Event Activation Strategies for Socially-Responsible Brands

Have you ever looked for exciting nonprofit events for product sampling and brand activation and found one with your ideal target audience, only to discover that a competitor already snagged an exclusive category sponsorship? 

Don’t fret, there are usually other ways you can reach the same event’s audience. Repetition breeds familiarity and trust, and there are many low and no-cost ways to help your target customers get to that loyal comfort zone with you.

In-kind product donations, a.k.a. sending products to events for attendees to sample, is a well-known marketing and CSR practice that not only spreads brand awareness but also boosts your brand’s reputation. Founders of brands like Stone Brewing, Hint Water, and Kind Bar have been outspoken about using this strategy to generate growth and loyalty through charity and community events. 

Leveraging the power of reciprocity, sampling removes the barriers and financial risk of trying something new for your prospective customers. When your products are at an event that supports a cause they care about, this alignment can enhance their positive feelings about your brand even more.

Let’s explore some event activation strategies so your brand can reach target consumers at highly desirable events without a paid sponsorship.

Why engage in CSR?

Corporate social responsibility, or CSR, is the idea that businesses have an obligation to devote some of their resources towards charitable causes to make the world a better place.

While it initially might not seem productive to “donate,” there are many benefits for you as a donor company as well as the beneficiary in a CSR partnership. Consider the following data from Harvard Business School:

• 77% of consumers are motivated to patronize socially-minded companies over competitors.

• 92% of employees working at socially-minded companies said they’d be more likely to recommend their workplace to those looking for a job.

• 90% of employees working at socially-minded companies say they’re more motivated, hard-working, and loyal.

Not only will you attract prospective customers with your charitable activity, but you’ll make your work environment more satisfying as well. Plus, you may be able to receive a tax deduction for your contributions, which reduces the financial barriers of donating.

What is event activation?

Event activation is a form of brand activation in which your business supplies products or gift certificates to an event for partnership and promotion. In turn, this shares your brand and increases your visibility among new audiences.

This tactic is especially useful as part of a CSR campaign because it allows you to build a charitable reputation while promoting your products and services. So, find nonprofit events that match your values and target market and offer to supply samples for their next event. For example, if you run a pet store, excellent nonprofit partners might be animal shelters or pet clubs and associations.
Unlike TV commercials or social media ads, events are all about socialization and connection, providing you the opportunity to personally connect with potential customers. So be sure to offer ways for attendees to stay in touch, such as signing up to receive special offers on the products they sampled.

Why donate in-kind gifts?

While nonprofits appreciate monetary donations, in-kind contributions can be just as, if not more, valuable to your partner. Some unique traits of in-kind gifts include:

• Scalability. In-kind contributions can be more flexible and scalable than monetary gifts, which may need budgetary review. You could donate excess goods, products designated for marketing promotions, time, or experiences based on your resources and bandwidth.

• Tax-deductibility. In-kind donations may be tax-deductible, so your business can minimize the financial impact.

• More impact for less cost. Your products might be able to help nonprofits offset expenses, but cost you much less than the retail value. In these cases, something that your company may consider excess inventory or a product/service, such as tickets to a museum, that you have ample ability to provide will attribute a much higher value of generosity and support. 

Donating in-kind gifts is an especially useful tactic for brands and services with broad target markets as they can support the nonprofit while spreading brand awareness. So, if your brand qualifies, this is an excellent opportunity to kill two birds with one stone!

Top Event Activation Strategies for Product-Based Brands

Why would a nonprofit consider accepting products from multiple companies for an event? Often, an event requires more variety and volume than one brand can provide. If one event is effectively closed to you due to sponsor preference, other events held by the same organization may not be covered by the same exclusivity clauses. 

Before determining how you’ll present your products, it’s crucial to ensure you find the right events for your needs. Though the prospect of working a large gala fundraiser is tempting, you need to be realistic and consider your time and budget’s flexibility. 

