7 Steps to a Successful Cause-Based Campaign

HOSPITAL MARKETING in 7 Easy Steps

Embracing social responsibility today is more than a noble gesture; it’s a vital part of brand identity, especially in healthcare. Your audience seeks alignment with brands that champion meaningful causes, potentially turning away if their values are not reflected. Engaging in cause-based marketing not only demonstrates your commitment to societal improvement but also strengthens your connection with your audience.

To launch a cause-based campaign that aligns with your healthcare brand’s objectives and significantly impacts awareness, start by identifying causes that resonate deeply with your brand and audience. Integrating strategies from the best cause marketing examples and cause-based marketing principles is crucial. Planning involves understanding your target audience, selecting a relevant cause, crafting a compelling message, and choosing the right platforms for dissemination.

Successful campaigns hinge on authenticity and a clear demonstration of how your healthcare brand is making a tangible difference. By adopting a cause-related marketing approach, your brand not only amplifies its welfare motives but also solidifies its relationship with the target audience, standing out for its commitment to addressing major healthcare challenges. This strategic alignment not only elevates your brand’s social responsibility profile but also contributes to achieving broader healthcare goals, making cause-based marketing campaigns a powerful tool for positive change.

7 Steps to a Successful Cause-Based Campaign

Cause Based Campaigns should be long-term and have a 12-monthly marketing action calendar plan with defined goals to arrive at measured outcomes. With a simple plan with defined steps and goals for your campaign, you can create a successful cause by spreading awareness in the required audiences’ minds.

Here are some 7 steps that a brand can follow to create a campaign that not only resonates with the cause but also creates an impact on the target audience.

1. Associate with a cause dear to you

Start by choosing a cause that you are most interested in, a cause that your healthcare brand specializes in. Selecting a cause that you resonate with the most is the first step to creating a cause-based campaign that has the potential to reach the masses. Make sure that the cause you choose convinces you that it is the need of the hour, it is something that the masses should pay attention to because unless a cause resonates with you and your brand, it is unlikely that you can convince the audience to pay heed to it.

If your healthcare brand specializes in cardiac health, your cause-based campaign targeting heart health, heart diseases or heart awareness is more likely to win over the audience, than a campaign around infertility awareness. Choose wisely.

2.Plan your target audience and budget

Our society comprises people from all backgrounds, each having their own healthcare problems to address and solve. Targeting the section of society that is more likely to require your help increases the chances of a successful campaign. Decide your target audience based on all facts and figures.

If your healthcare brand is planning a free health checkup, targeting economically weaker sections of the society will be more beneficial, worthy, and caring for society.

The budget of your campaign resides on various factors including your audience size, length of the campaign, location and area that you want to cover through your campaign, medium of your campaign (online or offline), and people involved. Creating awareness on a large scale would require you to spend a relatively higher amount of funds than a localized campaign. Plan based on your needs, and what you think will help your potential patients in the best possible way.

3. Prepare a marketing calendar with activities

Create a marketing calendar that contains all the activities that you’re going to perform in the campaign – make the calendar in a way that covers your cause. Big, or small, every campaign should be well-planned and prepared. Your cause-based campaign should be such that it covers every aspect from raising awareness to providing advice, creating curiosity, and prompting your audience to take the required action. To create a buzz in the audience, you will need a well-laid-out marketing and campaign plan that can help you visualize the campaign ahead of time. This plan could be month-long, or year-long, with detailed descriptions and timelines of all activities you wish to add to your cause.

For a cardiac hospital, a healthcare plan that lays out all healthcare days relating to heart health or related ones, with offline camp launches or online awareness ads planned with budgets and target audience in each location, may do the trick.

4. Create a cause-based marketing campaign

Now that you have your campaign planned with every aspect and detail in mind, create your campaign. Brainstorm ideas that add a curiosity factor to your audience’s mind, and create images, and videos that prompt your audience to react to the cause, understand the cause and relate to it.

To create awareness around heart health a simple message stating that heart health is important will not do the trick. Create buzz around the practical problems that heart patients deal with, focus on their symptoms, and causes, and understand the preventive measures they can pursue- this will help you hit the right chords. “Heart Health is Important” or “Do you often feel shortness of breath?” – Which is more likely to catch your audience’s attention? Make a smart decision.

5. Spread the campaign’s reach through various marketing mediums

By using various marketing mediums, you need to extend the reach of your healthcare campaigns. We live in a world of the Internet and social media, but that doesn’t lessen the power of a strong print ad. Based on your cause, target audience, and budgets allocated, decide which marketing medium suits your cause campaign the best. Is it offline, online, or a combination? Do you wish to promote on websites or social media? Will it be a blog an image or a video? Or do you want to create print ads in newspapers or magazines? Do you want to take up a billboard or collaborate with another brand? Weigh your options before you decide.

Consider yourself a cardiac specialist in Tier 2 or 3 cities where only 30% of the population may use online mediums or if your target audience is people above 65 years of age. Which marketing media do you think is more suitable- a social media ad or a front-page newspaper ad?

6.Measure the campaign effectiveness through appropriate digital tools

Creating your cause campaign is not the end of it but the beginning. Once you have created your cause campaign, measure the effectiveness. Is your campaign reaching the desired masses? Are people accepting your campaign? Is it creating the impact you desired? Analyze each aspect of your campaign and decide if you want to continue with it, or if you want to alter it to improve the campaign. Use digital tools and insights to understand the success rate of your campaign.

7.Get ready with the post-campaign report & publish it

The last step in cause-based marketing is to prepare a post-campaign report. Once your campaign is on the verge of completion, prepare a comprehensive report penning down every aspect of it. Why do you think it was necessary? Why did you choose the specifics you did? What impact does it creates on the audience? What improvements did you notice in the health of your audience? Publish your report. Make people aware that your work is worth it. It is creating an impact. This not only ups your brand image but also motivates other brands to join you in your cause and create something for a bigger good.

Now, that you have a better understanding of cause-based campaigns, it’s time for you to get started on your own campaign. You can start by following these 7 steps and creating a way for your audience to follow along as well.

Can you think of any other ways to incorporate cause-based campaigning? Which campaigns have been the most successful for your healthcare brand? Let us know by leaving a comment or connecting with us on social media today

Mohammed Ilias

Mohammed Ilias, Founder & Brand Strategist at BCC Healthcare, is an international healthcare branding and marketing strategist and an ethical marketer, with a presence in India & UAE. He has authored the Amazon bestseller “Ethical Hospital Branding & Marketing: 15 Proven Strategies”. With a decade of experience in the healthcare industry, he has trained 2000+ doctors on Ethical Marketing and has worked with over 200+ healthcare brands.