The wonderful thing about this day and age is that anyone can effectively promote an idea they believe in. Raising and maintaining awareness is no longer something that only a large business, nonprofit, government agency, or celebrity could manage. Whatever your cause is, you’re likely to have a wide range of affordable options for promoting it.
If you have a cause that you believe needs more attention, here are some tried and tested ideas to get people interested.
1.) Eye-Catching Wearables
Wearables such as silicone wristbands, t-shirts, buttons, or trucker caps are effective and often underrated promotional tools. The durability of such items can last for years, which means their message could be potentially seen by thousands of people over their lifetime.
This gives them a phenomenally low cost for each impression. And if someone wearing a promotional wristband or shirt makes an appearance on a popular vlog or television, your message may be put in front of potentially millions of people.
Of course, you can give wearables away to spread word of your cause. Sending them to influencers and celebrities who you believe share your views is one particularly effective way of leveraging your wearables. If the wearables are well-designed, they may even be sought after simply for their aesthetic appeal.
Moreover, buying wearables in bulk is cost-effective. Take wholesale wristbands, for example. Since you’re purchasing them in large quantities, manufacturers will sell them to you at a discounted price, giving you more value for your money.
2.) Virtual Conferences
Conferences are not just a way to get your message out there, but they’re essential for a few other reasons. First, they’re an indispensable part of building your credibility as a subject matter expert. Next, they make it possible to better gauge the interests and opinions of people engaged in your advocacy. Lastly, they’re a vital part of building a wider network from which to promote and maintain interest in relevant ideas.
You don’t need to have a lot of money to host a conference these days either. Virtual conferences have taken off since the pandemic. Aside from being far more affordable to arrange than conventional conferences, they can have a potentially global reach, making them worth considering if you want to have the widest audience possible.
3.) Email Campaigns
Emails remain a particularly useful method of reaching a targeted audience. The great thing about using emails to promote causes is that they are easily automated with the use of widely-available tools. ActiveCampaign, MailChimp, and Hubspot are just some of the many developers of excellent email automation software with free or low-cost features.
To make the emails pop, you can use free templates from online design tools such as Canva to ensure that your content looks professional and above-board. Make sure to include links to your most active social media platforms so that people who learn about your advocacy through email can instantly become part of the wider conversation.
4.) Search Engine Optimization
If you have a website (as you should) and your cause needs to be pursued in the long term, you may want to consider investing in search engine optimization.
Search engine optimization or SEO is the practice of improving the quantity and quality of online traffic that goes to a website. The principles apply to major search engines such as Google and Bing and could also be used on smaller internal search engines such as those used by social media and ecommerce sites.
The great thing about SEO is that it requires a relatively small investment compared to the continuous value that it provides. When done well, it can create a continuous stream of quality traffic for your website and social media pages, helping maintain interest in your advocacy without much further action needed.
5.) Regular Vlogs or Podcasts
Uploading podcasts or vlogs frequently not only helps boost your online presence through SEO, but also offers opportunities to build an emotionally-invested audience. Posting these regularly on popular platforms such as TikTok or YouTube is a good way to be found by potential advocates who you may have otherwise been reached through other means.
6.) Fundraising Events
Fundraisers are a classic way to both raise funds and awareness for a cause. These could be done by your advocacy group or in partnership with other groups who have complementary causes.
As with conferences, fundraising events are now increasingly being held online. Because fundraising events tend to attract people with less awareness of the cause than usual conference attendees, doing them in-person may make more sense as it will offer an opportunity for you to make a more direct emotional appeal. What’s more, physical events are great times to give away silicone wristbands and other promotional items as well.
7.) Challenges
Challenges are nothing new. However, the social media age has significantly increased their desirability as a way to promote different causes. Viral challenges such as No Makeup Selfies for cancer awareness, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, and Movember for men’s health issues were able to harness the power of social media to raise funds and spread the word about important health advocacies.
Challenges don’t have to be viral to be all that successful either. Challenges like Movember have been popular for decades simply because of persistence. Given the relatively low cost to start these challenges, any imaginative one that creatively illustrates your advocacy is worth trying.
8.) Quality Infographics
Infographics can be especially powerful as they leverage data to amplify an emotional appeal. Perhaps the most interesting use of infographics was the recent “flatten the curve” campaigns launched by different governments and nonprofits all over the world at the start of the pandemic. Of course, infographics can also be used to make similarly strong appeals for virtually any cause.
While it’s often best to let professional graphic designers handle more complex infographics, if you have solid data, then you can make simple ones with free online tools such as those offered by Visme and PiktoChart.
We hope that at least a few of these campaign ideas will help your advocacy get the attention it deserves. Have you tried these ideas before? Be sure to start trying these and other promotional strategies today.
