What Is Cause Marketing?
Cause marketing is simply a marketing campaign promoting a cause that customers believe in.
Cause marketing for lawyers is a marketing campaign promoting a cause potential clients believe in.
See an example of cause marketing for personal injury lawyers with the slogan Be Aware Motorcycles Are Everywhere® aimed at the motorcycle community to get motorcycle accident cases.
What Cause Marketing Can Do for Law Firms
Cause marketing for lawyers generates awareness of your law firm’s brand and creates goodwill for your brand. (See an in-depth definition of cause marketing)
How to Make a Cause Marketing Campaign Successful
A cause marketing campaign’s success is dependent upon prominently communicating your law firm’s brand connection with the cause. Otherwise, the goodwill is lost.
Do Large Companies Use Cause Marketing?
Every major company uses cause marketing. But only a very few smart lawyers use cause marketing.
Examples of Cause Marketing
Costco sent me an email saying,
Thanks for dining out with your Costco Anywhere Visa® Card. Did you know your next meal out can help provide 10 healthy meals for kids in need?
When you spend $5 or more dining out with your enrolled Citi® card, we’ll donate $1 to No Kid Hungry — up to $2 million. That’s enough to provide 20 million meals.
Bobby’s Burger Palace used this cause marketing ad to get people in the store.
6 examples of cause marketing activities
Cause marketing examples from Uber, Starbucks & JetBlue
Cone Communications found in a study on cause branding that 85% of American consumers “have a more positive image of a product or company when it supports a cause they care about” and “80% are likely to switch brands, similar in price and quality, to one that supports a cause.”
Does Cause Marketing Work for Lawyers?
Cause marketing is the most effective type of marketing even for lawyers.
Ken Hardison of The Personal Injury Lawyers Marketing & Management Association (PILMMA) advocates cause marketing in his article Inspire Your Law Firm On Independence Day.
See the effect created when the Cellino & Barnes law firm used cause marketing at a hockey game. The law firm got a bigger round of applause than the hockey team, which was “on their way to their fourth straight win of the season.”
The law firm flashed an announcement on the screen, “Home from Iraq.” The announcer said, “back from Iraq is the American hero,” and the soldier, who was at the game, was flashed on the screen, waving to the crowd. The screen panned back to the message now with the Cellino & Barnes law firm showing on the lower right corner of the screen.
Change Your Future!With 1-800-HURT-911®
Find out how Phil and Rob changed their lives and if your state is still available! Call Phil Franckel, Esq. Now! 7 days / 8 am to 10 pm EST>> 516-621-9399 ext. 5 Call Phil 7 days/nights
How Can Your Law Firm Do Cause Marketing?
A 1-800-HURT-911® licensee joined forces with an advertising agency that places mobile billboard signs on cars to find a kidney for a mom.
Cause Marketing Can Generate Valuable Free Publicity
Cause marketing can generate a lot of free publicity, so make sure you notify local newspapers, radio, and TV. This is the story on TV news about how 1-800-HURT-911® was helping to find a kidney.
Cause Marketing Won’t Benefit Your Law Firm if No One Knows What You Do
This was a great cause marketing idea, but it wasn’t apparent to viewers what 1-800-HURT-911® does. Is it an organization of personal injury lawyers or a kidney organization?
Grace, a spokesperson for 1-800-HURT-911® Florida, said she wanted to help out but, unfortunately, didn’t say that she and the personal injury lawyers at 1-800-HURT-911® wanted to help out. No one knows from this interview that 1-800-HURT-911® are personal injury lawyers. People could assume it’s a kidney organization.
Make a cause marketing video for your personal injury law firm website. This video was made by a HURT911® licensee.
Whether you decide to use cause marketing for your law firm with 1-800-HURT-911® or not, give cause marketing for lawyers serious consideration for your law firm.
Just a little thought and a small investment in your marketing budget will return tens of thousands of dollars in free publicity, generating awareness and goodwill for your law firm brand.
Philip L. Franckel, Esq., is the author of this article.
Phil Franckel is the owner of 1-800-HURT-911® and over 1,100 domain names. He is a personal injury lawyer and a former Member of the Board of Directors of the NYS Trial Lawyers Association. He is an expert in branding, advertising, marketing, and SEO. He has been doing SEO since 1994. Phil Franckel has written and produced TV commercials for lawyers and other industries and has been a consultant to businesses including several using vanity phone numbers. Phil writes a blog about lawyer advertising at LawyerAdvertisingBlog.com. Phil Franckel began his first business in 8th grade, owned businesses in various different industries, and worked freelance for a TV production company, ABC Wide World of Sports, and ABC Monday Night Baseball. In his spare time, Phil Franckel is the Commanding Officer of the Communications Bureau of the NCPD Aux. Police Section.
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