How can you use video content to effectively convey the importance of your cause to potential donors?

Any charitable or cause-based campaign will only be successful if they are able to trigger an emotive response from the stories they tell. Empathy, compassion, and resonance are all emotional responses, and if you can make potential donors feel empathy or compassion; or if they can truly relate to the cause, they are far more likely to donate. Video is a powerful tool to derive emotional triggers as you can weave together the right words, visuals and sounds to deliver your campaign message with strong emotional impacts. Just as a cake can be layered effectively with great results, a well-layered video can be appealing, powerful and very hard to resist.

I believe that video is very powerful to engage donors. It's storytelling but on multiple levels. I also find that influencers are not worth the time or money. I have had many campaigns we ran, where the organization brought in those people to do videos and it yielded zero returns. Why? Because they were not bought into the mission. They were bought but not into the mission. When you do a video, people connect when they feel others are buying into the cause. Influencers are bought into the check.

Leveraging visual elements becomes immensely powerful when you infuse a personal touch into your narrative. Share testimonials from individuals, communities, or beneficiaries whose lives have been impacted by your cause. It is essential to reveal the authentic faces and voices that drive the work you undertake. This transforms the theory of change, logframes and evaluation statistics into real, relatable experiences. Such stories not only not demonstrate the impact but also serve as a powerful catalyst for action. This approach fosters a deeper connection with donors as they witness the tangible effects of their contributions on the ground.

In addition to telling your organization's story, consider telling the story of one of the people you serve. Including a clip of the person telling their own story would be best, so that donors can really picture the people they'll help with a donation to your organization.

The fastest way to inspire generosity is to appeal to the emotions of the donor and make the video about what moves the donor to take action and give, rather than about you. And have multiple versions to send to different audiences. 1) Historical, the same video would be sent to your entire audience. 2) Then we moved toward having different videos to send to different segments. For example, if someone has kids in their household, they would get the donor story of a child’s life being saved. 3) Now, with digital customization, you can have even more segments and send a video based on the donors interest and behavior based on what the data says. 4) The future: every single person will get a slightly different video.

Remember you have 3 seconds or less to make an impact so users on social media continue to watch. Make sure you test the first part of your video and edit it if needed to increase engagement.

Identify key steps in your donor journey where video can increase conversion. This can be on landing pages, donate forms, thank you pages, emails and more. A/B test where possible.

Don't feel the need to invest lots of money into a video. Utilize a tool like Loom to create low-budget videos that will still make a powerful point.