When budgets are tight and you don’t have as much product to give, the trick is finding other highly targeted opportunities like VIP appreciation events or happy hours. While these events are smaller, they’re potentially more personal, impactful, and affordable. 

Now, let’s explore some event activation channels you can use to spread your brand awareness.

Gift Bags

Sponsor exclusivity may not extend to products included in gift bags. When providing products for an event’s gift bags, consider: 

• Pros: Everyone at the event gets your product.

• Cons: You won’t directly interact with consumers, increasing the need for bouncebacks. 

Gift bags are a smart option if you have products to send but are short on time or staff. This low-touch opportunity can establish some brand recognition without pulling too much from your human resources.

Vendor Booth 

Regardless of what competitors are doing, you may still be able to purchase a vendor booth where you can interact with attendees and give away samples. Reach out to see if buying a booth is a viable option for your team. Consider:

• Pros: People get to interact with your team, try your product, and give direct feedback.

• Cons: You’ll have to consider the cost of the booth itself and staff time, especially if events last multiple days.

Vendor booths are the best option if you have the time, staff, and budget to make it happen.

Incentives

Fundraising campaigns and a-thons may use packages created with your products to reward participants who reach certain levels. When offering your products to be used as incentives, consider:

• Pros: You receive extra promotion of your items as a coveted prize, lending your brand prestige. Links to your website and social media may be used/promoted as well.

• Cons: Typically no direct interaction with attendees. 

Try this strategy if you can offer universally-desirable, unique packages and want to save time.

Silent Auction or Raffle

If an event has a silent auction or raffle, this may be the easiest way to get brand exposure. Donating a larger basket or bundle, exceeding any competitor’s package if you can, can draw as much attention as a sponsor’s name on a program. Here’s what to expect from this strategy:

• Pros: This is a very common need of nonprofits and schools that fundraise, so can be easily scalable to promote your brand and products and engage as many people at events as you want it's relatively easy to put together a package, such as a bundle of brand favorites or a gift certificate for a popular starter service.

• Cons: There’s no direct interaction with attendees unless you attend the event yourself.

This strategy is best for brands looking for a quick, easy way to get in front of attendees, including new product launches One of the most successful companies to utilize this tactic, becoming the foremost brand in their industry, was Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, which established a national reputation for generosity and was able to introduce their Keurig machines, pods, and convenience into tens of thousands of households through donating to silent auctions alone. 

Day-of Volunteering

If the event is in your community, consider gathering a team to volunteer together. Wear branded attire and talk up your own contributions such as gift bag items or auction or raffle prizes, when meeting attendees. Volunteering considerations include:

• Pros: This strategy is scalable to involve as many or as few of your employees as you want. It also gives you an experience from an attendee’s perspective, so you can evaluate how much to sponsor or participate in future events. Plus, it involves your employees directly, offering them a sense of purpose.

• Cons: This requires your employees and friends to participate, so it’s up to you to encourage them to volunteer. 

This approach is best for causes that are universally liked by your employees. Creating fundraising teams for races and runs can also provide similar exposure.

Committee Volunteering

Allowing your team to join event planning committees as company-paid volunteering can give you the inside scoop on opportunities you may not otherwise hear about, as well as form relationships that can benefit your brand in the future.

• Pros: You’ll gain access to insider information and opportunities. Plus, you could get first rights of refusal for the promotion of your products.

• Cons: It’s a more involved time commitment, depending on the event size, history, and your selected role. 

Consider committee volunteering if you have highly dedicated team members willing to represent your company by taking on more involved roles in community partnerships.

Getting Started

Whether you’re new to partnering with nonprofits or looking for new collaborators, it can be daunting to find the perfect match for your business. But, with the help of event databases and platforms, it’s never been easier to connect with the right organizations. 

A corporate giving platform like DonationMatch enables you to set parameters for finding events by size, location, audience demographics, and event type to identify and directly reach out to event organizers. In turn, you’ll save significant time, effort, and money. 

