Engagement: A Crucial Part of the Cause Marketing Triangle

When cause marketers intentionally select media partners based on a shared target audience, the opportunity for strategic marketing is amplified. The Cause Marketing Triangle increases audience engagement by leveraging the power of a media brand to engage with its listeners or viewers who comprise the campaign’s target audience. A media partner can do this in a number of ways including content, social media and guerilla marketing expertise.

Starting from scratch is difficult in all things. Building on what already exists is much easier. This holds true when it comes to social media and gaining traction for brands via social media channels. How many times have you seen a nonprofit’s, government agency’s or even a corporation’s Facebook page that only has four followers, and every one of them is somehow related to the person who set up the page? There is a simple solution here. Don’t try to build your own traffic. Go where built-in traffic already exists! Social media is another form of entertainment for many consumers, and the social media pages of favorite media outlets are at the heart of engaging with people and brands online. Partnering with a highly-targeted media property will give you access to thousands of their followers who are already engaging with the content and personalities of the media outlet through their social media channels daily.

Finally, when there is a need to engage with consumers one-on-one to promote behavior change, your media partner will be the key to engagement success. Radio and television stations get hundreds of calls each month from marketers asking them to “bring the station out” to an event because marketers know media is the key to getting people to show up and have fun at an event. This is because media companies are also experts at engagement marketing. Traditional marketing tactics, such as on-air and online commercials are often used to educate target audiences about an issue. To continue the conversation one-on-one, media integrates engagement tactics, such as event marketing, social media engagement, grassroots marketing and street team deployment, to ensure their audience is actually participating in the new behaviors being promoted. Adding the right media partner to a cause marketing campaign will increase the level of engagement and in turn increase the campaign’s overall success.