Marketing Ideas 3 – Get A Campaign Going

The third instalment of a series of marketing tactics and ideas for your business. Are you the sort of person who shouts at Newsnight? Do you grumble at Radio 4? Swear under your breath while you’re reading the paper? I am.

We’re the people who care – the people who are politically aware and want the world to be a better place. Your politics might have nothing at all to do with your business.

If you run a software company, you might think that that’s got nothing to do with your dislike of David Cameron, or that you get upset about child marriage in developing countries. You might think that you shouldn’t talk about politics in case it puts off potential customers. But maybe you can use your passion to enhance your business.

Get A Campaign Going

Find a cause you believe in which is related to your work (even tangentially) and run a campaign around that cause. Don’t just aim to raise money – everyone does Movember (well the guys anyway). Make it into an actual campaign if you can. Your software company might want to campaign about issues of internet privacy or intellectual property. If you’re an ethical lettings agency like my client Catherine Bancroft-Rimmer, you might want to see the anti key money laws tightened up, forcing less scrupulous agencies to act more ethically.

Image by Richard Callanan

Put some thoughts on your website, write to your MP, join up with another organisation which is campaigning on the same issue. Encourage other people to do the same. And bingo. You’ve got something to talk to your customers about, an instant way to stand out compared to all your boring competitors, a reason to get in the paper, something to write about on Twitter. And you might just have started something which could make the world a better place.

Title photo credit – Kheel Center from Flickr on a creative commons licence