To start your event activation strategy strong, use DonationMatch to find collaborators that align with your values and goals. Then, plan which event activation tactics work best for you, and start spreading the word about your brand. If you consistently apply these strategies to build and strengthen relationships with consumers through nonprofit partners, your brand will flourish along with your social impact.

The Customer Journey: What It Is and Why It Matters

While it’s obvious that attracting and retaining customers is essential to a business’s success, many organizations actually lack a framework for analyzing key interactions they have with their customers. Interactions ranging from initial conversations with a member of your sales team to troubleshooting technical issues can determine whether a customer continues to support your business over the long run. 

All of these interactions make up the customer journey, and understanding these steps is key to their continued satisfaction and your business’s continued success. Businesses with a strong strategy for analyzing and improving their customers’ journeys can provide their customers, employees, and other stakeholders with an overall better experience. 

To help your business better understand the customer journey, this guide will explore three questions that can help you improve your own customer journey strategy:

• What is the customer journey?

• Why does the customer journey matter?

• How can my business improve the customer journey?

While this may be a new way of looking at customers’ experiences with your business, remember that the principles behind it are ones that your business likely already values. Approach customers with empathy, aim to create frictionless experiences, and constantly strive to improve how customers interact with your business.

What is the customer journey?

The customer journey consists of all of the interactions customers have with your business in the entire course of your relationship. This includes their initial discovery of your business by interacting with marketing materials, their first sales process and purchase, their use of your product or service, the support and communication they receive from your business, and the efforts your business makes to retain them as a customer over time. 

On the surface, the customer journey looks like a simple series of interactions. However, businesses interested in developing a holistic customer journey strategy need a more nuanced understanding of the other concepts and elements that inform a journey, including:

• Customer experience. Customer experience (CX) is somewhat synonymous with the term customer journey, but it also refers to the broader framework and programs that businesses develop to improve their customer interactions. Specifically, a CX program is a dedicated effort a business makes to collect feedback from customers after key touchpoints in their journey to learn how these pivotal moments can be improved. Your journey mapping and strategy fall under the broader umbrella of CX management.

• Moments of truth. A moment of truth, or pain point, is a high-stakes touchpoint in the customer journey that can often determine whether a customer sticks with a business or not. For example, a customer contacting a software provider’s support line for assistance to solve an urgent problem with the product would be considered a moment of truth. In this scenario, the customer is likely frustrated and a poor interaction may lead to them seeking an alternative service. By identifying moments of truth in your customer journey, your business can actively implement improvements to minimize negative emotions, show empathy to the customer’s struggles, and provide a solution. 

• Voice of the customer. Voice of the customer (VoC) refers to your customers’ perspectives on your business. This includes their expectations, likes, dislikes, and any other feedback they have provided. By surveying your customers, you can better understand their unique voice and how changes in your business impact them. A VoC or feedback collection program should be an integral part of your broader CX efforts.

How exactly these concepts and programs should be approached will depend on how your customer journey and communication channels are constructed. For example, a business that uses automated communication for the majority of the process will have different moments of truth to consider than one that focuses more heavily on building one-on-one relationships with individual clients. 

Why does the customer journey matter?

Customers find and stick with your business for many reasons. They might first find you through your standout marketing strategies or stellar reputation in the space. They might stick around because they appreciate your brand’s philanthropic efforts and identity or feel that your product is superior to your competitors. Among these reasons, customers will heavily weigh the service they experienced and the process of making a purchase at your business. 

Your customer journeys matter because all of the individual interactions and factors at play contribute to your ultimate likelihood of retaining their long-term business, which should be a primary goal for any organization. 

