Saturday, March 07, 2020

Customer Acquisition Through Crisis?


On Friday, our Marketing and Communications team released a report that this quarter our customer acquisition cost had more than doubled. It’s clear that global and national trends that have contributed to the increase. Primarily, UNICEF is competing in an over-saturated market and ad spend is continually increasing (it will reach $605 billion globally in 2020).
Since before the last election our organization has been having to think hard about how to differentiate it’s brand and voice from others, especially from competing organizations like International Refugee Committee (IRC) and Planned Parenthood that have taken clear and creative stances in attracting small donors. Our teams are facing an even more crowded ad space ramping up to the election. With donor dollars going to candidates.

In just the U.S. alone, companies are expected to spend $110 billion on digital advertising. This, coupled with unprecedented advertising/social spends from political campaigns this past year, has caused a major uptick. One area that we have had success is targeted campaigns about the war in Syria, where $1 spent on an advertisement gets $5 back for the organization. While the war in Syria has been on-going for years, crisis campaigns may get donor dollars, it doesn’t address the longer term differentiation donor acquisition challenge.

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