Digital Marketing Overview For Livestream Fundraisers
Before we jump blindly into Digital Funnels & Outreach Techniques, lets cover the basics.
Marketing is the communication of value to those interested in consuming our product or service so they benefit. The key elements being “Value” + “Those Interested” = “Benefit”. Truely successful marketing is the art of sharing a solution to those with a problem so they become more awesome by interacting with what we do:
Fire Flower + Mario = Throwing Fireballs
For us this means:
Livestream For Charity + Those Interested In That Content = Being Entertained & Making An Impact For Those In Need
The Value “Fire Flower” of our charity livestream is the entertainment and interaction of the fundraiser. This should already be hammered down from the first 4 steps of the guide.
Those Interested “Mario” that we should reach out to is entirely based on the details of the event. With the “what” of the event solidified, finding those interested in that content becomes much easier.
The Benefit “Throwing Fireballs” should be the overall focus of your marketing efforts. While event details definitely need to be communicated (we cover information pages step 5.A), you don’t convince Mario to grab a Fire Flower because the flower looks nice. If we want people to join our event, our focus should be on what makes them feel awesome: having an enjoyable time while knowing their participation raises money and awareness to help others.
Note: I come from a digital marketing background and much of the below strategies reflect that experience, focused into the charity live stream medium. You’re going to be learning a lot with you’re first few streams and through that you’ll end up building tools and strategies that work best for you. Please use the details below as a starting point, not an end all, for letting people know about your event.
Marketing Basics – The 4 Ps
Any beginning marketing class will teach you marketing has 4 core elements: Placement, Product, Price, and Promotion. This is important because controlling these four elements makes up the process for marketing anything and everything. While 3 of the 4 Ps have already been implemented by following this guide so far, it’s important to understand them all in order to make the last one, Promotion, successful.
Placement – Where People Interact With Us
The first P that we relate to for charity livestreaming is “Placement”. Placement traditionally is the location where a product or service is purchased and sometimes where it is consumed. Another way to phrase it is that placement refers to the place where a customer has their interaction with a business to completion. If you’re selling a physical good like a keyboard, placement would be a physical retail location or an online store where the transaction takes place. If you’re selling an experience like an amusement park, then placement both the location where tickets are purchased as well as the physical location of the amusement park itself. Obviously choosing the correct place where people interact with your product can make or break a business as ice in the arctic probably won’t sell well.
For our purposes, we’ve already implemented the decision of Placement in steps 1 and 2:
- Contacting the nonprofit to determine where/how people will donate to your organization
- Determining which broadcast host you will use so people can watch your event
Both watching the event and ensuring viewers can donate are the core crux for any successful charity stream. All the hype in the world won’t help you if you if people don’t know where to act on it.
Product – What Is The Item/Service & What Are It’s Features
The second P we relate to for charity streaming is “Product”. Product traditionally is the culmination of features of the item or service that are purchased and, again, sometimes where it is consumed. A simpler way to phase it is being the “what” that people pay for or the “value” mentioned in the first section. If it’s a physical good like a keyboard, then it’s all the elements of that keyboard from the plastic used in the keys to features like colored back-lighting to the packaging it comes in. If it’s a service/experience like an amusement park, then it’s every element that the attendee interacts with from the moment they start walking up to the gate to the moment they’re walking away (decor, rides, interaction with staff, food, etc). Ensuring your product can serve the needs of your customers is paramount for any business to grow & succeed.
For our purposes, we’ve already implemented the decisions on Product in step 3. Personal brand of those broadcasting, style of communication, type of entertainment (games, art, music, variety), giveaways, community interaction, passion for our cause, and much more all culminate into the value for those watching as we encourage them to donate to our nonprofit.
Price – What’s The Amount People Pay
The third P we relate to for charity livestreams is “Price”. Price traditionally is exactly what it seems, the amount that people will pay for a good or service. In physical goods like keyboards, this is usually just the price you pay in exchange for the item. However, depending on the good/service being provided, pricing can be also be broken down into different tiers/structures with premium features being offered at different prices. This can be seen in: different feature tiers for web services (Individual vs Team vs Businesses on CLS), microtransactions in free to play mobile games (free initial download, small payments for items in game), paid DLC in already released games (initial game purchase with additional purchases for bonus content), the list goes on and on.
For our purposes, we have also already covered this in step 3 through setting reward tiers for donation amounts and fundraising goals. Your overall goal is, of course, to raise as much money as possible for your cause, but breaking challenges and donation rewards into smaller sections can spur incentive to donate.
Promotion – How To Reach Those With A Problem We Can Solve
The final P we relate to for charity livestreaming is “Promotion”. Promotion traditionally encompasses all elements of reaching out to potential customers and informing them about your product from advertising to event marketing to product display & packaging. With the advent of the internet, online promotion has exploded into as many different channels as people use to communicate.
For our purposes, livestream fundraisers sit in a unique position of being fully digital events which are, in themselves, promotions to raise awareness for the nonprofit benefiting. Considering the world is only becoming more connected online, understanding both the framework for online promotion as well as the techniques for executing on that framework is incredibly important. As a result the remainder of step 5, and it’s sub-steps, will focus on the practical nature of digital outreach and how we can take advantage of it.
Marketing Basics – Digital Marketing Funnels
Successful marketing for an event or organization always follows a standard structure, whether it’s realized or not. The steps are:
- Promotion
- Information inquiry
- Purchase or some other desired action
- Ideally this then leads to follow-up communication and up-sell / customer revew & promotion, but we’ll touch on this later.
This structure is traditionally known as a Marketing/Sales Funnel or Conversion Funnel, “Conversion” being a generic term for the step 3 action you want others to take and “Funnel” because each step sees a smaller percentage of people interacting.
When building a digital marketing funnel for a charity livestream the funnel looks like this:
- Promotion (Social Media, Forums, Video, Advertising, Email, CLS Promotion, etc)
- Information Inquiry (The CLS Detailed Event Page)
- Desired Action (Watching The Livestream and/or Donating To The Donation Page)
Ideally at one of the 3 steps above they will share the event with their communities and will continue to share the event at the request of the broadcaster. Once the event has started, however, it’s a best practice to use your promotional efforts to push people directly to your livestream and use your integrated user flow along with shout-outs during the event to direct people to the information & donation pages.
Marketing Basics – Integrated User Flow
Due to the nature of a charity livestream, the webpages for steps 2 & 3 should all have links to one another during the event as well. That way no matter which piece of your event they are viewing (information, broadcast, donation) they can quickly and easily move between them without hitting the Back button.
While having these three interconnected is the bare minimum for livestream navigation, all major social media accounts you use should follow the same principle and be enacted as early as possible to give the best chance at exposure. The last thing you want is for someone who would be interested in your event to not realize it’s happening because the information wasn’t front and center when they check your profile.
Building an integrated web of links helps to ensure that everyone can quickly gain enough information to be comfortable making a donation is what we’ll work on next.