Establish Goals. Now that you have selected your charity, determine what it is you want to accomplish with your involvement from a business perspective. There are tangible and intangible goals you can reach through cause marketing. Are you looking for networking opportunities at board or donor level? Do you want to raise your business’ profile through publicity about your involvement? Are you trying to build employee or customer loyalty? Or, do you just want to shore up support in your home community? Set your goals and then you can determine what resources, both time and money, to budget for cause.

Dive In. Although writing a check to cause will help, this should not be extent of your participation. Choose a single cause and maintain a focused campaign that integrates cause into very fabric of your organization. Look at other ways to expand your involvement. Serve on board. Become a volunteer for your selected cause. Encourage employees to get involved in projects with selected charity. Give them a “charitable time” budget each month that lets them use business hours to perform their service with your chosen cause. Strategic allies and even customers may want to be involved if you have selected your cause wisely.

Communicate. Develop a simple, direct and compelling message that not only explains cause but reason your company is involved. Explain how purchases – if part of program – are directed into cause and how that contribution will affect it. Then, promote cause in customer mailings and in your advertising. Create joint events with your nonprofit partner to attract customers, prospects and media coverage.

Selecting and supporting right cause for your company can build profit, brand equity, as well as employee and customer loyalty, while improving world. So, what could be better than that?

No matter what type of business you have, in your marketing materials you MUST sell benefits, not features. People only care about one thing, "what's in it for me?"

A feature is a characteristic of your product or service. A benefit is what that feature does for a customer. Here are a couple examples of features and benefits:

Feature: At Consolidated Bank, there's NEVER a charge for using other bank's ATMs.

Benefits: You can get cash wherever you are, when you need it, and save money.

Feature: At ABC Employment Service, we test applicants office skills, such as typing speed.

Benefits: When we send you an applicant, they meet your minimum requirements, and you don't have to waste valuable time testing them yourself.

Here's a little trick for finding benefit within feature. List a feature then ask yourself, "So what?" What does that feature do for my customers? For example:

Feature: Personalized service.

Benefit: The benefit of our personalized service is that we take time to understand your needs."

Don't stop there. So what? What does working with people who take time to understand their customers needs do for your customers?

Benefit: Since we take time to understand your needs, we can better anticipate potential problems and save you time, money and aggravation.

Bingo! Almost everyone likes to save time and money, and less aggravation is always good, so this is a real benefit statement.

Benefits Categories:

Though benefits can be described in a million ways, there are really only five main categories:

1. Convenience: Saves time or effort.

2. Saves money or increases money.

3. Provides peace of mind.

4. Appeals to image or ego.

5. Fun or enjoyment.

In addition, one single feature can have lots of benefits to one customer. Benefit statements don't necessarily have to include one feature and one benefit, each.

Also, keep in mind, just like beauty is in eye of beholder, so too are benefits. One person might buy an SUV because he needs room to transport five kids; another person buys same SUV because she likes comfortable ride and enjoys sitting up high overlooking other cars.

Another powerful psychological strategy is using a technique that appears to lower price of your product or service, without actually doing so.

For example, if you charge $1000 per year for your product or service, you can break it down for reader so that they understand it's really only $19.23 per week." It's exact same price, however, $19.23 per week is a lot easier to psychologically digest and justify than $1000.

If you would like to start utilizing immense power of psychology immediately in all your marketing efforts, I highly recommend following books:

"Compelling Selling: A Framework for Persuasion," by Philip R. Lund and "Secrets of Closing Sale," by Zig Ziglar

Since they're all-time classics, you should be able to find both both books at your local bookstore or on Amazon.com. Enjoy!