Skip to main content

Marketing Your Nonprofit with Behavioral Science, Part 2

This article dives into behavioral science and social marketing. You might want to review Part 1 before continuing. Last time I focused on fundraising and behavioral science. I'll assume you are somewhat familiar with things like framing and hypothesis testing. 

To review something else, social marketing is about using advertising and persuasive writing tactics to convince people to change their behavior for their own benefit versus to benefit a company. You get people to do things for themselves rather than buy this product or select that service. 

How you do this is a subject of several books. I can introduce some of the scientific concepts you need right here. 

Literature Review:

Don't make things up. Figure out what's work on similar campaigns in the past. And find out what academic literature has to teach you about "selling" your ideas. Scholars have published research on public health initiatives like vaccination. If you are trying to promote vegetarian eating or walking instead of driving, you can probably find research that applies.

Grab a notebook and spend a few minutes writing down likely search terms. You're researching behavior change and social marketing, so use those terms. Write down some terms that describe what you are trying to influence and what sort of change it is. Think of abstract domains like 'public health' or 'fitness' and concrete activities like 'flossing' and 'carpooling'. 

Don't let this literature review task intimidate you either. Most likely, you'll find plain English reports or short abstracts that give you enough information to work on. 

Secondary Research:

You don't need numbers to sell your idea, but it can help. If you have statistics in mind that you want to use, fine. If not, do some digging in existing research databases and reports. The United States government and the United Nations are treasure troves of data on health, education, crime, and poverty. 

Hypothesis Testing:

Want to test what you learned? Then you are ready for hypothesis testing. You don't have to call it that, but you do need to test your social marketing ideas. Lots of possibilities will come to mind as you work:

1. Will "Sign Our Pledge" get better results than "I'm eating to save the planet."?

2. Does using a negative emotion in the header affect our click-thru rate? 

3. Does a concrete goal increase commitment versus a general goal or promise? For example, does asking people to eat no meat on Friday work better than asking people to eat less meat? 

Think about your audience and the behavior you want them to change. This thinking should lead to other things you can test. And you might want to test memes or videos in addition to text-only messaging. 

Advice on Using Video Content:

Do use videos if you can. Use presentations, animated explainers, testimonials, music videos, or whatever else will get the message across. Just make sure you focus on your social marketing message. A history of your organization with a "Go Vegetarian!" at the end will not help the cause. Focus on using video to motivate people. 

Here are some tips on how to make those videos "sell" the change you want people to make:

1. Tell an emotional story when you can. 

2. Use your content to produce amusement, anger, anxiety, fear, or joy.

3. Try to evoke mastery, outrage, control, or pride when you can. 

4. Speak to those emotions in your title, description, and call to action. 

If you have the resources, test a few videos. Change one element at a time if you can. For example, you can focus on evoking anxiety in one video and the related text, then produce essentially the same thing but emphasize amusement. In both videos, try to give viewers a sense of control over their fates though. And otherwise don't change the imagery or language. 

Leverage the Science of Behavior Change:

This post only introduces some tools you can use to encourage healthy eating, walking, volunteering, and lots of other worthwhile things. I hope you'll read the post again and take notes. How can you use what you learned on whatever marketing challenge is top of mind today? 






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Imagining New Economic Models

I was listening to NPR today. One of the stories concerned a nuclear power plant this about to close. The plant is a major employer in that area, so this closure will be a huge economic hit to lots of families and local businesses. Can something be done about this? Well, no. The only approach in this situation and thousands like it around the world is to creatively replace the lost income and tax revenue. One can assume the jobs, and associated tax revenue, will not be coming back in the case of that power plant closure. Another source of money must be found by local governments, displaced workers, and small businesses. I'm sure there are some programs for this now but the story sparked an idea: A group like the Taproot Foundation or the De Bono Group could offer pro bono consulting on new ways to cut costs, or generate revenue, for the communities and new business models for local businesses that are in danger of going under.
Post a Comment
Read more

A New Approach to Activism

Nonprofit executives report the same issues in survey after survey. Fundraising, communication with donors, budget woes, effectiveness, and efficiency come up in some form. Performance measurement is a cause for concern, though that goes to efficiency and effectiveness - How do you know how well you are doing? How do potential donors know? Is there a simple system out there that could make it easier to answer such questions, and deal with those other issues too? At the risk of sounding like an Internet marketing hack, the answer is a qualified 'yes' to both halves of that question. Allow me to explain. To have an effective organization you need ideas, people, money, and a plan. There are a few other things too, but I think you follow. Ideas - Look for ideas that promise more impact for less cost. Look for ideas that allow you to attack the real problem instead of the symptoms. Doing so will probably require breakthrough thinking. Do not expect inspiration to come from som...
Post a Comment
Read more

Aggressive Humanism?

This is just a random post sparked by some things I learned by watching The Big Question on BBC. Actually, I just watched the clips on YouTube. Nevertheless, here is the idea: Activists have manuals for various things, but humanist activists don't have a manifesto and guide to effective action in pursuit of a humanistic world. What to do, when, and where? That would be the activism manual part. The Humanist Manifesto gives a pretty good overview of what humanism is and why it matters. My manual would elaborate on how to enact the values of humanism in the modern world. Recent developments in systems theory, climate science, positive psychology, and behavioral economics need to be accounted for. What do these things mean for humanist activism? Some of the answers are clear, but others are not. That's what I like to think anyway. There need to be instructions on various sorts of direct actions. How do we deal with churches that post anti-gay slogans outside? Do you picket the...
Post a Comment
Read more