In “Questions From The Client”, we reach into our grab bag of client queries to answer a question that we often hear current and potential SocialToaster clients asking.
Today’s question: Can faith-based organizations benefit from an advocacy marketing program?
Short answer: Yes!
Mid-sized answer: They absolutely can!
Long(ish) answer: While we work with many large, and small, for-profit companies at SocialToaster, we also have the opportunity to work with a number of faith-based organizations (record labels, stores, publications, and churches, to name a few) that utilize the SocialToaster platform to support their advocacy marketing efforts.
So, why are these organizations using advocacy marketing to support their missions?
To Have Their Content Seen
According to Buzzplant, more than 46% of churches say that social media is the most effective method of outreach, beating out door knocking, newspaper, radio, and TV. Just like brands, faith-based organizations’ audiences are active on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms.
However, even faith-based organizations have to cope with the current low levels of organic reach – the average reach of social posts on Facebook is only 2% of a page’s following. For brands with larger marketing budgets, promoting posts with advertising dollars is a way to increase this reach; however, with smaller budgets, faith-based organizations need to rely on the support of their members to share content with their personal friends and family. This is where an advocacy marketing program comes into play.
From a simple email, members can easily share their content directly to the social media platform of their choice. And since the average advocacy program member is connected to at least 500 people, it only takes a handful of dedicated members to have a meaningful impact on audience reach.
To Increase Email Click-Through and Content Engagement
Not only does an advocacy marketing program help a faith-based organization share their message with a new audience, it also allows them to better engage with their current membership. Did you know that the average click-through-rate is 115% higher for church emails that include at least one social media link?
Members are more likely to read emails that have some form of social sharing, a must-have for any successful advocacy marketing program. This is due, in part, to a fundamental motivation to share their faith with their friends and families. It’s up to the organization to tap into this motivation and make it easy for their members to share their faith with their friends and family.
To Build Relationships and Encourage Conversations
Advocacy marketing programs are ideal platforms for encouraging conversations both publicly (online) and privately (within the organization). Over 40% of millennials have participated in online faith discussions and a similar percentage have blogged or commented on a blog about their faith.
Utilizing advocacy marketing to drive conversations on specific blog posts or creating content that fosters conversations on a member’s Facebook page gives them the opportunity to engage in more conversation about their faith and foster their relationship with your organization.
Pro-Tip: SocialToaster’s built-in survey feature allows organizations to easily tap membership to ask for their opinions and feedback on various topics including the type of content they want to share, aspects of their faith they’d like the organization to support, or even opinions on the direction of larger projects or missions.
To Drive Action
While not every faith-based organization is selling a product (though some, like record labels and publishers, certainly are), all are driven by a fundamental mission. That mission could be to increase awareness of their faith, encourage donations and charitable efforts, or even to just offer support and a safe space to those in need.
Your active community has chosen to be a part of your organization because they believe in your mission. They want to help, so empower your fans to support you by:
- Giving them clear direction
- Laying out action steps (and make it easy!)
- Providing a feeling of contribution
- Thanking them for their support
Driving action is the crux of a successful advocacy marketing program.
Ready to see if an advocacy marketing program is right for your organization? Reach out today and let’s get started!
