Be where your donors are.
This simple phrase will give you 90% of the direction you need to create a strategy that engages your diverse group of donors. While each blood centers' donors engage differently, we've found a few constants when marketing to younger donors:
A whopping 84% of adults ages 18 to 29 say they use social media sites.
Younger donors spend a ton of time on social media platforms - 3 hours per day!
They spend most of that time on newer platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram
Gen Z users are 2x more likely to shop on mobile devices than Millennials.
Combine these learnings with the best practices below and you'll be on your way to increasing engagement with your younger donors.
Read: Importance of Multichannel Blood Donor Recruitment
Why you need a multichannel strategy
In early August, Facebook stopped allowing advertisers to promote many paid campaign types to those under the age of 18. This means blood centers were going to miss out on the 16-17 age range. Although we could still reach those above the age of 18, the 18-25 year old demographic was engaging with ads minimally compared to other age ranges. It became apparent to us that we needed to find another way to engage donors under the age of 25.
Snapchat
When marketing to ages 25 and under, we’ve seen success with using Snapchat. In fact, 24% of all social media users are on Snapchat! A majority of the engaged users on Snapchat are under the age of 25, making this platform the perfect place to start advertising to the younger demographics when other platforms don’t seem to be doing the job! In fact, 48% of Snapchat users in 2020 were between the ages of 15 and 25 years old.
Snapchat also gives you insider information on your target audience’s interests such as sports, music, shopping, films, and more! We’ve been able to learn that over 80% of our targeted audience has an interest in shopping and are sports fans. This helps you better understand your donors and better cater to their interests (like when choosing your next promotional item)!
Read: Successfully Recruiting A Younger Donor Demographic With Snapchat
Though Snapchat is a great option, we did use another method to help engage the younger demographics on Facebook as well. It’s important to not give up on your audience when they are being outperformed by others, but rather change your strategy and implement new tactics to re-engage your current donors! The tactic we saw success with across both Facebook and Instagram was poll ads. When the poll ads were launched, we experienced a sudden increase in CTR across all audiences, including the younger demographic! Within a one-month period, polls were responsible for 73% of clicks within our 25 and under audience! These types of ads were helpful when re-engaging this age demographic.
TikTok
TikTok recently celebrated reaching 1 billion monthly active users, with almost 50% of U.S. adults between 18-29 spending an average use of 89 minutes per day on the app. As one of the fastest-growing platforms, it's essential to use this platform to engage the younger generation of donors. However, it's not just about re-using content, posts, or ads from other channels - TikTok requires a unique style of video in order to effectively engage donors. Be human, use trending music and hashtags, and have fun! This type of authenticity is rewarded on this platform with high engagement that translates to actual blood donations. Stay tuned for a client success story!
Our Success
We wanted to find new ways to engage more effectively, so we implemented a new strategy. We were able to start launching specific audiences that targeted just those donors under the age of 25. Within 2 months of launching these new lists on both Facebook and Snapchat, we experienced a 55% increase in blood donations under the age of 25!
This increase alone helps to point out the importance of “being where your donors are”. After all, the younger demographic is going to engage with many different types of ads/different types of platforms than donors over the age of 55!
Conclusion
Targeting specific age groups and shifting your donor recruitment strategies can have a positive impact on your donor base. It’s important to consider all of your options when it comes to bringing donors to your donor center!