Breaking down conservation marketing for eco-conscious businesses and nonprofits.
Ultimately, our goal is a sustained behavior change over time benefiting our cause and organization. I've heard it in so many different ways, but the story is the same: we're inspired to "do something" to "save something" because it's the right thing to. We're connected and soon invested. Now we're making logos and daydreaming how we're going to raise money and how we'll get people to connect and buy-in to our cause because we think it's the right thing to do.
Next part of the story - it's been a few months or even years, and the progress has been painstakingly slow. You're wrestling with the idea of quitting, but your cause still needs a champion. So let's stop and break down what Conservation Marketing is and how to use strategy to improve our business or nonprofit.
Let's get started with defining your business or fundraising goals and how you're going to measure success. This could be metrics and insights from social media channels and posts. Then who are you trying to reach? Create a variety of target audiences, and define what's relevant to them. This will help you create social media messaging and content to reach them more effectively.
Create a timeline for yourself and your time. Due dates can be useful for motivation, but creating "milestones" can help you and others to stay on track.
Action: Test your messaging, and ask for feedback. Then modify/ adjust, and repeat the process to dial in your messaging before you create products and fundraising events.
The biggest threat to our conservation causes is APATHY. If we're going to change someone's mind and behavior, we need to tell the story in a way that connects them to emotions. That's why we have researched our target audiences and tested different styles of posts or places within the platforms to narrow down our messaging. All to make better content that creates community and increases our chances of success for our conservation-based businesses and nonprofit goals.
It's surprising how much the general public at large is unaware and uneducated about the environment, wildlife, and the threats our planet is facing. They believe "someone else" is going to fix the issue.
To market our conservation causes, we need to grab people's attention, bring them into the experience (the customer journey), build trust (create messaging that fits so well with a person that the product/service feels like a natural fit), and lastly, we need people's participation (behavior modification). We need to clearly outline the prompt to action, or change consumer behavior.
Business 101 DON'T - Ask consumers to change their behavior, but that's exactly what we need them to do. Your story and messaging is the first part of grabbing their attentions and eventually changing their everyday behaviors to benefit the conservation issue.
People ARE willing to change their behaviors.
Some people don't know about the problem they have- this is where you're trying to "sell" awareness and give the educational value.
If your product/service/event is not what people want, then you'll be stagnant without the right messaging. Speak to people's desires, needs, and emotions - but think about all the benefits and problem-solving solutions your business and organization offers.
Some people will become brand advocates and others will be more interested in the product or type of event (like a beerfest benefiting conservation) than the cause, and that's okay because sometimes you just need to bring people "into the door" before you can share the awareness and education values.
When you're in those hard times, remember WHY you chose this conservation to champion.
Communicate those values to your customer and keep it consistent throughout the whole customer journey: From drawing them in through social media, to nurturing their curiosity, to converting them into brand advocates, supporters, and consumers of your product or service so that you can continue to champion a conservation cause with a stronger community and build on this success.
If you have a marketing topic you want to learn more about or have a specific question, I'd love to hear it! Send me a message or leave it in the comments below.
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