Marketing CSR Programs: A Step-by-Step Guide for Businesses

From improved brand reputation to employee engagement to making a real difference in the community, the advantages of a strong corporate social responsibility (CSR) program are undeniable. Plus, CSR is flexible, so you can facilitate impact however it suits your business best. For instance, you could start by establishing an employee volunteer program, and once you’ve built up a budget, directly provide donations to nonprofits as gifts to employees.

Your work isn’t finished once you’ve set up your programs. To get the highest possible return on your investment in CSR, you’ll need to spread awareness of your offerings—with employees and external stakeholders (such as customers). 

Let’s explore how to market your CSR program optimally to tap into its benefits for your business.

1. Create Marketing Goals Based on CSR Values

Start your marketing efforts strong by building a solid foundation in the goal-setting stage. This is the time to align your team on expectations, brand voice, and other crucial campaign elements.

It’s also important to establish your audience at this stage. Marketing CSR entails different activities based on the audience of your communications. For instance, marketing to employees is about getting them involved in the program, while marketing to customers is about explaining how your CSR initiatives create a positive social impact.

Here are some details to establish in this stage and examples of what those might look like:

• Overarching goals that follow the SMART framework.

• • By the end of the year, we will boost employee volunteer signups by 30% via targeted email marketing campaigns.

• Key performance indicators (KPIs) based on your goals.

• • Click-through rates on internal calls to action
  • Open rates on internal emails about marketing
  • Volume of clicks on specific marketing calls to action

• Target audience definition and personas.

• • For the email campaign, the target audience is employees who don’t regularly volunteer with the company. We’ll focus on employees who have never volunteered, those who have participated sporadically, and employees who previously volunteered but don’t anymore. 

• Brand voice/messaging strategy.

• • The brand voice is optimistic, powerful, impact-focused, knowledgeable, and inspiring.
  • The messaging strategy will emphasize real impact with true stories from beneficiaries and testimonials from employee participants. Regardless of the channel, messaging will be accessible so many audiences can connect with us.

Keep in mind that CSR programs are flexible and open-ended, so it’s essential to keep your goals focused.

2. Hone Marketing Channels

Once you’ve established your CSR marketing goals, determine the marketing channels you’ll send your communications through. Each channel has different user demographics, features, and content compatibility, so you must choose the right ones for your strategy. 

To help you get started, compare channels using this table:

These are only the most common marketing channels—your company may use unique resources or platforms not mentioned here. To assess any channel’s feasibility, add it to this table and compare it with your other options. 

3. Create Content that Resonates

Now, you can combine all the pieces to create compelling content for your CSR efforts. You likely already use marketing to generate sales and connect with business partners, but socially-driven marketing requires a different approach. Keep these key tips in mind when creating CSR marketing:

• Take hints from nonprofits. You’re likely working with nonprofits to drive change through your CSR efforts, so take some plays from their book. Use emotional, impact-driven storytelling techniques to create memorable marketing moments. For instance, instead of simply saying the amount of hours employees volunteered, you could say, “We spent over 200 hours building forever homes for fifty families.”
• Build trust with testimonials. Use a voice for the campaign that aligns with the campaign’s audience, like a loyal employee telling stories about their time with your volunteer program. Similarly, collaborate with influencers, thought-leaders, and other figures your audience respects.

• Leverage user-created content. Similarly to testimonials, you can build trust by tapping into social proof—the idea that if someone’s connection trusts your cause, they’ll also be more likely to trust you. User-generated content empowers stakeholders to speak about their relationship with your business or CSR program, priming their networks to approve of you. Just ensure you use a campaign hashtag so all stories can be found in one place.

• Gamify your marketing campaigns. If your goal is simply to grow engagement with your marketing materials, gamification can help. Offer a prize for interacting with your campaign materials to signal-boost your content. For instance, you might provide a gift (Unwrapit suggests items like gift certificates, an extra day off, or event tickets) to the user who gets the most likes on a post under your campaign hashtag. 

4. Measure Results

Finally, take a holistic look at your campaign to pinpoint your strengths and areas for improvement. Evaluating your success unlocks new opportunities to expand and refine your marketing, so make sure to cover all your bases.

First, gather quantitative data that measure your KPIs. Ideally, you should utilize comprehensive marketing software that helps you report on data faster and more accurately. Using your platform, automatically generate reports on your KPIs in as much detail as possible. Then, contextualize these insights with other important information, such as if your company was undergoing a leadership change.

Next, collect qualitative data from relevant stakeholder groups, such as employees and customers. Use surveys and interviews to gather feedback on the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Also, ask for suggestions to capitalize on missed opportunities or improve your content for future use.

Remember, lots of CSR work involves collaborations with nonprofits, corporate partners, or vendors. Loop any parties that contributed to your CSR efforts into this final stage. For example, if you choose corporate gifting as a CSR program, consider asking your your corporate gifting company if they can include the nonprofits you work with as a gift option

In the business world, CSR programs are here to stay. In fact, Double the Donation reports that 94% of US companies plan to increase their corporate giving in the coming years, meaning that the CSR market will just get more saturated over time. By launching and refining your marketing efforts early on, you’ll not just survive the influx of companies fighting for recognition—you’ll also thrive and act as an example for others to follow.