participation in the Cleaning For A Reason program as the deciding factor in the selec-tion process. That’s powerful cause marketing. Give From The Heart Cause marketing, at its best, helps you stand out from the pack and positions you as a company worthy of doing business with. Studies have shown that consumers will even pay a little more to do business with companies that are making a difference socially. Your customers and prospects want to know how you’re special, what makes you different and how you’re “giving back” to the community you serve. If you’re not, studies show they’ll choose the competition that is. When they buy from you, they know they too are helping to make a difference; a value consumers say is worth more to them than just price. Heartfelt giving will become a part of your company’s culture, engaging employees, customers and prospects. It feels good, as an owner, to be able to use your business to do good deeds in your community. works and is the way most of us built our businesses. Thanks to our partnership with Cleaning For A Reason, however, free publicity and tons of public exposure has become the norm at my office. Our business has been featured over a dozen times in various local newspapers and on the evening news and morning news shows in the last two years. Formalize Your Affiliation To make your cause-related partnership a win-win for everyone, work with the non-profit you choose to define how it will help your business increase its visibility. Fundraisers, expos and logo use on your website and your marketing materials go a long way in getting the word out about your participation. Many organizations will even assist with ideas and press releases. Business benevolence should not be the best-kept secret in town because giving in the background is a missed opportunity for a business. Plan how you will inform your current cus-tomers of your cause-related efforts and line up newspaper and television interviews. There’s a real story behind any cleaning business that is helping women with cancer receive free house cleaning during their season of treatment. As a cleaning-related business, your efforts in helping this cause are newswor-thy — whether through sponsorship of a local maid service or if you are the service actually doing the work. Hundreds of cleaning businesses have already received thousands of dollars in free publicity and have been in the news nearly every single day since our organiza-tion started. If you aren’t leveraging the power of cause marketing in your business, you are missing out on one the hottest trends in America today. Moreover, there is a sense of personal satisfaction that comes from using your business to help those in need. CM Choose A Complementary Cause There are hundreds of causes to choose from but there is only one nonprofit approved by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that specifically involves the cleaning industry: Cleaning For A Reason, a 501c3 nonprofit. Doing good on your own, without the partnership advantage of a nonprofit, makes it difficult to be noticed in the press. Think of the dozens of times you’ve already given back, and then ask yourself how many times you’ve been interviewed by a reporter because of it. Cleaning For A Reason is such a high-impact story that reporters want to write about it or bring the information to their viewers on the five o’clock news. It’s unique, it’s practical and it’s the “help now” factor that reporters love and the pub-lic appreciates the most. I spent the first 25 years of my business paying for every piece of “advertorial” and print advertisement I could get. Traditional marketing is expensive, but it Circle Product Information no. 202 on page 32 www.cmmonline.com 31
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