Viral Ad Network

The economic downturn and recent Comprehensive Spending Review have provided significant challenges for charities and non-profit organisations. According to Third Sector, many state-funded charities could be devastated in the long term, with employment and training organisations likely to be at highest risk – 70% of their income comes from the statutory sector, with education and law advocacy following closely behind.

When organisations tighten the reigns on spending, marketing is often one of the first expenditures to be cut. Despite recession and budget cuts, it’s vital to spend adequately on marketing and advertising to survive. Your organisation needs to get its message heard and attract new sources of funding, as well as reminding your current supporters that you appreciate them and still need their help. The challenge lies in doing more with less, and making your marketing work harder for you.

One consideration when trying to increase the effectiveness of your budget is to look at the channels you are using. Although a TV campaign can generate huge exposure, it can be prohibitively expensive. Direct mail and email campaigns are a more affordable option, but do not guarantee to reach your audience, often finding their way into junk. There is another way.

Online video provides a genuine alternative, with lower cost than traditional methods and with the option of guaranteed engagement. Many successful online videos are also produced in-house, keeping the costs down even more. Third Sector provide some great tips here, and our recent article on how to create a killer viral marketing video is helpful if you’re interested in the DIY approach.

There’s very little guess work when it comes to results with online video. By simply placing your content on a popular video site such as Youtube, you can see the amount of views, you can monitor comments and promote sharing. If you produce something truly spectacular, it may go viral all by itself. Otherwise, using a seeding service such as VANs can give your campaign an initial boost, and you only have to pay for genuine, targeted views of the video. Everything is accountable.

VAN have worked with the British Red Cross on several viral video campaigns. See our blog post on how we helped them, and feel free to get in touch if you would like more information.

Tags: Charity, Charity advertising, Charity marketing, Non-profit, Online video, Recession, viral

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Advertisers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.