CAP digital marketing strategy creation

The challenge

Christians Against Poverty had no existing digital marketing strategy and limited tracking of their digital marketing activity. Digital marketing activity was not planned around clear user journeys, and they lacked skills in key marketing channels like SEO and paid search.

They were aware that the content on their website was in need of improvement, to enhance its quality – in terms of expertise, authority and how well it meets users’ needs – and to add better signposting for different audiences.

The charity needed a digital marketing strategy to allow them to reach new audiences and help them optimise for user journeys across multiple digital channels. They also needed a way to embed digital across the wider charity, educating every employee to believe in its importance and value.

The four key digital marketing goals were to:

1. Deepen engagement with existing supporters
2. Reach new audiences and inspire them to engage with CAP
3. Increase giving through digital channels
4. Increase brand awareness and reputation

This project allowed us to use our 'tried and tested' approach to digital strategy discovery, which includes full immersion within an organisation, audience research, a review of key digital channels in terms of performance and usage, competitor and market analysis, plus strategy creation and planning. As a result, we were able to deliver a strategy back to the CAP team that was not only based on the needs of the audience and the organisation, but also allows them to start implementing activity straight away.

David Somerville, Strategy Director 

Our solution

In partnership with Christians Against Poverty, we produced the charity’s first holistic, audience-driven digital marketing strategy and a clear roadmap to make it happen.

The project consisted of three phases spanning four months in total.

Phase 1: Immersion

Over two days at the Christian Against Poverty headquarters in Bradford, David and project director Nicky Moody planned and ran stakeholder immersion sessions with the charity’s digital marketing strategy board and other team members.

By interviewing internal stakeholders from the communications, fundraising and marketing teams, we learned about the charity’s:

• Current digital marketing efforts
• Goals
• Performance
• Staff and team structure
• Roles and responsibilities
• Audiences
• Digital channel usage
• Expertise
• Future plans
• Challenges

We led an empathy mapping workshop where team members explored five key audience segments, including ‘regular givers’ and ‘church leaders’. This process provided valuable insights on the needs, behaviours and experiences of their website visitors, and helped generate a number of key learnings used in latter stages of the project.

Phase 2: Investigation

Our specialists carried out a series of short digital marketing audits and reviews of the following aspects of the charity’s current online presence and activity:

• User experience (UX) and content
• Paid advertising
• SEO
• Google Analytics
• Social media, video and offsite activity

We conducted six qualitative interviews with people who represented the charity’s priority audience groups. Using their answers, we built six individual customer experience journey maps (CXJMs) and identified the key ’moments of truth’ - the points in a customer journey where people experience moments of pleasure or pain.

Phase 3: Strategy

We took everything we learned from phases 1 and 2, clearly summarised these findings, and brainstormed and defined a series of digital marketing objectives, workstreams, focus areas, tactics and actions for Christians Against Poverty. 

Following this, we created a digital marketing strategy document to present back to them.

The three objectives of the digital marketing strategy are to:

1. Implement and fix digital marketing fundamentals
2. Increase acquisition of audiences and awareness
3. Optimise and improve audience journeys

New work streams include:

• ‘Brilliant basics’ such as technical SEO, analytics, tracking and reporting that need to be in place before the client ramps up their digital marketing activity and spend 
• User experience (UX) and conversion rate optimisation (CRO) for donations and fundraising journeys
• Enhancing existing and new campaigns with the use of digital channels and tactics
• Personalising experiences for the charity’s supporters

We presented the final strategy to the digital marketing strategy board in a workshop at their head office in Bradford, and undertook a collaborative exercise to prioritise all of the proposed objectives and tactics across a three year timeline. 

Following this, a full digital marketing strategy and roadmap was developed for the client. This presented what needed to be done to achieve the charity’s four goals across the next three years. The roadmap included activities aimed at:

• Increasing local search visibility
• Optimising website navigation 
• Amplifying service user stories
• Targeting and engaging with younger audiences

The outcome

Christians Against Poverty now have a comprehensive digital marketing strategy and three-year plan that meets their goals, which their digital marketing strategy board is fully engaged with and bought into, due to their involvement throughout the process.

The strategy takes into account the charity’s recruitment challenges, incorporating the possibility of upskilling their current team. 

A digital culture has permeated through the organisation, with the whole team embracing the potential of digital channels to increase visibility and support for the charity.

Fundamentally, the charity is now armed with the key insights they need to better engage with their key audiences, including donors and supporters.

We are looking forward to partnering with Christians Against Poverty to help push the digital marketing strategy forward over the next three years, across our areas of expertise such as analytics and data, SEO, PPC, CRO and user experience.

“It was fantastic to work with a client who truly embraced a collaborative approach, and I believe this was key to ensuring the resulting digital strategy landed well and met the needs of the organisation. The CAP team were completely open and honest with us during our initial immersion sessions and throughout the project, and we had regular contact and review points to ensure that the strategy we were developing was going to be realistic and achievable for them. On top of this, everyone we came into contact with at CAP was an absolute pleasure to work with and extremely friendly!”

Nicky Moody, Project Director