2022 has been a whirlwind for pro-life organizations everywhere. We have gone from serving and advocating for life under the radar to being on the front page of news articles and pro-abortion bills and ordinances.
While we will forever celebrate the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the main key to pro-life marketing in 2022 after this major political change is resilience. Pro-life marketing requires tenacity, adaptibility, and avoiding the temptation to become silent in the face of challenges and obstacles.
We are all on a mission to reach, serve, and save abortion-minded women, babies, and families. Continuing to market is a must.
In addition to a resilient mindset, here are additional keys to pro-life marketing in 2022.
1. Know the Rules and Play By Them
Pro-life marketing is becoming more challenging and more regulated. Whether you are marketing on social media platforms, Google, or in your local town, you need to know the local laws or ordinances, terms and conditions, policies, and community guidelines.
Knowing these will help you play by the rules, as they will dictate what you can and can’t say and advertising approval. The last thing any pro-life organization needs is to be banned or suspended by a platform. This will not help you reach your target demographic. We must be smart about our word choices, being as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves.
2. Stay on Top of Changes
Companies and state governments are still scrambling to determine their official policies on the life issue.
Recently, Google decided to take a staunchly pro-abortion stance by showing abortion clinics (and excluding pro-life pregnancy centers) by default in local search queries. This happened suddenly, months after Roe was overturned.
To be effective, pro-life organizations must be aware of significant and sudden changes like this and adapt. Google’s change, for example, should redirect your organization’s strategy to diversify your advertising platforms and consider focusing on virtual geofencing and organic SEO.
Facebook has also posed more challenges by removing some of the targeting specifics they used to offer. Organizations can’t market any pregnancy services to minors, and it’s challenging to target as specifically as we used to. Knowing this, we have altered some of our strategies.
State laws and ordinances also continue to change daily. Knowing these will enable you to effectively communicate and protect your center from legal issues.
Every pro-life organization should keep watching and not let their guard down.
3. Follow Marketing Best Practices
When marketing—no matter the industry, product, or organization—best practices will always prevail. There are best practices that extend to every type of marketing.
A few of these include:
- Keeping your website aesthetically pleasing, up-to-date, quick, and fully optimized
- Ensuring it is easy for your target demographic to find and contact you
- Creating content regularly on all platforms and blogging on your website
- Making sure every piece of your marketing has synergy and works together seamlessly
- Tracking the results of every marketing campaign and taking action based on them
- Knowing how to use each platform and making the most of every capability they offer
- Experimenting with new tactics to see if they could be successful for your organization
- Implementing a culture of continuous improvement and refinement
- Not keeping all of your marketing eggs in one basket; a diverse marketing plan will be crucial to your success
Following best practices makes the most of your time investment and allows you to get the maximum marketing potential out of every tactic. If you find you are doing all you can and the results aren’t worth the investment, that’s your sign to switch your strategy.
4. Be Present Where Your Target Demographic Spends Time
When looking at your overall marketing strategy as a pro-life organization, you must examine your target audience and see where they are spending their time.
For instance, if you are only doing mail and email marketing for your donor campaigns, you could be missing out on Millennial donors on Facebook. If you are marketing to Gen Z, but you aren’t using Instagram or paid search, you could also be missing out. You want to make sure to cater your strategy to your target in order to reach them.
This is why pro-life organizations can’t completely unplug from Big Tech. There’s too much at stake. We must be present. If we aren’t, the competition has an automatic advantage.
5. Fine-tune Your Messaging Strategy
There’s a lot of negative press right now for pro-life pregnancy centers and organizations. This means every pro-life organization must carefully review their messaging strategy and always think of any potential ramifications.
This is not saying we should shy away because of bad press. This is saying we need to be careful of our public image and appeal to our target audience.
Here are some examples. If a pregnancy center has a public image of being a “fake clinic” when in fact they do have medical personnel on staff, then the messaging should shift to promote medical qualifications. If a pro-life organization is accused of not helping women after they give birth, then the organization should showcase how their care extends beyond birth and how they have compassion for women in all types of circumstances.
Finetuning your messaging strategy is all about combating accusations with the truth. These will help maintain your public image and mitigate the damage caused by false claims.
Want to Dive Into Specifics?
At Choose Life Marketing, we believe there isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy for every pregnancy center or pro-life organization. You each exist in unique locations with differing levels of support and opposition. Each organization requires a custom marketing strategy to maximize outreach and marketing results.
If you have a desire to dive deeper into your pro-life marketing strategy, reach out to us. We are experts in pro-life marketing and can help position your organization strongly in a post-Roe world.