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Growing social and environmental consciousness is driving more and more consumers to turn to brands that take a stand on social and environmental issues. Organizations that demonstrate their social responsibility are the ones that’ll gain an edge over the competition in the long run. But how does a brand show its commitment to a social cause? Cause marketing might just be the answer.
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Cause Marketing Meaning
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Examples of Cause Marketing
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Benefits Of Cause Marketing
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Types Of Cause Marketing
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Create Better Solutions
Cause Marketing Meaning
Cause marketing refers to marketing campaigns built around a social or charitable cause. Cause marketing serves a dual purpose by helping organizations drive revenue and contributing to bettering society while at it. Cause marketing often takes the form of corporate social responsibility (CSR), where a for-profit organization collaborates with a non-profit organization for mutual benefit. Such benefits include raising public awareness for a social cause, creating social value and generating significant profits for the business concerned.
While establishing a cause marketing strategy, it’s important for organizations to –
- Find a cause that’s in some way related to the brand to make the cause marketing campaign appear more authentic to customers.
- Ensure their workforce believes in the cause. When employees are passionate about a cause, their enthusiasm comes through their work and lends new meaning to the cause marketing campaign.
For a cause marketing strategy to work, organizations need to think beyond monetary gains and concentrate on the social cause they’re engaging with to make their efforts resonate with consumers.
Examples of Cause Marketing
A recent survey shows that 64% of customers think that while contributing money to a cause is important, organizations must also integrate social good into their business. Let’s look at a couple of cause marketing examples that do just that:
Cadbury
Cadbury launched a cause marketing campaign in the UK called Donate Your Words to fight loneliness among the elderly. It collaborated with Age UK, a charity for older people, and removed all words from its packaging to raise awareness about loneliness and highlight the plight of isolated older people. Donating 30 pence of every chocolate bar sold to the charity, Cadbury garnered an overwhelming public response. People stepped forward to volunteer with Age UK and reached out to old neighbors or relatives. (Ambien)
KFC
KFC India launched Plate of Hope, a digital cause marketing campaign, to fight hunger in the country. Customers who ordered from KFC’s website could create a virtual plate of food through an interactive online session. For every virtual plate created on the website, KFC fed a hungry child.
From Lifebuoy’s Help A Child Reach to Tata Tea’s Jaago Re campaign, the examples of cause marketing are many. Over the years, organizations across the globe have come up with new and innovative ways of cause marketing to up their brand presence and support a worthy cause.
Benefits Of Cause Marketing
Cause marketing can significantly shape a consumer’s purchasing behavior. Consumers are not only willing to spend more with a brand that’s associated with a cause but are also more likely to recommend that brand to others. Let’s look at a few benefits of cause marketing for organizations:
- Cause marketing helps an organization improve brand image and reputation through positive media coverage, word-of-mouth recommendations and good customer reviews
- Cause marketing portrays a brand as purpose-driven, giving it a significant edge over its competitors in the market
- When employees find meaning in their work and can contribute to the betterment of society through cause marketing, their job satisfaction increases and employee turnover reduces
Aligning a business with causes that matter to consumers has the potential to drive significant revenue and growth. Cause marketing helps organizations establish a deeper connection with their customers, which, in turn, translates to customer loyalty and attracts new customers in the long run.
Types Of Cause Marketing
Now that we know the meaning of cause marketing and have gone through a few cause marketing examples and benefits, let’s go through the different types of cause marketing:
Incentives
Such cause marketing campaigns encourage customers to donate to a cause by offering them incentives in the form of discounts, gift coupons or free products.
Point-Of-Sale Campaign
This type of cause marketing is most commonly used by retailers and involves soliciting donations from customers during checkout when they make a purchase.
Buy One, Give One
In this type of cause marketing, organizations donate a product to a needy person when a customer purchases something from their brand.
Apart from these, organizations may also donate a portion of their earnings for each product they sell or encourage consumers to donate their time to support a social cause in exchange for complimentary services as part of their cause marketing efforts.
Create Better Solutions
In a world turned upside down by COVID-19, organizations are increasingly turning to cause marketing to reach out to the masses and strengthen their brand position. To help your organization deliver maximum impact through cause marketing, you need to be able to identify a social problem and analyze how it resonates with your brand. Harappa’s Create New Solutions course will allow you to do just that. It’ll help you keep your research foolproof and your analysis error-free, enabling you to think critically about new solutions and create better ones.
With Thrive Skills such as Intellectual Rigor, you’ll learn to make well-reasoned and articulated arguments supported by evidence and logic, while Assimilating Knowledge will help you continuously seek, absorb and interpret new information. You’ll be able to ask insightful questions to get to the root of a problem and carefully process information, assumptions and numbers.
Want to go behind the scenes to excel at cause marketing? Sign up today for Harappa’s Create New Solutions pathway and generate solutions that really work.
