Social Entrepreneurship - Giving Whilst The Economy Is Taking A Dive
posted in Marketing & Advertising Assets |Social Entrepreneurship
Cause-Related Marketing first surfaced in the early 1980’s by American Express. The principle behind it, however, has been around since the dawn of civilisation…
Reciprocity.
The benefit for your business is more sales…
Reciprocity makes business work in a non-intuitive way. For a graphic demonstration of the sheer power of reciprocity, survey the online world. You cannot but help see keyword phrases such as “Mass Control Marketing”, or “Product Launch Formula”, “Butterfly Marketing”, “Moving The Free Line”.
What is the same amongst them? In each of them is the deeply ingrained concept of giving to potential customers in the hope that these prospects/people become clients. Sounds risky right?
There are lots of free-loaders flying about, yes?. True enough, there are plenty but there is only the smallest of risk involved for these smart businessmen and women.
They know how people in general think, how we all ‘tick’. We all feel indebted to someone who does us a favour or bestows a gift upon us (some moreso than others mind).
It may seem off the wall to suggest giving - particularly in the turbulent times we now live in - will improve your sales. You may instead think it is in fact a risky idea.
American Express did not and do not. Instead, they understood when they initiated the pledge to donate a penny to the refurbishment of the Statue of Liberty for every transaction made by customers, these would be pennies, dollars and even thousands of dollars invested.
Great publicity cannot be bought, customer good will cannot be bought, better employee morale cannot be bought (usually). They found out by giving, a far more powerful force is unleashed.
During the American Express Statue of Liberty initiative, use of Amex cards increased by 28% and new users increased by 17%. In the intervening years, many more companies have had fantastic successess with cause-related marketing. Companies like Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Avon, the list goes on and on… are highly involved. And it’s not just big companies either who are savvy to the positive benefits cause-related marketing can bring to the balance sheet of a company.
More profits by giving money to good causes a great idea? Well…
During an appearance on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” to promote her role of the sex-crazed assassin Xenia Zirgavna Onatopp in the bond film GoldenEye, Famke Jansen asked him if he would like a demonstration of her characters signature move (involving her getting astride Conan on his desk and squeezing him with her thighs). Conan responded with “This is what we in the industry call a ‘no-brainer’.”
Good causes are great business, it is a no brainer.
JointWinWin.com is a free cause related marketing business directory. As a business you can submit unlimited website listings for no cost giving you extra sales channels for your business. Take a look at this video for more info: http://jointwinwin.com/IntroductoryVideo-BlogPost