3 things your prospective supporters don't care about - and what to focus on instead
One of the hardest lessons to learn in marketing is that the things you love the most about what you do can be wildly different to what your audience loves about what you do. And that to engage your audience and grow awareness around your cause, you need to focus on what your audience thinks is valuable.
Here's an example - when I started in the ads world one of my first clients was an amazing zero-waste breakfast food delivery business in my area, founded by a man who cared deeply about eliminating plastic waste and reducing carbon emissions. All his milk and juice was locally sourced and delivered in reusable glass bottles and he delivered early in the morning by bike rather than truck.
Our initial thought was to talk about the business' eco credentials in his marketing because that was the foundation of his business. But then we asked his customers what they really valued. Can you guess what it was? Fresh croissants on their doorstep when they woke up. The majority weren't too fussed that the delivery didn't come wrapped in plastic; they enjoyed the luxury of rolling out of bed to crispy pastries and freshly squeezed juice. So that's what we focused on.
So, if you're struggling with audience engagement, now's the time to analyse whether your social media, blogs and ads are focusing on things that you care about rather than things your ideal supporter cares about.
To get you started, here are my top 3 topics your audience doesn't care about, and what to focus on instead...
Anniversaries. A milestone anniversary is a big deal and a brilliant cause for celebration internally. But the fact that you've been around for 50 years doesn't mean anything to new and prospective supporters. What to focus on instead? Your goals for the future. You've done so much in the last 50 years, what do you want to do next? What are you working towards? How can the public help you achieve those goals? Is it donations, volunteering, participating in an event, something else? If you can make your prospects and supporters feel part of a mission or a movement, you'll drive motivation to get involved.
How you help. There are a lot of places where this is massively relevant information - and I'm definitely not saying don't communicate what you do for your beneficiaries! But when it comes to raising awareness and driving engagement, remember that your most powerful tool is storytelling and that means focusing not on what you do, but on how you make your beneficiaries feel. Video content can be really useful here, but there are other ways to convey this information if you can't feature your beneficiaries in person - pulled out quotes and interviews with your services team telling stories about their work can be really powerful too.
Jargon-heavy research results (especially if you're in the medical space). Always approach your social content with the understanding that social media is a busy, noisy marketplace and that the average user is easily distracted and spends their day being bombarded with information. This means that you need to not only stand out from the crowd enough to stop the scroll but that your content needs to be easily digestible. You don't want your audience to have to Google terms to understand the research or give up entirely. So, if there's a new piece of research that you want to share, rather than posting a link to a journal, consider sharing your top few takeaways from the research and - most importantly - what these results mean in practice for your beneficiaries. Linking any updates like this back to either your work on the ground or your vision for the future helps to translate potentially dry research into hope, which is much more relatable to a non-medical audience.
In reality these are minor tweaks, but they can make all the difference!