Cause Marketing Success Factors: Buy-in from Your Boss
Don’t expect your boss to fully understand what cause marketing is and what it can accomplish after just one meeting. Even if he says he “gets it,” as is common with bosses that want to come across as [more…]
Cause Marketing Success Factors: Staff
Cause marketing is worth doing, but like anything worth doing, it requires work and a dedicated staff. The prospecting and project work associated with cause marketing requires time and a lot of energy [more…]
Cause Marketing Success Factors: Realistic Expectations
No nonprofit or business lives by cause marketing alone. Causes raise money in a variety of ways, including grants, direct mail, major gifts, and through cause marketing. The mix is different for every [more…]
Improving Cause Marketing Results: Incentivizing
A lot of businesses reward their employees for performance, so don’t be surprised if you are asked, “Should we offer employees incentives for hitting specific fundraising goals?” Surely employees will [more…]
Cause Marketing Success Factors: Famous Last Words
Every successful cause marketing program has Famous Last Words (FLW). Famous Last Words is the phrase you want the consumer to remember above all else. Despite what comes before or after it, these are [more…]
Cause Marketing Success Factors: Messaging
A successful cause marketing message doesn’t always have to reflect the full mission of your organization. For example, a hospital that serves a diverse population of lower-income residents in the Boston [more…]
Branding is Key to Successful Cause Marketing
Powerful cause marketing brands are like magnets. They do good things, and good things are in turn attracted to them. Take national causes like Feeding America, Product [more…]
Is Slick What Makes Great Brands Tick?
Branding is key for long-term success in cause marketing. But what if your branding efforts go too far? Cause branding that is over the top or too slick won’t stick. Most people have radar for branding [more…]
Striking the Right Balance of Philanthropy, Marketing, and Business
Cause marketers have to carefully balance philanthropy, marketing, and business in the programs they create. For example, while U2’s Bono is best known for his cause marketing success with Product [more…]
Cause Marketing Partnerships Overview
Cause marketing is like a marriage: You need a partner. But choosing that special someone is never easy. Compatibility is important, but you also want a good provider. No one wants to wake up one morning [more…]
Managing Prospects through a Circle Strategy
Whether you’re a cause or a company, employing a circle strategy in which you plot your prospects on a target and move from your strongest leads in the bull’s-eye to the weakest ones in the outer circles [more…]
Researching a Company for Your Cause
Before you even think about asking a company to support your cause, ask the following questions about each one. Answering these questions first will save you time, a lot of frustration, and maybe even [more…]
Identifying the Right Cause for Your Company
Some of the things that apply to a nonprofit finding a good company are also applicable to a company finding a good cause with which to partner: [more…]
Find the Best Companies for Your Cause Marketing Campaign
To find a partner company, start by working with your innermost circle and contact your cause's current supporters and donors. Because they know you better than anyone else, they can open doors to other [more…]
Keep Organized with Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool helps you record and track your contacts. The circle strategy can help you identify cause marketing prospects. But remembering all those contacts and your [more…]
National versus Local Company Cause Partnerships
Ideally, you want to find a way to partner with both national and local companies in your cause marketing. But you need to know the pros and cons of each type. [more…]
Managing Cause Partners with Lots of Locations
Most successful cause marketing campaigns involve businesses with multiple locations. For example, Chili’s Grill & Bar raised $6.2 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in 2008. This is an [more…]
Considering Cause Marketing
Most causes and companies should consider cause marketing and focus on the positive things it can result in but cause marketing won’t work for everyone. Remember these key things when considering cause [more…]
Cause Partners Asset Leveraging
As a cause marketing partner of One Warm Coat — a national effort to provide any person in need of a warm coat with one free of charge — retailer Burlington Coat Factory supported the charity with 8,000 [more…]
New Cause Partners thru Your Fundraising Events
Most causes have fundraising events, but they don’t view them as the assets they are. To many, cause marketing is one type of fundraising, and special events is another, without ever thinking to combine [more…]
Improving Cause Marketing Results: Motivation
Highly motivated consumers and employees can make a big difference in the success of your cause marketing program. Motivation is especially important for local programs because they generally involve smaller [more…]
Improving Cause Marketing Results: Employee Training
Well-trained employees can play a big role in the success of your cause marketing program. Not only should your employees be well trained in how to execute the program, but it also helps if they’re well-trained [more…]
Closing the Cause Marketing Deal: Feelers
The cause marketing prospects which are feelersare driven by their emotions. They don’t fixate on the graphs and charts and numbers. They focus on the pictures, watch the videos, and listen to the stories [more…]
Reaching Out to Cause Marketing Prospects
Before trying to communicate with a cause marketing partner prospect, take a minute to consider how you plan to connect with her about cause marketing. How do you plan to identify with the needs of the [more…]
Cause Marketing Prospect First Interaction
Your first interaction with a cause marketing prospect probably won’t be in person. It will be over the phone or e-mail. There’s a schism about the best way to initially connect with prospects: phone or [more…]
