Using PR to drive more than just donations.
With over 180,000 charities in England and Wales, there is a huge amount of competition for funding. Therefore, it is important that nonprofits actively raise awareness to avoid missing out on valuable funds.
As the cost of living crisis increases pressure is beginning to affect donations to charities. New research from the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) suggests six in 10 (58%) people plan to cut back on discretionary spending over the next six months in order to manage their bills. This rises to 69% amongst 25-34-year-olds. Consequently, charities must focus on expanding their reach to stand out from the crowd.
In today’s article, we summarise some of the key strategies that nonprofits should employ in order to supercharge their charity marketing.
Driving brand awareness.
For charities, they must ensure their brand is visible. Whilst many tactics and strategies exist, building a brand takes time and effort.
Researching your audiences and understanding how they engage is important. Here at The PHA Group we use a variety of tools to understand audience. Once this is understood the research can be leveraged to ensure you use the right communication methods in your outreach.
Charities often have a variety of great content and case studies. This can be extremely valuable when building your brand. We talk more about driving brand awareness in a recent article titled “How to elevate your charity PR campaign.”
Supporting awareness days.
In 2021 we talked about how Charities could make awareness days work.
The key here is in choosing the right day and the right level of involvement. Many charities focus on seeing a quick spike and not necessarily thinking about the long term benefit of aligning with the right days.
However, in order to get the best outcome, it is important you find one that your brand identifies with. It should also fit with your audiences values and beliefs. Other areas to consider are who else you could engage with, whether celebs, spokespeople or influencers?
Whatever you choose to do, to key focus in to maximise your exposure.
Campaigning.
Effective campaigning is crucial for nonprofit organisations. In a recent blog post we took a look at organisations leading the fight against fuel poverty. This post highlights how effective campaigning can make a real difference to donations, as awareness and public perception of your nonprofit increases.
The one of the golden rules of effective lobbying is thorough research. This allows the charity to support content with evidence and statistics. This is extremely important when trying to identify issues or concerns and drive real change.
Creating impact through PR and social tactics.
PR and Social Media have the ability to reach large audiences. As new social platforms emerge it is important for Third Sector brands to embrace them, especially if they want to attract a new audience. It is often said that brands should go where the audience goes. Therefore, embracing these new platforms at speed can benefit the reach that can help you supercharge your charity marketing.
Why a consistent social media strategy in important.
Social media is a great way for charities to achieve their objectives. Whether it is raising awareness, supporting awareness days or campaigning, the power of social media allows charities to collaborate and communicate with their chosen audience.
In addition, there are many social media platform that now offer donation button, allowing them to raise much needed funds.
Recently, we spoke about the power of a consistent social media strategy that provides insights into how a social presence can really make a difference.
The summarise, above are just some of the tactics and strategies we suggest when working with third sector clients to deliver real impact. If you would like to discuss this further by speaking to our experts or discuss how to create a PR plan for your a charity, please get in touch to find out more.
