Driving conversion through digital priming
As competition grows fiercer and digital marketing costs continue to increase, charities need to evolve their approach to ensure that investment in digital fundraising keeps generating results.
While a focus on conversion activity may feel like the best way to cut costs and maintain the activity that drives donation, it's a short-term strategy. For longer term results, organisations need to start at the top of the funnel to boost conversions and find new audiences.
More response-focused than awareness activity, and more consideration-focused than conversion activity, priming activity sits at the middle of the funnel and is designed to prepare audiences for future asks with the aim of improving the efficiency of subsequent activity.
At GOOD, we work with charities and not-for-profits to maximise their digital income. Sharing three key ways organisations can drive conversion through digital priming in the year ahead:
Tell stories
Although many causes are self-explanatory, some are a little more complicated and require audience education. If you represent a charity that works in one of these areas, you don’t have the luxury of skipping the awareness and consideration phases.
As well as educating, the stories you tell also need to drive emotion. To build a connection, the narrative needs to make audiences feel.
Digital priming gives you the opportunity to deliver crucial information and trigger an emotional response to help potential donors begin their journey to understanding the cause and, but extension, your charity.
Set yourself apart
With most charities trying to engage the same people on the same channels in the shortest time possible, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for audiences to understand the differences between organisations and figure out who best aligns with their beliefs.
It’s not always enough to promote the issues. You need to make sure your organisation stands out from the crowd, connects itself to the cause, and helps audiences understand your role in the solution before asking for their contribution.
Context is as important as content
Your target audiences will have channel preferences, but not every channel is built for response. It’s important that you are considering how best to use placements to serve a relevant ask to the right people.
Priming can come in many forms, not just from charities themselves. For example, if a news story is educating an audience at scale, charities could leverage specific placements to deliver a tailored ask.
- 70% of consumers in the UK are more likely to recall an online ad when it runs alongside contextually relevant content
- 81% of people said they prefer to see ads that are relevant to what they are viewing
- 65% of consumers said they have a more favourable view of brands that offer contextually relevant ads
Source: The Power of Context report from agency Integral Ad Science/WARC
A great example of this is Crisis’s quick response advert as part of their 2023/4 Winter Campaign. GOOD worked with the charity to produce a fast turnaround, topical digital ad in response to Suella Braverman’s comment that “homelessness is a lifestyle choice.” That digital advert alone raised over a quarter of a million pounds as part of the wider campaign.
If you’d like to discuss an upcoming digital campaign, please get in touch with Lucy Martin, lucy.martin@goodagency.co.uk
