services
• Pro­vid­ing vol­un­teer groups among employees 

Involving Your Audience

Some of the best exam­ples of cause-relat­ed mar­ket­ing also involve con­sumers and tar­get audi­ences, as they can poten­tial­ly dri­ve the entire cam­paign! Cus­tom-built land­ing pages and social media posts can moti­vate the audi­ence to share the page/post, direct­ly donate, inter­act with the part­ner­ing non­prof­it, or even par­tic­i­pate in char­i­ty events.

Try Co-Promoting

Cause mar­ket­ing strate­gies can poten­tial­ly work bet­ter when both the cor­po­rate and the non­prof­it part­ners are pro­mot­ing the cause.

They can:

• Tag each oth­er in social posts
• The cor­po­rate part­ner can announce the part­ner­ship in a newsletter
• Cre­ate joint press releases
• Write blogs about the process/experience
• Use the logos in mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als and campaign

This type of shared strate­giz­ing can ensure that both sides get the most out of the process. 

Stellar Examples of Cause-Related Marketing

Before we con­clude, here are a few excel­lent cause-relat­ed mar­ket­ing exam­ples that man­aged to make a dif­fer­ence for both partners.

Democracy Is in Your Hands 

Ben & Jerry’s cam­paign is a unique exam­ple of cause mar­ket­ing that clev­er­ly com­bines two things that have almost noth­ing in com­mon: ice cream and law. More specif­i­cal­ly, the brand start­ed by intro­duc­ing a new fla­vor, clev­er­ly named Empow­er Mint, with camp­ing mate­ri­als about vot­er sup­pres­sion laws, vot­ing inequal­i­ty, and so on. Even though the fla­vor was a one-time-only thing, the com­pa­ny still revives the cam­paign dur­ing major elec­tions to raise the aware­ness again and again.

Buy a Pair, Give a Pair

War­by Parker’s cam­paign is also con­sid­ered one of the best cause mar­ket­ing cam­paigns out there. For every pair of glass­es cus­tomers buy, the com­pa­ny donates a pair to some­one in need of glass­es world­wide. The com­pa­ny also offered to sell eye­wear at low­er prices and pro­vid­ed vision care for those who oth­er­wise would not be able to afford it. 

Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the com­pa­ny switched from donat­ing glass­es to pur­chas­ing pre­ven­ta­tive health sup­plies and pro­tec­tive equip­ment for health­care work­ers for every pair of glass­es they man­aged to sell. 

Cause Marketing and Cause-Related Marketing

The two terms are most often used inter­change­ably (just as we did through­out the arti­cle), but still, you should know that there is a sub­tle dif­fer­ence between the two cam­paign types. For the most part, cause-relat­ed mar­ket­ing is a term used more in India and the Unit­ed King­dom, While Cana­da and the Unit­ed States pri­or­i­tize the term “cause marketing.” 

Essen­tial­ly, there are no “tech­ni­cal” dif­fer­ences between the two terms as they both mean the same thing. 

Fight for the Cause With The Right Professional Team on Your Side

Set­ting up a smooth part­ner­ship for a good cause can often be a demand­ing and chal­leng­ing task, even for the most expe­ri­enced non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions and the most sea­soned cor­po­rate enti­ties. To get the mes­sage out and tru­ly make a dif­fer­ence, part­ners will often have to cre­ate a new dig­i­tal ecosys­tem that com­bines every com­mu­ni­ca­tion pipeline, enabling the imple­men­ta­tion of an omnichan­nel approach and ensur­ing that the cam­paign reach­es its true potential. 

That’s no easy task, requir­ing the expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge of sea­soned dig­i­tal mar­keters. On that end, if you are look­ing for a dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency in Fort Laud­erdale for your next joint char­i­ty ven­ture, feel free to reach out to us so we can fight for the cause together.