National Days & Giving Tuesday
If you’ve spent any more than 30 seconds on social media in the past few years, you will be well aware of various “National Days” for all sorts of weird and wonderful things.
February 9th marks National Pizza Day, September 26th is the European Day of Languages and December 4th is, obviously, National Sock Day. While you would have to wait 3 weeks to have enough pairs to last until the following Christmas, a day that you shouldn’t wait to learn about and understand is Giving Tuesday in 2023.
Last year marked a decade since Giving Tuesday was born in the US, and it is celebrated on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. It was incorporated into the UK a few years after that and has been celebrated ever since.
To put it simply, Giving Tuesday is the driving force behind getting people involved in good causes. From spending an afternoon in a soup kitchen, to campaigning for cleaner and more efficient public transport, Giving Tuesday covers all facets of charitable assistance.
Of course, one of the main things charities rely on most is donations. Whether that is financial, or the acquisition of goods, clothes, food and more, they are an integral part of helping charities stick to their message and help out those who need it the most.
Online Action – How to Start
It might be easy at this point to now go out and think about where you are going to post, what tools you will use and what results/actions you are looking for. However, there are a few steps you need to address before you take that step.
First of all, the campaign that you are about to create; what is it about? Is it:
A one-off post/video or a series of content?
Prepared in advance, ready to create or undrafted?
Pushing a specific action for users to take
Paid advertising or organic reach?
Involving or educating the community?
An event that last one day or a longer duration
There will be more questions and statements to consider as your campaign comes together, but this should serve as a solid foundation for you to begin creating content.
It is crucially important that your message, the reason behind the campaign, is clear throughout the campaign so users are given clear direction towards the point of your campaign, and they clearly understand how to digest the content, what they should do and why that is important to you.
Comparing Large Charities & Small Charities
Smaller and/or local charities need to build up trust in a much more powerful way than that of the bigger names, such as Barnados, Cancer Research UK, RSPCA etc.
They have the budgets for TV advertising, getting famous faces to endorse the message and a larger number of volunteers to man phone lines, talk to people in public and help people directly.
Giving Tuesday has various names and charities involved that help spread awareness, from sports stars like Gary Lineker and Tom Daley to musicians such as Zayn and Lady Gaga.
Their website’s homepage clearly sums up the aim of the charity and a number of key details, with a huge part of this being the embedded video directly from YouTube where you can view a short, trailer-like video about Giving Tuesday and what they do.
Moreover, this could be an incredibly beneficial starting point for charities to try and start off a campaign with.
If they can get in touch with some local faces, be it celebrities or local businesspeople; they can all help spread the word around their circle and even further afield; making it a clever, organic way of delivering your message.
This could be from one or multiple social posts, appearing on posters in the local area, their voice on a radio advert and so much more.
So long as the message conveyed is clear and meaningful, it will be hard to get negative engagement from such an action, making it an imperative objective for charities to try and utilise.
Online Action to Consider
Now that we’ve covered a key strategy, let’s keep the ball rolling by identifying some more interesting campaign actions.
A deep dive into our top 5 begins with…
Organic Social Posts
No, this isn’t us saying simply, post content to Facebook, YouTube and the like. You should curate quality, organic content that anyone will be able to digest. Use fundraiser tools on Facebook and Instagram to help aid your cause.
Whether that is a post that links directly to a fundraiser, or adding the donate button to your page or post, there are various tools across all big social platforms for you to investigate and incorporate.
Not only would Giving Tuesday highlight people’s organic content from across the world on the day in question, but they would look to build anticipation by posting content days and weeks in advance, with events, stories and charities that are integral to the success of Giving Tuesday.
Our second point stays within the same realm, as we take a trip to look at…
Paid Social Posts
Unfortunately, unless you are McDonald’s, Amazon, or something within that ilk, not everyone is going to know who you are.
Organic is great for engaging with your current audience with the hope that a number of your followers will share content with their friends, family and audience of their own.
But Paid social is a fantastic way of appearing in feeds, to an audience strictly of your choosing. You can target paid social ads is a number of ways, so you ensure visibility amongst people you are certain will engage with your content, your charity and your goals.
Learn more about Paid social by visiting our Advertising for Non-Profits page:
Point three stems away from social as we delve into…
Email Marketing
If you haven’t already got an email list, we highly recommend you build one with useful contacts as soon as you possibly can.
However, if you already have one, make the most of it by tailoring emails to previous donors, volunteers and the like so that they can be made aware of any new campaigns you push.
Schedule emails for specific times and dates so that they hit inboxes at the right time for people to engage and act.
Our fourth point is going to describe…
SMS Marketing
One of the most effective large-scale campaigns involves SMS marketing and how you can get your message, into people’s messages.
Fewer non-profits and businesses in general use this method as part of their marketing strategy, meaning you could hit a real hole in the market when trying to get people on board.
In a similar vein to Email marketing, you can look at scheduling text messages to your SMS list at various times and days.
Not every text message has to be the same for everyone on your list. Identify your audience and what you think they would be most likely to do, whether that’s donate, volunteer, organise an event etc.
The final point is a real expertise of ours…
Google Ads
Over 4 billion people around the world use Google and its products, so it’s fair to say that you can target quite a few people with quality advertising on Google Ads.
Alongside this is the Google Grants scheme, providing charities and non-profits with $10,000 worth of ad credits per month. Learn more about the scheme by visiting our page here:
Your landing page will be critical to the success of a campaign on Google, so ensure it clearly reflects your charity’s message.
Make the process easy for your users by including a donation button, an email sign-up link and more.
An Overview
Giving Tuesday is an incredible cause which you should definitely check out, and even look to get involved with. Furthermore, they provide a fantastic benchmark for all charities to aim for.
Their marketing efforts will never go unnoticed, from the content they produce directly, to the celebrities that promote their efforts, to the general public who get involved at any step along the way.
All of the points we have covered are going to be integral steps towards building an incredible campaign for pushing your charity’s goals out into the wider world.
If you would like to learn more about anything and everything discussed in this blog, please get in touch with Optimyzd today and we would be more than happy to arrange a chat with you.
