Previously, individuals chose to remain impartial to avoid potential backlash regarding certain topics or movements. Currently, people crave a sense of belonging and purpose. Whether it’s through endorsing a cause at a local or worldwide level or adopting a specific way of life, today’s consumers actively strive to enact change. This urge for making a difference is evident in the consumer’s conduct and choices when purchasing products. A variety of notable instances comprise favoring brands that refrain from animal testing (such as BECCA), backing the zero-waste packing movement (like bare market), the climate emergency (e.g. Patagonia), among others.
Cause marketing, also known as purpose-driven marketing, has been spurred by passionate consumers seeking out brands and businesses that align with their values and support the same causes.
What is a Purpose-Driven Brand?
A brand with a purpose extends beyond profits and is motivated and focused on a specific purpose, mission, or vision. This is a modern trend that multiple companies and brands are adopting to engage with their customers. In an interview with Forbes, it was stated that purpose-driven branding leads to triumph, and a brand’s purpose must be placed at the forefront to be successful. In this age of “radical transparency,” we acknowledge that customers are not just purchasers.
Therefore, it is important for brands to align with and show stronger devotion towards their customers’ values. This is where purpose-oriented marketing becomes a crucial component in your company’s brand marketing tactics.
Why is Purpose-Driven Digital Marketing Important?
Purpose-driven brands are preferred by 63% of consumers worldwide. Additionally, more than 70% of consumers are inclined to recommend brands that support a positive cause. To learn three innovative purpose-driven marketing lessons, check out the following tips for these brands.
1. Find a mutual cause both you and your audience can connect with.
To connect with your audience through purpose-driven marketing, it is essential to identify a cause that resonates with them and is consistent with your brand.
An exemplary purpose-driven brand is Patagonia as it expertly modifies its marketing campaigns to align with a cause that resonates with its target market. Patagonia’s purpose is to rescue the planet amidst the current climate emergency. By offering top-quality products without causing any avoidable harm to the environment, they perceive this as a window of opportunity. They concentrate their business operations on conserving nature, a subject their audience passionately supports.
Getting acquainted with your customers and understanding their interests is crucial. Utilizing data-driven ingenuity can aid in plotting out the path your customers take and facilitating the experience that they anticipate. Acquiring suitable data can be a game changer and identifying a cause that resonates with your audience entices them to engage with your brand’s purpose.
2. Drive social change by being transparent with your online audience.
Companies that have a strong purpose are preferred by consumers as they are four to six times more prone to be purchased from, trusted, and appreciated. Moreover, buyers demand to be assured that the companies they back are genuinely contributing to the betterment of society. Therefore, brands that are driven by purpose should adopt a transparent approach in their marketing strategy to demonstrate how they are instigating social change. This involves disclosing the impact their brand has had on the cause they are supporting. Most brands collect and analyze data to evaluate their impact over specific time frames.
As a marketer, you can use this opportunity to produce unique content by reporting on the joint impact that you and your customers have created. For instance, the TOMS Stories website showcases firsthand how their customers’ purchases are fostering change and leaving an impression. You can learn about the motive behind their Unity Collection which aims to promote equality and inclusion. Also, you can delve into their efforts to put a stop to gun violence. The company’s content marketing approach is the backbone of their compelling narrative as a brand with a purpose. This is noteworthy because it can aid in forging better brand trust and loyalty over time.
3. Always realign your purpose-driven digital marketing efforts back to your brand.
Remember that purpose-driven marketing involves both giving and receiving. It’s important to ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. Your marketing not only affects your customers, but it also shapes your business’s overall identity.
Consider the Adidas and Parley collection as an example. Adidas has executed purposeful marketing strategies for this partnership, focusing on the issue of ocean plastic pollution. Their promotional video thoroughly examines the detrimental impact of ocean plastics on the ecosystem. Adidas successfully integrates this problem with a solution by designing top-quality sports apparel made from plastic. This case demonstrates that the cause supported by a company becomes a crucial aspect of the brand story, influencing the customer base and attracting investment opportunities.
Why is Becoming Purpose-Driven the Path to Success in Today’s Market?
In essence, businesses that operate with a clear sense of purpose tend to perform better, attract superior talent, and gain more customers. On average, employees who are driven by a stronger sense of purpose and have definite social incentives are more productive. Although profit is a crucial objective of your organization, a purpose that extends beyond the bottom line motivates staff to work harder towards the goal of profitability. Nowadays, customers are more socially conscious, and they are more likely to respond positively to a business that demonstrates its commitment to being a part of a larger social and environmental context and improving the lives of all its stakeholders. Purpose-driven companies capture people’s hearts and minds rather than just marketing products and services, which is the key to their success.
How Can a Purpose-Driven Brand Change the World?
