The two organisations I am going to do my report on is MacMillan Cancer Research and Cancer research. This is because they are very similar therefore, it will be interesting to compare the two and see how they both use their inbound marketing to promote and attract their customers.
Each organisation's approach to inbound marketing
Firstly, Macmillan Research approach for inbound marketing is very personal to their customers. They like to provide different blogs and events in order to enable their customers to feel involved in their charity. They also provide results of how much money they have made through the fundraiser. This a very good marketing move as it enables the customers to feel pride and be proud of their work, that they feel that they have helped out and made a difference to a charity that means a lot to them. They also have a forum chat on their website which allows cancer patients to talk to other patients all over the country so they can relate to each other and share their stories. MacMillan create brand awareness by having events such as coffee mornings as they can speak on topics that the customers want to know and hear about. Therefore, this enables more people to search in their website to get their right information on their coffee morning chats, allowing them to become the first website to come up when searched.
Cancer research’s approach is also very similar to MacMillan Research, they also have a very personal relationship with their customers and audience. They provide awareness to their charity by letting people “share their story”, they share their story on many social media platforms such as Instagram, twitter and Facebook and on their website. This enables the charity to share awareness of cancer research but also enables this to be spread around globally to attract new customers. As stated in the review, cancer research has many blogs which also enable organisation awareness, the blogs are mainly about cancer and treatment. This provides the customers with updates and different information daily. Therefore, this brings more and more people to the organisation as people start to talk about the different blogs, allowing more people to visit the website. Furthermore, Cancer research understands the needs and wants of the customers and use this by creating blogs and information of cancer treatment, this enables their search engine optimisation to be successful as they engage with users on their frequently asked topics.
Strengths and weaknesses of the inbound marketing approach used by each organisation
Furthermore, Macmillan have lots of strengths and weaknesses with their use of inbound marketing. The strengths include that they are providing daily updates on their website and social medias therefore, their customers and audience are always provided with vital information with their favourite organisation. Another use of the inbound marketing is their use of content marketing, MacMillan Research use the content marketing in order to tell different stories of their customers. Therefore, this enables the customers and audience to engage and have a topic, allowing the customers to feel appreciated and part of the organisation as a family. This is very successful as it also enables the charity to have more people involved in their organisation and to help raise more money for people suffering with cancer. Moreover, a weakness of their inbound marketing is that they don’t have blogs on their website. The MacMillan provide lots of daily updates about the charity and provide stories of their customers. However, they don’t have many blogs that customers can read. This is a weakness because they are not using all of their marketing methods to provide and build brand awareness. MacMillan should provide relevant and useful content to target and engage with their audience. Therefore, they are not fulfilling the needs and desires of the customers and not attracting more perspective of their customers.
On the other hand, Cancer research also have lots of strengths and weaknesses. This is shown on their website. They are always changing the way the website is shown and they also ask for feedback, this can be seen on the website at the bottom, “We've recently made some changes to the site, tell us what you think”. This is a brilliant use of inbound marketing as it’s allowing the customers to have a voice on the website and also allows the charity to know the customers to better and have insights on their needs. Therefore, they can amend and make changes to fit the customers needs and desires. Furthermore, another strength is that cancer research provide lots of different events which customers can get involved in. This can be seen through their “race for life”, doing your own fundraiser - a lot of people shave their head to raise money and awareness for their charity. They promote this well on their many different platforms to engage more customers. However, cancer research also has weaknesses in their organisation, I believe a weakness is that people who donate are unable to keep track of how their contributions are utilised or who they have benefited by donating. Therefore, this can anger donates as they want to know who they have helped. Cancer Research could change this by keeping track of the money coming in from donators and seeing where and how that money was beneficial to the organisation. Cancer research could then share this with their customers so that they feel pride that they have helped someone. Cancer research not doing this can ruin the reputation, this happened with Oxfam when all the money was going to the top executives as shown on The Daily Mail - “Despite being one of the best-known anti-poverty charities in the world, Oxfam has rewarded senior executives with banker-sized salaries and benefits.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3193050/Oxfam-spends-25-funds-wages-running-costs-Charity-spent-103m-year-including-700-000-bonuses-senior-staff.html, Sunday, Feb 28th 2021
Which organisation was best at inbound marketing and why
In conclusion, I believe that Cancer Research were better at using their inbound marketing as they had an array of different methods that they used such as blogging, different events and use of social media. They also update their website a lot and want feedback from their customers. Therefore, they are always looking at ways to engage with their customers and their needs and desires. This enables more people to attract on their website, enabling their search engine optimisation to be successful. Furthermore, MacMillan cancer research is still a very strong and thriving organisation however, I believe if they created more content by the use of blogging, they could engage more with their customers and audience.
Sources:
Cancer Research UK. 2021. Cancer Research UK. [online] Available at: <https://www.cancerresearchuk.org> [Accessed 26 April 2021].
Sja.org.uk. 2021. First Aid Courses, Advice & Volunteering. [online] Available at: <https://www.sja.org.uk> [Accessed 26 April 2021].
Macmillan.org.uk. 2021. Macmillan Cancer Support. [online] Available at: <https://www.macmillan.org.uk> [Accessed 26 April 2021].
Oxfam GB. 2021. Oxfam GB | We are Oxfam. [online] Available at: <https://www.oxfam.org.uk/?pscid=ps_ggl_Google+-+Communications+-+Brand+-+BAU_oxfam&gclid=Cj0KCQjwyZmEBhCpARIsALIzmnIcmMP-to92u01k1pSi95gfJ3W0mAqIER0mhBx-v67oAJZSJJFzKaUaAjDBEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds> [Accessed 26 April 2021].
Steiner, R., 2021. Oxfam spends 25% of its funds on wages and running costs. [online] Mail Online. Available at: <https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3193050/Oxfam-spends-25-funds-wages-running-costs-Charity-spent-103m-year-including-700-000-bonuses-senior-staff.html> [Accessed 26 April 2021].
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