When brands decide to support a social cause or initiative, they too often take a Band-Aid approach.
They add a rainbow logo or frame to their social media profile. They publish a blog article explaining why the brand is committed to combatting climate change. They air a short video to announce new benefits for employees after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
And then …
Nothing. The moment’s hot topic cools off – and so does the brand’s public conversation about it. In some cases, the brand’s commitment goes cold too.
What if the content marketing team could change that? Could you lead the ongoing effort around those essential topics?
By ensuring the brand stays hot on the initiative, you’ll elevate content marketing’s role within the organization (and even get that much-coveted seat at the top leadership table).
But how do you replace the Band-Aid with a healthy, sustainable approach?
You write down a cause-related content marketing strategy.
Let’s talk about how to do this. I’ll use an example based on a brand committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). But this formula can work for almost any cause or initiative.
Start building your cause-related marketing strategy by going straight to the top.
I’ve written about tactics to take to cultivate diverse, equitable, and inclusive content marketing. Brands are making progress on that front. But many struggle to sustain their efforts.
Why? At many brands, the conversation stays focused on what needs to happen to ensure the organization keeps its public face focused on those topics.
A documented content-marketing strategy around a DEI (or other cause) commitment, for example, enables all the teams that create content across the brand to operate from the same page. Its development also can serve as a jumping-off point for other departments or the whole organization to develop a long-term strategy around their contribution to the brand’s DEI mission.
Your strategy preparation starts not with content marketing but with the organization’s business operations:
- Does it have a mission statement around DEI?
- What are the objectives it wants to achieve with the commitment?
- How does it affect the business goals?
- How is success measured?
That first step will likely take the most time – and it involves a lot you likely don’t have control over. But doing this research, including interviews with key stakeholders, will inform everything you do next.
Your investigation will help people in your organization realize the depth of the brand’s commitment and understand the goals for its DEI efforts.
It also communicates to leadership that your priority is to ensure content marketing aligns with business objectives.
With this research finished, you’ll likely find yourself with one of two conclusions:
- Clear DEI business goals and metrics
- A fuzzy picture of what leadership would like to happen (though they haven’t fully formulated a plan or set goals)
You can still progress to the next step, no matter which conclusion you reach. It might be more challenging if you’re in the fuzzy picture crowd.
Bring in the audience.
Now that you’ve thought about the business, it’s time to consider your audience.
In most cause-related initiatives, marketers forget they have a target audience and decide to create the content for the greater good. That’s a positive step, but it’s only the beginning.
Ask audience-specific questions, such as:
- Who in the target audience is most interested in this content?
- Why?
- What do they want from this content?
With this information, you can narrow your larger target audience or renew your commitment to an existing persona or niche. It is the group to target with your DEI content marketing strategy.
Align cause-focused objectives with business and audience
You’re ready to figure out your content marketing objectives with your business goals and audience understanding.
What content marketing goals align with both business goals and audience interests? Are they concrete and measurable?
At this stage in a DEI content marketing strategy, some may suggest setting benchmarks for inclusive imagery, accessible content, diverse voice representation in content, etc. These goals are essential. But they’re focused on tactics and need to incorporate the audience properly.
What do you want from your readers, viewers, and listeners? Your answer will likely fall into these three broad objectives:
- Awareness
- Action
- Loyalty
The three goals function together as stages or a funnel. Brand awareness leads an audience to act, and that action ultimately contributes to brand loyalty.
An election-season analogy might help:
- A voter learns about a candidate (awareness).
- The voter decides to support the candidate (action).
- The voter puts the candidate’s sign in their yard (loyalty).
In cause-oriented content, most marketers do the brand awareness stage well. You might change the social profile image to represent the designated month. You publish an article from the CEO explaining the brand’s commitment to the cause and review metrics around social media engagement, increased traffic, or time on the page.
But it would help if you also got to the second stage – action. That is where many brands falter. To prompt action, you might invite readers to subscribe to a series of articles around your brand’s DEI commitment/activities. You could ask them to register for a webinar to learn more. Success metrics would include sign-ups.
Keep pushing to get to the third goal in the sequence – loyalty. Publish regular and authentic content around the DEI mission (or your specific cause). You’ll convince the audience that your brand walks the talk.
They’ll continue to consume your content. They might buy your products. And they might tell others about why they like your brand (whether they buy from you or not). Success metrics might include returning visitors, and several pages visited, purchase activity, and brand mentions.
TIP: As you determine your initiative-specific content marketing goals, you must also discuss the content plans. What formats will you use? How frequently will you publish? Those two factors need to be determined to set relevant and realistic goals.