In other words, the customer journey your business offers will directly and indirectly impact how customers view your business and if they will buy from you again. There are other benefits to improving your customer journey as well, such as:

• Improved customer loyalty. Customers who feel that your business created a positive experience for them, showed empathy for their struggles, and implemented their feedback will likely feel increased brand loyalty. This means they will likely be retained not just as long-term customers but as active promoters of your brand. 

• Faster response time. Part of building a customer journey strategy involves creating a process for responding to negative feedback. For example, during a moment of truth that goes poorly, a customer might fill out a survey that reflects their negative experience. With an effective program in place, your business will be able to reach out to the customer quickly to resolve their issues, potentially saving your relationship with them. 

• Better data collection. Deliberately monitoring your customer journey will allow you to collect more data on your customers, their needs, and preferences. This information can be used for marketing purposes or planning new activities and products they might like.  

CX and the customer journey are continuous processes, and regularly reassessing what goes into them at your business will allow you to keep up with changes in customer preferences. Make sure to routinely collect feedback during pivotal touchpoints to check if your improvements have succeeded, as well as how customer needs naturally shift over time. 

How can my business improve the customer journey?

The customer journey can be improved through deliberate tracking, analysis, and implementation. Just like many other internal processes at your business, such as communication, budgeting, and project management, there are software solutions that can help you monitor and generate reports on your customers’ journeys. 

Explore CX software solutions that have customizable survey tools, allowing you to tailor them to ask pertinent questions about your customers’ experiences during critical moments in their journeys. Before designing these surveys, consider your customer journey map. 

The customer journey map is a visual representation of how your customers or customer segments interact with various parts of your business during their journeys. It considers a business's different audiences, each touchpoint, and can help explain why certain outcomes happened. 

PeopleMetrics’ guide to customer journey maps walks through the six core components of creating a map for your business:

1. Determine your objectives. Establish a specific goal for your map to help focus your efforts. This will be related to the overall scope of your customer journey map. For instance, does your map cover the entire customer journey or hone in on a specific moment of truth? 

2. Define your personas. Take a look at your customer data to create personas. These personas represent various groups of customers with shared characteristics, such as their product or service tier, motivations, common pain points, and goals. 

3. Break the journey down. Work with your team to break down the customer journey into distinct steps. Consider the voice of the customer during this step by dividing the customer journey based on what actions the customer is taking, rather than what may be happening internally at your business. 

4. List all touchpoints. Working through the steps you just identified in the customer journey, list all of the touchpoints customers have with your business in each stage. Consider both actions the customer takes and processes that happen internally that may impact the customer’s experience along the way. 

5. Compile touchpoints. Identify which touchpoints are relevant to the customer journey in question and organize them based on your map’s overarching purpose. Pay special attention to potential moments of truth and other critical touchpoints—referencing past customer feedback can help you identify these. 

6. Test your customer journey. Present your map to your team for feedback. Discuss touchpoints they would consider as moments of truth, and make adjustments based on their feedback. Study your customer interactions going forward to see if they follow the course you’ve outlined, collect more information, and make tweaks over time.

If you have difficulty organizing your customer journey map, remember that these journeys are a continuous, non-linear cycle. Try zooming in on specific points of the customer journey to make better sense of moments of truth, rather than analyzing your customer journeys as a potentially overwhelming whole. Doing so can help you identify outcomes related to individual interactions, which can easily get lost when looking at the entire customer journey at once. 

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Your business should strive to make your customers’ experiences with your business as frictionless and positive as possible. By analyzing your customer journey and taking steps to improve it, you can retain more customers, build brand loyalty, and stay up to date with changing preferences. Improve your customer journey by mapping it out, creating surveys, and investing in new tools to support your organized, intentional approach.

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About the Author:

This is a guest post contributed by Sean McDade.

Sean McDade has been helping companies optimize customer experiences for over twenty years. An angel investor in the Philadelphia region, he is also the founder, CEO, and visionary of PeopleMetrics, a leading provider of experience management software and advisory services. In addition to working with a number of leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, he is the author of two books.