Charlie Waller Trust
Marketing Strategy | Social media strategy | Brand messaging | Audience & competitor research | Marketing recruitment consultation and job description development | SEO audit & recommendations | Project Management | Database audits | Supporter and fundraising journey development | Ongoing marketing support
The Brief:
Charlie Waller is a mental health charity specialising in training, knowledge, support and expert guidance for people who look after, support and educate young people.
They came to The Doers initially for support with their social media channels but after a discovery call they approached us with a full strategic marketing brief which included:
Increasing their in-house marketing capacity
Clarifying their narrative and enhancing their brand position
Optimising their database
Marketing their charitable activities
Marketing their income generating activities
Advising on social media engagement
The challenge:
The team at Charlie Waller were open, keen to learn and to be challenged which made them a joy to work with. Our main challenge was the lack of audience insights and data available to us to really get under the skin of their audiences and also pushing them to focus in on particular strands of their support and target audiences. As it stood they were talking to a broad range of people with a lot of different messages which was diluting their messaging and making their marketing less impactful.
What we did:
Recruitment
First step was to address their lack of marketing resources and consider a restructure of the marketing team and create a new role and job description. We interviewed the current marketing team to get a sense of where their skills and passions lay and developed a short and mid-term recruitment plan along with a full job description for the new roles we recommended.
Audience research
We conducted a social media audit, analysed data from their website and Google Search console, analysed top-level information taken from their database and conducted a competitor analysis to inform our recommendations of one to two priority audiences to craft a marketing strategy around.
Brand messaging
Our Brand Messaging Doer Ben, developed a comprehensive messaging framework for the charity to clarify their narrative and succinctly explain who they are and what they do. Ben then developed audience specific messaging for the priority audience we identified from our research.
Marketing strategy
Focussing in on our priority audience we crafted a proactive and multi-channelled marketing strategy to raise awareness of Charlie Waller amongst this key audience and to increase their uptake of charitable activities and training resources. We also crafted a fundraising marketing strategy for this same audience to increase the number of people raising funds and making regular donations to the charity.
As the final piece of the marketing strategy we looked at social media with recommendations on content which is focussed, considered and drives engagement rather than followers. We also recommended that they shouldn’t shy away from using the platform to engage with followers and ask them what they’re there for and how the charity can better support them, opening up the channels as a way of connecting with their audience rather than viewing it as an overwhelming and sometimes scary platform.
Data
We worked with the brilliant Alex Fearon to take a deep dive into the charity's data. Alex looked at how the organisation's data was being collected, stored and segmented and made recommendations to improve this going forwards to better inform marketing and fundraising strategies as well as using it to better understand the charities key audiences.
Alex then delved even deeper to develop a new and improved supporter and beneficiary journey including automated and editorial email flows to better engage with current and new supporters and stakeholders and to make sure they’re being communicated the right and most impactful messaging.
Ongoing support and training
With a new structure to the marketing team and a new Head Of in place to activate our recommendations we wanted to make sure the team at Charlie Waller had the support and resources to lean on us when they need to. This is still in progress at the moment but includes ad hoc consultation when needed, advice to drive proactive campaigns and a series of power hours for one-to-one or group training kicking off with an SEO power hour run by Matt.
The results:
A new Head of Marketing & Comms in position, streamlined and focussed roles for the existing marketing team members and a new Content & Story Manager in place.
An audience insights report highlighting our findings and recommendations for one target audience to focus marketing and fundraising efforts on.
Succinct brand messaging which tells all stakeholders what the charity does and how they can be supported along with focussed messaging to target the priority audience. Delivered as a comprehensive messaging document to be used across all marketing channels.
A proactive multi-channel marketing strategy to raise awareness, increase uptake of charitable activities and convert the priority audience to become community fundraisers including a timeline, to do list and content planner.
Clear supporter journeys to convey the right messages at the right time to convert both uptake of charitable activities and also regular giving. A strategy to improve how data is collected, stored and segmented and recommendations to develop data management further through new internal resources and pro-bono external support.
Doers working on Charlie Waller:
Laura West
Jess Sims
Ben Hayes
Matt Batterham
Alex Fearon
“As a rapidly expanding charity, we needed intelligent insights and clear recommendations for action. Jess and Laura are providing both in abundance, along with a straightforward approach, an ability to really hear what our needs are, and a willingness to work to our agenda. They really know their stuff, are down to earth, inspire confidence and are great fun to work with.”
