Most businesses want to do good and make a difference in the world by donating to charity. But a few marketing savvy businesses have learned how to leverage their charitable donations to generate massive positive publicity for their business in the local community; and have turned a good deed into an effective advertising strategy to get new customers.
One of the hardest things for anyone to do, is to do a good deed and not tell anyone about it.
Usually, this would be a good thing.
But, if you make a donation to a specific charity like “Save the Children,” and you tell your friends and family about it, you are also promoting the charity.
According to Dr. Pamala Wiepking, of Rotterdam School of Management, “people don’t generally talk about their charitable donations; and this should change.” Her research shows that “if you really want to support a charity, you must tell people how much you donate and to which charity. This stimulates others to donate too and changes our perspective on philanthropy.”
In a recent survey by LendingTree, they revealed that 56% of Americans donated to charity in 2021, at an average of $574.
Is charity something that’s important to you? If your business could donate to charity AND have a third party do a business spotlight on you that reaches thousands of people in your community, wouldn’t that be good? What if you were also able to get hundreds of new customers from them seeing positive publicity about your business, wouldn’t that be great?
That’s something that many other local businesses are doing right now – donating to charity, and promoting the charity; and as an added bonus, promoting their business and generating many new customers from it!
According to marketing expert, Jared Braverman, “people listen to feedback and positive reviews from other people, and use this to make purchasing decisions. When giving a speech, for example, it’s always better to have someone else introduce you and say nice things about you, rather than to introduce yourself, and say nice things about yourself.”
You may be wondering though, how can these businesses look like a hero, if they are bragging about their own good deeds? And where or how will people hear about these good deeds?
The answer to that is they needed a third party to talk about them. They also needed some publicity to reach people in their local community.
You also may be wondering how much did these businesses need to donate to charity? Or, how much did it cost to generate the publicity?
The answer to that is surprisingly less than you may think…
Many of these companies were able to both donate to charity and reach over 10,000 people that live within 5 miles of their business for less than $1000 dollars.
As a veteran marketer working with small businesses, Jared Braverman has seen first-hand the struggles that many small businesses face to launch effective advertising campaigns. “Many businesses have no clue which strategies or platforms they should be focusing on, and end up spending thousands of dollars on ineffective campaigns, with no real understanding of why they failed.”
Today, he is doing something he’s never done before… He created a free interactive quiz, that will help you determine whether this strategy will work for your business, and provide you with the exact steps for you to take to generate a media blitz of positive publicity based on a small donation you make to charity.