We are truly lucky at SocialToaster. We get to work with a wide range of fun, exciting brands and non-profits that manage outstanding advocacy marketing programs. From time to time, we shine a spotlight on one of these high-performing programs to identify potential advocacy marketing tips, tactics, and best practices from their program efforts to help support our other clients. For this Client Spotlight segment, we’ve chosen a non-profit organization near and dear to our hearts: the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA).
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Non-profit Spotlight: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
We’re proud to have worked with ASHA for the past four years. Rather than use the SocialToaster platform to support a yearlong evergreen program, ASHA instead uses SocialToaster to support a month-long sprint campaign. Every May for the past four years, ASHA activates its advocates to build awareness of its organization and members—the professionals who diagnose and treat speech, language, swallowing, and hearing disorders.:
To keep their advocates engaged and sharing during the month of May, ASHA awards weekly prizes through sweepstakes drawings. The more advocates share, the more entries they earn in the sweepstakes—providing a strong incentive to stay involved. Over the past four years, ASHA’s program has consistently been a high-performer. Here are just a few of the program’s raw performance statistics:
- Their active audience numbers over 4,000 people, giving ASHA a potential reach of 2.7M people on social media.
- The program has earned them over 2.3M impressions with over 25K total content shares.
- ASHA’s advocacy email open rate is 34.8%, well above SocialToaster’s benchmark rate of 15%.
- To date, ASHA’s advocacy marketing program has earned over $379K in earned media value, which is a staggering 5x ROI.
To add a bit of clarity on that last point, if ASHA were to try to buy the equivalent number of impressions, social engagements, and site traffic generated by its advocacy marketing program, it would cost them 18x more than what they are currently investing in SocialToaster.
Talk about generating a strong return-on-investment!
Lessons Learned from ASHA’s Advocacy Marketing Success
So, what is their secret? How can you build an advocacy marketing program for your non-profit that mirrors this strong performance?
1) Recruit Advocates Who Believe in Your Non-Profit or Cause
ASHA’s strong program performance is due to the amazing advocates that have signed up to join its program. These advocates, largely ASHA members, believe in the mission of the organization and are invested in ASHA’s success.
ASHA isn’t alone in this regard. SocialToaster has a variety of non-profit clients that utilize the SocialToaster platform to help spread a more intimate and personal message about their cause. By leaning on their cause-supporters, these non-profits can benefit from the increased reach, awareness and engagement of their content without having to spend money to promote it.
2) Focus Your Advocacy Efforts During Your Top Fundraising Months
May is designated as Better Hearing and Speech Month—an important month for ASHA. For this reason, it chooses to focus all its advocacy efforts through SocialToaster on driving as much participation and awareness as possible during these weeks. By creating a strong sense of urgency, ASHA is able to rally and inspire its advocates to be engaged in the program for the entire month-long effort.
Providing a weekly prize or incentive is another way that ASHA drives ongoing support throughout the month. Multiple prizes give its advocates multiple opportunities to be awarded for their advocacy efforts. This ongoing carrot helps to drive participation in the program throughout the month.
3) Theme Your Content
To further keep advocates engaged, ASHA regularly themes its content mix. Each week a new theme of content is presented to their advocates. This not only keeps their advocates engaged with new content, it also helps keep their advocate’s audience engaged. The more your brand or organization mixes up the focus of your content, the more likely your advocates are to share that content with their social feeds.
Each theme is related to its overarching messaging in some way. Through this strategy, ASHA can reinforce its organization’s key messaging while also showcasing the full spectrum of its work within the community.
In Conclusion
ASHA has earned its strong performance due in part to the advocacy efforts of its program members. These advocates believe in ASHA’s mission and are invested in its ongoing success.
We’re honored to be able to work with ASHA in support of their great work. Its advocacy program has returned an incredible ROI and we look forward to hearing even more about their continued advocacy marketing success.
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Inspired by such achievements? Don’t wait. Get in touch with SocialToaster today to learn more about how your non-profit can launch an advocacy marketing program to drive awareness, engagement, and fundraising support.