How building relationships through social media can boost your ad campaign results

If you're a charity marketer or fundraiser, you're likely in the same boat as me. You get served a lot of charity ads on your social channels and, because of the work you do, you notice them maybe more than you would otherwise. I've seen a lot of ads these past few weeks asking for donations, some driven by the recent devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria, but many others too.

And maybe what you're seeing is at odds with what I bang on about all the time (and you may also see elsewhere) which is all around the need to:

1. identify who you want to talk to, how they feel and what they want

2. figure out where they spend time online and how to reach them

3. use your organic social and paid ad strategy to take them on a journey to get to know, like and trust your charity enough to engage and ultimately donate.

What's the point of doing all that if I can go straight out for donation to complete strangers and bring in the $$, you may ask yourself. Am I over-complicating everything? Am I wasting time? Cue massive downwards spiral and crisis in confidence.

Here's my take, to put your mind at ease.

Firstly, you can. You can go straight out for donation and most likely bring in funds. There's a place for that, especially for big, established charities with broad brand awareness. Unicef, for instance, can ask you for a donation when a disaster like the earthquake hits and even if you've never seen their socials or other ads chances are you have a pretty solid idea of what they do and would trust them with your donation. Some of the larger charities are part of the fabric of our lives and have that mass awareness that nudges people further along the know, like, trust journey without them realising.

And even for smaller charities it's worth testing going straight out for donations, so that you know either way if seeing a single stat or a single story is enough for your audience. It might well be, in which case keep doing what works.

BUT - whatever size your charity is - if you want to really increase your brand awareness and drive donations, keep reading, because here's where I think some charities miss out on donations from ad campaigns...

I see a lot of charity ads asking for money and not that many make me get my wallet out. You might be the same.

And that's no criticism of the teams behind those ads, which are usually really strong and often go into my swipe file of great charity ads. And it's not self-criticism, because you can't be moved by every ad you see.

The reason that I scroll on past the vast majority is because I have no relationship with them; I don't know exactly what they do, where they operate, how they change lives, how their beneficiaries feel before and after they engage with the charity. I might not have had an experience that connects me with that specific cause. So unless what they are asking for money for is something that I'm already aware of and care about, like a disaster in the news, I'm unlikely to engage.

So, if you want more people to engage with you and donate, it's really important to build those relationships. And that means letting people see the life changing work you do, how you make your beneficiaries feel, what drives you. Consistently and over a period of time on your social media channels and via engagement campaigns. So that when the time comes for your donation ad to pop up on your audience's newsfeed, they already know and like you, and they understand just what their donation can do to help make the world that tiny bit better.