Choosing a nonprofit that resonates with your brand is key to running a give-back campaign that captivates shoppers both old and new (yes, giving back can be used as a sales acquisition tool!).
To help us dive into this topic, we had the pleasure of hosting Jemma Lee (from Ettika and Charged) and Mike Pasley (from Idea Nest) on a webinar to answer the question: How do you decide what nonprofit to support through your online store?
A successful cause marketing campaign hinges on your brand backing a cause that resonates with your customers and inspires them into action.
Read below for our main tips and takeaways from the webinar.
How do I go about choosing a nonprofit to support?
Here are four groups of questions to help you select an aligned nonprofit (or many!) for your cause marketing campaign:
- What type of cause aligns with my brand values? (Hint: browse causes via your Shop for Good dashboard for ideas
) - What causes are my customers passionate about? Is there customer interest centered around a relevant cause or movement, like COVID-19 relief or Black Lives Matter? What current events are your customers discussing on your channels or in niche groups that you monitor? (Consider asking them directly through a survey if you don’t know!)
- What nonprofit’s mission furthers my brand’s mission? (Hint: browse nonprofits by cause via your Shop for Good dashboard )
- Consider how you can match a cause or nonprofit to a product, or which nonprofits share language and values similar to those of your brand. For example, you could invite customers to donate to environmental nonprofits when shopping for outdoor gear or clean, nontoxic skincare; or donate a portion of sales of pink jewelry to a breast cancer research organization.
In the case of Lee, Ettika’s brand mission is to uplift women and support them through every step of their journey. She recognized that customers shopped at her stores — Ettika and Charged Jewelry — because they shared those values.
Lee then narrowed her search by asking herself, “How do we celebrate women going forward?” She coordinated her three selected nonprofits, listed below, around that question to help her narrow down options:
Meanwhile, Pasley knew that his only consideration was picking a nonprofit that embodied “the side of good.”
With his brand Idea Nest’s broad range of products and customer interests, he chose to transition between different campaigns by identifying who the “die-hard fans are in each niche.” By attaching different causes to different products, Pasley’s able to target individual subsets of customers with each campaign.
Give the webinar a watch below, and join us today on the cutting edge of e-commerce with cause marketing!
Each brand will find its perfect strategy and partnerships, and all brands can benefit from giving back.
In fact, half of all customers today are belief-driven buyers. That means that 1 out of every 2 people will choose, switch, avoid, or boycott a brand because of its stance on societal issues (Edelman 2018).
In other words: give your customers something to believe in through your brand and you’ll reap the rewards.
Giving back isn’t seasonal or limited to a single movement. It’s an ongoing mission to make, as our Chief Impact Officer Mel Lubey told us, “your product more impactful.”
Now that you’ve got these pointers, which nonprofit will you be supporting with your brand?
Don’t have Shop for Good added to your Shopify store yet? It’s quick and easy to add and you can launch your first cause marketing campaign in minutes
