Your Awareness Problem and What to Do About It
All but the largest charity brands are mostly unknown by most people. We all fish in the same pond for the same donors over and over. And most fundraising professionals believe a dollar not spent on conversion is a dollar wasted.
But how to break out of the doom loop of rising costs, lower performance and fewer donors when all the spend is aimed at the same people and evaluated on the same conversion metrics?
It’s seems silly to say but people can’t give to you if they don’t know you exist. Awareness matters and the only way to increase awareness is to increase Reach. Every person who goes from 0 to 1 on exposure to your brand has been reached. And because of what’s dubbed the mere exposure effect, people reached are predisposed to have a favorable view of your brand.
And who should pay for this Reach and awareness building? Fundraisers and within your existing budget.
This data is from Fospha, one of the many attribution platforms on the market. What is this showing?
- Upper funnel advertising is ads bought with awareness goals, usually priced at cost per thousand and very cheap to run because there’s less competition as everyone’s incorrectly focused on only bottom of the funnel conversion.
- The blue bar is those brands running Reach and Awareness ads in addition to conversion ads.
- The purple bar is brands running only conversion.
- Look at the difference in ROAS. A 42% increase by redirecting some of your fundraising budget to the activity you likely thought was either a waste of money or someone else’s job.
What’s the catch? If you only run this experiment for 2 or 3 months you won’t see a positive return. Your cost to acquire and ROAS will be worse, not better. It takes a bit of time for Reach and Awareness spend to deliver down funnel.
But it will deliver. And the best news? You only need to divert 10% of your conversion fundraising spend to likely see positive returns, though plenty of brands go higher and reap more reward.
Kevin
2 responses to “Your Awareness Problem and What to Do About It”
Behavioral Science Q & A
Integrating an individual giving appeal with other communications from a charity can have both positive and negative effects, and the outcome largely depends on how it’s executed. Advantages of Integration Brand Consistency: Maintaining a consistent appearance and messaging across all communications can reinforce the org’s brand identity and strengthen brand recognition and trust among your […]
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I’m not aware of any in-market tests specifically comparing recurring vs. gift frequency language. I suspect the answer might not be the same with all gift frequencies, nor with all people. It sounds like a great opportunity for you to test and find out what works for your audience. Based on the literature, here’s a couple […]
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Based on what we know from existing data, those renewal notices can actually be pretty effective in getting people to donate. They tap into our psychology – creating a sense of urgency, reminding us of past support, and using personalization to make the message hit home. They’re playing on our natural tendencies to feel obligated […]
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Interesting question. I had a quick look at the testing done on this topic. On the positive side, in all cases, over half of donors decide to cover the fee. In some cases, it goes as high as 65%. Not a negligible percentage at all. Here’s another test from iRaiser showing consistent results (see point […]
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There’s just one thing to consider when designing a supporter journey: the supporter. More specifically, you need to take into account: Who the supporter is i.e. their identity, which is the reason they support this cause, and their personality, which describes the way they “see” and process the world. These will determine the kind of […]
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I’m not an expert in this but a quick search surfaced this article on the effect of tax reforms on 2019’s charitable giving. The researchers didn’t find a reduction. Actually, they observed an “increase in charitable contributions in 2019, even with the lower tax rates and the dramatically smaller number of taxpayers who itemize their […]
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Could you define the acronyms in this? I’m guessing ROAS means “return on ad spend”, but I don’t know CAC or CPP offhand.
Hi Dan, hope all is well. Yes, ROAS is return on ad spend. CAC is cost to acquire and CPP is a bit arcane but cost of reaching one percentage point of the target audience with an advertisement – more common in out of home, TV etc.