This might sting a bit to mix charity work and business, but really its a win win!
Do you wish to help others?
Do you wish to polish up your brand name /company name?
Do you wish to be the go to company within you market?
Do you wish to make more money / profits?
What better way than to do strategic donations to promote your company.
Lets do an example, low-budget first!
Take any sport that you particularly like. (im going to use soccer in this example.)
They always have problems with funding and since you got a marketing budget you are going to get a whole lot for your money by volunteering to pay for the socks,shorts and t-shirts. In return for this nice gesture you would like to have your colors and logos /commercial text or whatever on said clothes for a season or two.
On a shoestring marketing budget i would suggest going for one little league team instead of the whole club. With a bigger budget (still small compared to a marketing campaign) you could option to do a series or a tournament with help from the club and get good press exposure.
What will this bring back to you?
These little athletes play a lot of matches away from home aswell as meeting teams on their home turf. There will also be plentiful of photos taken for family albums or Facebook and such meaning a great spread of your brand in a none aggressive way. This means that your sponsorship will be seen by all parents and as well as other teams parents and all of these have jobs and will sooner or later result in business coming your way and to start it all of you get a lot of brand recognition both by the adults as well as the children /youths.
Example 2.
Do you rent / own or have access to space ? This is useful since a lot of charity events need just that.
Pick an organisation that you like or can stand for and ask them if they would be interested in doing and event to raise funds.
If one says no (unlikely but..) ask another.
Invite the local press to attend be active in promoting the event. This will essentially only use up some time from your side (or your employees). The upside is a real win win. The organisation that you have chosen will get free publicity as well as a boost of funds that it can use to benefit those in need. You will get a wide-spread free publicity and usually to potential customers that you wouldn’t have reached otherwise. The brand recognition factor will play in here aswell.
This will establish you as a good guy and everyone wants to be associated with you and that’s why you aswell as the team or charity will benefit greatly from doing this.
Contribute with what you can and you will be rewarded tenfold!
Related articles
- Nicole Scherzinger – Nicole Scherzinger Loves Charity Work (contactmusic.com)
- Web Agency Alchemy Viral Supports Works of Educating the Children (rushprnews.com)
- Charity says closing doors to save money is not an option (newstalk.ie)
- Big Society blow: More than 7,000 charities close in one year (mirror.co.uk)
- What can charities learn about business continuity from London 2012? (guardian.co.uk)