Brands that are driven by a purpose tend to appeal to consumers who are conscious and prioritize ethics. As a result, these consumers expect brands to prioritize their purpose and their values concerning the environment and ethics. This creates a market that thrives on providing both excellent service delivery and ethical practices, as well as generating profits and promoting positive change. This combination maintains a balance between purpose and profit, allowing companies to provide ethical products and services that satisfy their clients. Purpose-driven branding is a testament that it is possible and necessary for profit and ethics to coexist and work together.
BONUS: How to Choose the Right Digital Marketing Strategy for Your Business
To create an effective digital marketing plan, relying on the latest digital marketing fads or assumptions about your client base won’t suffice. Rather, it requires utilizing insights that are supported by data.
According to Jess Reilly, the chief marketing officer at Rebel Interactive Group, the key to successful marketing in the digital age is mastering people-based advertising. This involves delivering the right message to the right person, at the right time and on the right platform.
The process of selecting a digital marketing plan involves creating profiles of potential customers, determining your objectives, selecting appropriate digital marketing resources, and evaluating the effectiveness of your strategy.
1. Build buyer personas to understand your target audience.
Fictitious individuals that embody typical customers that could potentially be interested in your brand are called buyer personas. Employing these personas assist you in promoting your offerings to this specific group of people.
According to Reilly, the development of buyer personas aids in defining your marketing approach by shedding light on your buyers’ identities, the challenges they encounter, and most crucially, the objectives they aim to achieve, all of which inform your messaging strategy.
When creating customer personas, take into account the subsequent details pertaining to your intended audience.
- Job type
- Interests
- Age
- Gender
- General demographics
- Most-used social platforms
- Beliefs and values
Subsequently, tailor your approach taking into account these particulars.
If you want to comprehend the pain points and desires of a particular market, acquire opinions and customer feedback by gathering survey data through the internet, email, or text.
2. Identify your goals, and align them to your strategy.
What specific goals do you have for your marketing strategy? These could include developing brand recognition, boosting product sales or expanding your social media audience. It’s important to clearly define your objectives so you can focus your efforts appropriately. Let’s delve into some examples.
If your goal is to heighten brand awareness:
Is your brand known to your potential customers who prefer to purchase from reputable brands? Do they trust and are they familiar enough with your brand to consider making a purchase?
If enhancing your company’s reputation and promoting brand visibility are main focuses.
If your goal is to raise consumer awareness:
Your company may experience low search volumes for target keywords when consumers fail to comprehend how your product or service can enhance their lives, leading them to not actively seek out your company.
In the event that your sales process and website traffic are not problematic but your customer base seems unaware, your objective in digital marketing should be to inform potential clients about a particular issue they face and present your resolution.
If your goal is to increase traffic:
Most business owners prioritize traffic as it is a crucial key performance indicator (KPI) that can yield greater sales leads and actual sales when of higher quality.
To achieve higher traffic, concentrate primarily on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, successful search engine optimization (SEO), and email marketing.
If your goal is to increase leads:
Generating leads for your sales team should be your priority instead of expecting customers to make their first purchase of an expensive or complex product online.
If your goal is to increase sales:
Strategic utilization of email marketing and an increase in traffic to your website landing page are likely necessary measures to boost sales.
3. Choose digital marketing tools based on your primary goals.
Numerous marketing tools are available, such as templates for content marketing schedules, social media platforms, and email marketing applications. Each tool has its own advantages and intended uses, hence the appropriate selection will be contingent upon your objectives.
Prentiss stated that each business has distinct requirements or deficiencies. This could include inadequate feedback, unfavorable positioning on Google, or an urgent need to revamp their website. Regardless of the specific necessities, every business demands a unique solution.
Arrange your priorities and review your budget to identify the most advantageous investments. In case a sale is distant, opt for cost-effective tools like emails and social media posts, as there will be some loss in your sales funnel. You may later explore and test other available tools.
4. Audit your current digital marketing strategy.
Auditing your digital marketing approach entails evaluating past successes, experimenting with current methods, and identifying necessary adjustments.
- Discover the true ROI of past efforts. You’ll need to measure ROI for digital marketing campaigns you ran in the past. Reilly advised business owners to ask how much “lift” each marketing channel provided in previous seasons. “Using a combination of customer purchase data, digital tracking data and any traditional media buys you have, you can dive into the data to discover what your true ROI was in the past and opportunities to grow in the future,” Reilly said.
- Test new strategies. Before going live with your new strategy, test it to see what might work and what won’t. Spend time figuring out if there are aspects of your strategy that can be fixed or improved.
- Determine what needs tweaking. Prentiss recommended monitoring your progress to determine what might need shifting. “We set daily, weekly and sometimes even monthly reminders to check on the progress we made,” Prentiss said. “The daily and weekly check-ins on what we created are very important in the beginning so we can adjust what we are doing. This truly ensures the success of the campaign.”
In essence, if your return on investment is not satisfactory due to the cost per lead exceeding the profit earned from the final sale, adjustments should be made.
