What does post-Covid digital marketing look like for charities and non-profits?
I wanted to reflect on a couple of the trends and predictions about digital marketing in a post-Covid world, and how they might apply to charities and non-profits. Although I’d hesitate at this point to even call them trends: we’re not yet out of the pandemic and I suspect it’s too early to predict any long-term or permanent shifts. But still, it’s interesting to speculate!
1 - Marketing spend is down
This Marketing Week article quotes figures from Gartner showing: “the average marketing budget dropped from 11% of revenue in 2020 to just 6.4% in 2021 – a record low”. I expect that whether or not this continues as a trend into 2022 will depend on the evolution of our response to the pandemic; Wellcome has an excellent explainer here on the connectivity between health, economy and society.
The Gartner figures don’t break down spend by media and I’d be interested to know whether digital marketing spend remained robust compared to more traditional ad formats e.g. TV or out of home.
As demand (marketing budgets) dropped, we might have expected to see prices (CPMs/CPCs) fall if, all other things being equal, the supply of advertising space online remained constant. But prices certainly didn’t crash and I wanted to make a couple of suggestions why that might be.
Tech companies offered free ad credits to governments and health bodies like the NHS and WHO during Covid to help surface public health messaging. A totally reasonable response. But perhaps also one which artificially boosted the ad market by keeping demand - and hence prices - higher than they might otherwise have been for other advertisers.
I also wonder whether ‘supply’ (i.e. the volume of ad inventory) was also restricted. Although people spent more time online, searches using Covid keywords or news updates were not monetisable as tech companies (again, quite reasonably) restricted which ads could be shown against this content.
I don’t think the market - or marketing spend - has settled yet. Whilst all advertisers would welcome lower prices, for the non-profit & charitable sector it would enable greater reach and cut-through for smaller budgets. And whilst reach for the sake of reach is not necessarily a desirable outcome, I do think there are potentially some opportunities for the non-profit sector to explore whilst the ads market is finding its new equilibrium, particularly around testing new audiences and/or creatives.
2 - Online and physical worlds moving closer together
Ofcom’s Online Nation report shows time spent online has increased steadily since 2017. So with that in mind, it’s been interesting to see digital native brands like Glossier investing in immersive retail space, as well as a more ‘traditional’ brand like John Lewis talking about how they’re integrating their app with their physical stores. I’m curious whether retailers are tapping in to a wider feeling of ‘Zoom fatigue’ and people’s need for a real-life / non-digital experience.
Translating this to the non-profit sector feels hard. I think we recognise that our work can sometimes feel remote but we don’t always have the luxury of a physical space to bring it closer and make it more tangible (Wellcome is very lucky in this respect to have the fabulous Wellcome Collection).
I can see lots of potential but I think it’s going to take a while for this to become accessible for most charities and non-profits, and for them to have the expertise and resources to fully take advantage of online/offline potential.
