Turning limited capacity into communications momentum

Client: Cambridgeshire ACRE

Campaigns, Engagement, Nonprofits, Social value, Strategy

The challenge

Cambridgeshire ACRE had strong expertise, established relationships and plenty of stories to tell. It supports rural communities across affordable housing, community buildings, health and wellbeing, environmental projects, volunteering and community development.

Our challenge was to create a more proactive, structured and focused approach to communications, aligned to their priorities but within an allocation of just a day a month. The charity needed strategic direction, but also dependable marketing expertise to help build trust and strengthen their position with their audiences as rural community specialists.

Our approach

We had already had a trusted relationship with Cambridgeshire ACRE through previous work, including the development of a practical tone of voice framework to help staff communicate more consistently and confidently, including the use of AI.

We began with an in-depth workshop to explore Cambridgeshire ACRE’s audiences, positioning, priorities, projects and communications challenges.

From those insights, we developed a structured and tailored communications approach combining strategic direction with practical delivery. Our support included content and campaign planning, organisational messaging, social media consultancy, content creation and copywriting, and practical guidance to help the internal team create stronger content.

We looked closely at how Cambridgeshire ACRE was communicating with its different audiences and recommended a more targeted to reflect that different audiences had different needs, motivations and relationships. We also helped the Chief Executive develop a more consistent LinkedIn presence, giving the organisation a stronger leadership voice and additional opportunities to highlight its work and impact.

We also created targeted content around key moments, including an article for Volunteers’ Week bringing together stories from across their projects, and presented at its Community Buildings Conference, sharing expert, practical advice to help volunteers increase visibility of the village halls they supported. As a bolt on resource, we also developed a closure and legacy content plan for the New Life on the Old West (NLOW) programme – designed to keep the achievements, knowledge and resources visible beyond the funding period.

Impact

The year-long retained partnership gave Cambridgeshire ACRE access to strategic marketing expertise, trusted advice and dependable additional capacity; creating an established communications rhythm and providing strategic confidence that helped strengthen the charity’s own internal capability going forward.

Across the retained period, Cambridgeshire ACRE’s combined social content generated more than 259,000 impressions and 5,500 interactions, while its website recorded 25,760 views. Its combined social media audience grew by 8.8%, including 13.7% growth on LinkedIn and 7.3% growth on Facebook.

Hayley Neal, Chief Executive, Cambridgeshire ACRE said:
“The session at the beginning, working through our marketing strategy and thinking carefully about audiences, positioning and priorities, was incredibly useful. As someone relatively new in post at the time, it really helped me to cement my thinking and gave me confidence that we were heading in the right direction.

“We were supported thoughtfully and professionally, particularly through the transition of losing our in house marketing expertise. That continuity and reassurance meant a great deal and has helped us maintain momentum during a period of change.”

Services used

• Strategy
• Campaigns
• Content
• Digital
• Engagement