When it comes to getting people’s support, we have to remember that our audience is nothing like us. They’ve not had the same experiences, they don’t have the same information and they don’t feel the same way about animals as we do. In fact how we feel is probably a perfect indicator of exactly how the general public don’t feel.
(photo below from K9wavelength: the demographic of people with an intense interest in dog behaviour; see any trends?)
This isn’t a bad thing – it’s just a thing. And we need to be aware of it.
When we do marketing based on our own motivations we tend to put together campaigns based on saving the lives of death row pets. We say “you have to act to save these pets – there’s hundreds of them and they’ll die if we don’t do something” because that’s what motivates us to take action.
An Upstate animal shelter is sending out mass e-mails of with pictures of animals scheduled for death in hopes of saving some of their lives.
Those who send the e-mails don’t make light of the urgency of the situation. The animals’ days are numbered, and the e-mails make that clear.
Now the group above is getting a positive result with an increase in adoptions (however, any program that involves advertising individual animals on the internet probably would). But, what you don’t see in their numbers is the people turned off by their approach.
Campaigns based on doom and gloom don’t lead to people feeling positive about your group. What you’re actually doing is negative marketing. They will help you, but they won’t feel good about it, they won’t look forward to hearing from you again and their support will be limited. Ongoing messages of this kind (i.e. all the pets going to die today) will leave your supporters feeling helpless; what’s the point trying if the problem is so insurmountable?
Never give depressing messages to your audience or try and guilt them into supporting you. You must focus on the positive: your results and how the support makes a difference. Thank your supporters over and over. By all means tell a story about the plight of your pets, but right next to this negativity needs to be explicit detail on how they can contribute and change things for the better.
Knowing they’re making a positive difference will make your supporters feel good and motivate them to help again.
The sooner we stop pushing people to help because “they have to or dogs will die” and instead focus on making people feel good for being involved and bringing about positive change, the sooner we can start working to build mutually satisfying relationships with our supporters.
