Enhancing Charity Digital Marketing with Emotional Appeals

Aneesh Natero^*
*Correspondence: Aneesh Natero, Department of Kinesiology & Health Education, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, USA, Email:

Introduction

Emotional appeals are frequently used in advertising campaigns by charities to raise funds and awareness of various causes. The charitable advertising efforts have long relied heavily on negative emotional appeals, but their efficacy has been questioned in both the literature and practice. Practitioners are constantly seeking knowledge of the most efficient advertising strategies for achieving high engagement and efficient budget utilization with the rise of digital advertising tools. It is clear that the digital and social media landscape is changing quickly. More and more advertising messages are aiming to change people's social, environmental, and health behaviors. The majority of citizens spent more time online during the COVID-19 pandemic, primarily for social reasons like shopping, entertainment, and networking with organizations. Advertisers now have a chance to reach their intended audiences at a lower cost through digital marketing. For instance, advertising on social media is expected to cost AU$110,628 million in 2021. In 2021, digital and social media advertising accounted for almost half of marketing budgets (46 percent), and 97% of marketers invested in social media ads. Advertisers can use quantitative metrics like impressions, reach, and engagement on social media to monitor the performance of their campaigns in real time and distribute persuasive messages to consumers directly [1].

Description

Online advertising tools are increasingly being used by charities and nonprofit organizations (NPOs). NPOs and charities use social media platforms to raise awareness about particular issues, advocate for their causes, and accept donations through available fundraising tools. Social media marketing presents an opportunity for NPOs and charities to reach people in a timely, targeted, personal, relevant, engaging, and cost-effective way. Fueled by the advantages of directly interacting and engaging with consumers, constituents, and stakeholder Social media's two-way communication enhances interactions with customers by providing organizations and customers with real-time responses and engagement. The way businesses carry out their marketing activities has changed as a result of the interactive nature of social media platforms. According to previous research, charities spend more on direct marketing than they do on social media marketing. It has been discovered that engaging donors through advertising and marketing on social media results in greater effectiveness, efficiency, and return on investment. The current study primarily focuses on examining the effectiveness of emotional appeals in NPO and charity social media advertising in light of the lack of studies examining the use of social media as a platform for advertising [2].

Through the lens of the tri-component model, advertisers have utilized distinct emotional appeals like fear, guilt, shame, love, pride, and hope in the delivery of their messages with the intention of influencing consumers' attitudes, decisions, and actions both online and offline. For instance, charity and non-profit advertising discovered that emotional appeals of happiness, sadness, and pride were effective in driving attitude and behavior change, while pro-environmental advertising context discovered that emotional appeals of shame, guilt, and hope led to the development of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. Prospect Theory is utilized to comprehend consumer decision-making and choice-driven actions when presented with various options and message appeals. Scholars developed a number of behavioral economics theories to look at how people choose between risky and uncertain alternatives. One of these theories is Prospect Theory. Prospect Theory says that people think in terms of expected utility, which they use to make decisions. Four primary correspondence models originated from this logic: AIDA Model, Progressive system of Impacts Model Advancement Reception Model and the Interchanges Model. There are three main stages shared by all of these theoretical frameworks: a stage of thinking, feeling, and acting. Even though these theories show that communication plays a role in all three dimensions, behavioral outcomes can only be measured in a limited way. Utilizing controlled experimental designs to examine how various persuasive appeals affect persuasive outcomes like attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral intentions is the focus of much of the research in this field. Advertising scholars have a one-of-a-kind opportunity to investigate the effects of persuasive appeals in the field thanks to the advantages of social media platforms for disseminating persuasive messages and tracking their effectiveness, which is measured through behavioral, server-based responses to advertisements [3].

Prospect theory can be used to comprehend how persuasive messages that are emotionally framed are processed. According to prospect theory, the audience's decision-making and actions are influenced by message framing (positive/gain versus negative/loss). Tversky and Kahneman demonstrated in their earlier econometrics experiments that when a message emphasizes the gain or the loss in a particular scenario, people arrive at distinct decision outcomes. By impacting the manner in which a crowd of people sees a message through a positive or pessimistic allure, their perspectives, convictions, contemplations, and activities are likewise affected. In social advertising, the importance of advertising appeals and framing has been emphasized because people's perceptions of social and public issues are significantly influenced by the framing and presentation of information, which in turn affects their behavior. Mixed and inconsistent evidence presents advertisers with a challenge when crafting persuasive messages in the context of charity advertising. For instance, Chang and Lee found that messages framed in terms of loss performed better than those framed in terms of gain, whereas Tugrul and Lee found that messages framed in terms of gain performed better at encouraging donations. Multiple contexts, including responsible tourism, conservation, and organ donation, have investigated how advertising appeals and message framing interact. This study builds on previous research to investigate the connection between message framing and emotional appeals for charities made via social media in order to identify the most effective advertising strategies in this setting [4,5].

Conclusion

Advertising can appeal to one's rational or emotional faculties, depending on the message. Arguments, logic, and facts are used in rational appeals to persuade. Emotional appeals, on the other hand, try to get people to feel a certain way in order to make the message stick with them and make them more likely to take action. In the context of advertising, it has been discovered that messages that use an emotional appeal rather than a rational one are more effective at initiating processing and producing persuasive results. It is argued that the challenge facing advertising research at the moment is not only to identify effective advertising appeals but also to match these appeals to "corresponding action tendencies and relevant behavioral advertising outcomes." When emotions are evoked in the audience, both affective and cognitive responses are elicited, resulting in "feeling-action tendencies" that guide both intentional future behavior and automatic response to stimuli. The emotional system generates distinct perceptions, cognition, and behavior in order to mitigate a threat or seize an opportunity. As a result, it has been discovered that emotional advertising appeals can help explain behavior.

References

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