Would Your UK Charity Benefit From Marketing Support?Marketing for charities and non-profits is such a big sector, as every charities goal is to raise brand awareness for their cause.
Marketing in the non-profit sector is a balancing act, since the money to pay the marketing company comes from charitable donations from the UK public.
The issue is finding the right marketing agency, as there are thousands around the UK.
We always advise choosing a marketing agency that has experience in doing marketing for charities and non-profits.
Just fill in the form to get free advice and quotes from marketing companies that work with charitable companies.
There are around 200,000 registered charities in the UK, many of these are based in London.
Non-profit organisations are spread over all walks of life (children, animals, marine, air force, birds, livestock, water, food, homeless, religion).
There are so many charities in the UK that the government has a specialist department set up to manage advise and tax each one (The Charity Commission).
Charities are growing in numbers in the UK, partly to do with good works and good morals, partly to do with the tax benefits that come with being registered as a charitable organisation.
Remploy is a great example one that works in the business sector (run by the Department of Work and Pensions). Remploy was set up just after the war to provide employment opportunities for the soldiers returning from Europe.
They have diversified across a broad range of industry sectors and is still a government sponsored program.
Set up to help provide employment to people that have social and physical restrictions to getting work in the private sector.
Marketing is all about creating awareness, about letting people know a specific message and encouraging them to buy into it. Without it, your charity will not have a voice to support your cause.
Charities all have a unique message about your cause.
What it is your charity stands for?
Why you stand for it and why you are seeking support from the UK public and business world?
Marketing does cost money. It is not free and can be very expensive.
This is something that many charities do struggle with. As donations from people and companies get spent on campaigns (paying for TV advertising, websites, radio campaigns, and marketing agencies themselves benefit from fees).
Many TV channels do offer reduced rates to non profits.
Many UK people feel that their donations do not go to the cause, that for every £1 donated, a high proportion goes to a marketing agency.
Some to the paid staff, and a small % to the charitable cause.
Reports are that as much as 70% of every £1 does not reach the cause for many charities especially larger ones such as Oxfam (that have high running costs and infrastructure).
However, you do need to market, for two reasons:
The problem is that all marketing needs to be paid for, planned, monitored and developed – which all costs money.
All charities are different, depending on the size and resources available different ones use different marketing tools to reach the UK public. Popular UK charities would be:
These are the main charities that get the most media exposure based around their marketing, most of which is TV or visual advertising based. Lesser known charities would be:
Many UK Christian churches are also registered and do provide support both in the local community and wider world.
The obvious choice is choosing a marketing agency that has experience in working with non-profit organisations.
There are a number of agencies (or all kinds) that do work with NPO’s (Non Profit Making Organisations) and are able to offer focused support and help for you.
It is always advised to meet and chat through ideas in detail rather than on the phone or via e-mail. As communication is so much better face to face giving the chance to objectives, targets and strategy to be discussed.
There are a wide variety of channels that you can use in order to create brand awareness for their various causes:
Advertising is quite controversial for you, as advertising is generally very expensive.
As the money for it comes from donors, this means that much of donations go to the commercial world rather than the charitable cause.
This being said, it is essential in order for you to gain media exposure for your cause.
There are numerous agencies offering advertising for charities (sometimes at a discount) having worked with NPO’s in the past.
Popular would be charities advertising on TV, radio and visual adverts, but it is quite a broad area of channels.
Advertising is central to marketing for charities.
All charities need websites. Large or small all need them in today’s world and there are website designers around that have experience in creating websites for charities.
A website serves as an information resource into your cause, your objectives, values and goals and also serves as a pivot to encourage donations.
Websites are an essential part of marketing for charities.
Public relations is not used by all, but certainly by the larger charities (the ones in the public eye).
This is to manage their brand, their image, create awareness and encourage donations to the cause.
There are many PR companies around the UK that have specialist experience in doing PR for charities or have worked with them as part of a broader mix of clients.
Being found on the internet is quite important for you, but not a major issue.
Your websites tend to get good ranks from search engines naturally due to them being .org (in fact, for private companies to get links from you is an SEO technique); however SEO is needed.
However as you have 200,000 non profit competitors, SEO for charities is important.
Paid advertising is very popular for many non-profits, as most cannot afford expensive advertising such as traditional advertising or TV advertising. All the leading UK charities have adverts on the search engines to get maximum exposure.
PPC is popular among NPO’s as it can be highly targeted.
There are many PPC companies that can do PPC for charities and can offer support services to help with management and data collection.
Social media marketing is quite new as far as the advertising world is concerned and many are still getting to grips with using it in the best possible way.
Pretty much all UK non-profits have a Facebook page, where donations can be made.
Many marketing companies are offering support for NPO’s on the social media side of things. This is to gain Facebook likes, Twitter followers etc. To broaden the sphere of influence that a charity has on social media platforms. The latest social media platform is Tik Tok, which is proving very popular with charities.
Social media is a fast growing part of marketing for charities.
Telemarketing for charities is becoming very popular, both calling consumers at home, and also businesses.
Telemarketing is a powerful form of direct marketing that can quickly get non profits into the consumers eye.
Promotional gifts for charities is very popular.
We have all seen Oxfam cups or t-shirts with sponsored charities. They are great to raising awareness and people tend to keep hold of useful gifts.
There is the need of marketing for charities as there are over 166,000 registered charities in the UK. Most marketing agencies will offer a slightly reduced price for the work that they offer to you, however it is still wise to shop around and get quotes.
The main thing you need is a return on investment.
Marketing for charities is a fickle area that often does not show clear results, so for you there is a lot riding on getting returns for donor’s money.
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