Purposeful Digital Marketing

Purpose-driven digital marketing is more than just promoting products or services; it's about aligning your brand with meaningful social causes and values. In this approach, digital platforms are used to spread awareness, drive engagement, and inspire action towards issues that matter.

However, devising a digital marketing strategy for a purpose-led business can be more challenging than expected. In contrast to traditional organisations with goals of revenue and sales, businesses motivated by social causes can find it hard to grow their audience and spread their message. But in this digital age, a holistic online marketing strategy is a necessity.

Why Purpose-Driven Digital Strategy Can Be Tough?

• Focus on Short-Term Wins: As a purpose-driven business having a lot of 'quick win' KPIs can be the wrong approach. More so, building an engaged audience on your digital channels and seeing tangible returns could take time, which can lead to organisations falling back into the revenue-focused model.
• Lack of Authenticity: As with any purpose-driven strategy, creators can find it hard to come up with engaging content that is aligned with the core beliefs of the business. This affects engagement rates and audience retention which can tempt content creators to jump on the 'latest trends' to boost these metrics.
• Targeting the Wrong Audience: Most brands are tempted to blast their content and messaging to the widest audience group available, in a bid to increase engagement and retention. However, people want to see personalised and relevant information and not be spammed by content that they're not interested in.

These challenges call for a comprehensive digital strategy that utilises specific mediums to target separate audience groups with relevant messaging.

Digital Marketing Strategies

Content Marketing
How many times have we heard the phrase "Content is King"?

Well, it is true!

Content marketing is a strategy that involves creating relevant and engaging resources like blogs, articles, social posts, videos, podcasts and other media to attract and retain audiences.

It is important to nail this strategy to establish expertise and build brand awareness, which in turn boosts trust and loyalty among your consumers.

As a best practice, there are a few key elements needed to create high-quality material:

• Clarity: Your messaging should not leave your audience with more questions than answers. It should be explicit and come across easily.
• Concise: With reducing attention spans across the board, your content should be well presented and to the point. You don't want your audience to zone out mid-way through the content.
• Consistency: Avoid contradicting yourself across the different channels. The core should remain intact while the presentation can be tailored.
• Authenticity: Stay true to our purpose and beliefs. Trying to post content just for the sake of it doesn't work. Don't comment on issues that don't align with your WHY.
• Relevance: Not all of your audience would be interested in every message you design. Adopt a data-driven approach to segment your audiences and target them with personalised content.

Social Media Marketing
Social media is an inexpensive but effective way to market your brand and highlight your values and goals to a global audience. With over 4.9 billion people on social platforms, it has become a necessity rather than an option. It is an excellent tool for small businesses to capture and engage audiences that might have been a challenge due to financial constraints.

Here are some key benefits of utilising social media platforms to champion your purpose-driven goals:

• Reach: Given the global scale of social media, clubs and brands can bring in new fans from across the world. This is even more important considering the social causes you align with and their impact on societies in different countries.
  
  An example of this is highlighted in AS Roma's purpose-driven campaign on their social media channels. The club used their transfer videos on social platforms to spread awareness about missing children. This campaign has helped more than 10 children to reunite with their families.

Official: Leonardo Spinazzola is now a Roma player.

This summer #ASRoma will use each transfer announcement video on social media to help raise awareness about the search for missing children globally.
@MissingKids ❤️ @telefonoazzurro pic.twitter.com/sy9GheDhsg

— AS Roma English (@ASRomaEN) June 30, 2019

• Brand Awareness: Given how social media algorithms operate, the chances of your content trending worldwide are quite high. This increases the chances of putting your brand and purpose in front of new audiences who may share similar values.
• Drives Traffic: Social media is more than a standalone tool to boost engagement. It can be used to redirect fans to your club or other websites to complete certain actions like signing up for newsletters or participating in fundraisers or making donations.
• Potential for Influencer Collaborations: This is a secret weapon in the social media marketing space. Partnering with influencers who align with your purpose can boost your reach, credibility and trust. Moreover, access to the creativity of the influencers is an added perk that can make your content more engaging.

Email Marketing
In the world of social media and instant updates, email marketing has held its fort for a long time. It is an effective way of combining news, content, promotions, and service updates - delivered on a consistent basis. Moreover, emails seem to perform better in the sports industry compared to others with higher Open and Click rates:

Key Benefits of Email Marketing

• High ROI: It doesn't cost a lot to set up email marketing campaigns but the value it brings is invaluable. As your email audience lists would include people who have opted-in to hear from your brand, the reception and engagement of your content would be strong.
• Personalisation: The biggest advantage of email strategy is the ability to tailor the message based on user preferences. As a brand, you can deliver purposeful messages to relevant audiences based on the social causes they support or are interested in. Additionally, experimenting with subject lines, copy, and send times can enable more engagement than other media.
• Automation: Another interesting facet of email strategy is the ability to automate certain messages. For instance, as a purpose-driven business, you can design Welcome emails that introduce your purpose, and values. Other examples include reminders, follow-ups, and feedback emails which help in building loyalty and trust among your consumers.

To wrap it up, the evolution of technology and digitisation of social interactions means that utilising these channels is now a prerequisite for brand promotion. While it is challenging to build a purpose-led digital strategy, the benefits are worth the effort. Focussing on creative and authentic content as a foundation for your messages across social media and email channels is the right way to go about it. As some of the examples highlight, it is not only about marketing your products and tickets but about making a difference.

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