Father’s Day a missed opportunity for charities, says research
Melanie May | 16 June 2017 | News
Charities are missing out on donations by not digitally promoting ethical or alternative gift programmes around key calendar events such as Father’s Day, according to research from equimedia,
While purchases of ethical gifts have seen a 19% increase over two years according to CAF – a keyword analysis of online charity campaigns by equimedia has shown no significant uplift from charitable organisations promoting their alternative gift services.
equimedia analysed Google search trends around peak annual gifting occasions, which showed significant volume uplifts from searches among people seeking inspiration and ideas for unusual gifts. At the same time, its analysis of paid search activity on Google showed charities were not running digital campaigns to capitalise on these occasions to promote their ethical gift programmes.
equimedia investigated a number of paid search alternative gifting keywords, as well as consumer search trends throughout the year for peak gifting occasions such as Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Valentine’s Day. It discovered that according to Google monthly averages for these search terms, an average of 33,000 searches per month are currently being conducted looking for Father’s Day gifts – equal to the number of searches for online inspiration for Valentine’s Day. This is only beaten annually by over 60,000 searches a month for Mother’s Day gift ideas. Over 19,000 additional searches for ‘Father’s Day presents’ and ‘Father’s Day ideas’ a month are currently taking place.
Louise Burgess, COO and founder of equimedia, said:
“With the dramatic increase in people taking up alternative gift options from the UK’s charities, you would expect this to be an area where charities are seizing on the potential to not only promote their causes around key calendar events but to also get ahead of their fundraising targets for the year. It is astonishing that this analysis of Google search terms shows that this is not the case.
“That charities are ignoring key moments throughout the year to engage when Google search data clearly shows that people are actively looking for unusual gifts for their loved ones, highlights a tremendous missed opportunity – and one which organisations could act on with very little financial outlay to deliver tremendous returns.”
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About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.