Turning marketing insight into a strategy the team could actually use
Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital Charity supports the work of Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital, helping to fund equipment, facilities, research and resources that improve care for patients.
With a small marketing team and ambitious goals, the charity wanted to make sure its time and resources were being focused in the right places.
They came to HG Marketing for a clear, practical marketing strategy that would help them better understand their audiences, strengthen engagement and support future growth.
The challenge
Like many small marketing teams, the challenge wasn't a lack of ideas. It was knowing where to focus.
The charity needed a more joined-up approach to its marketing, with a clearer understanding of the different people it needed to reach and the messages most likely to resonate with them.
Any strategy also needed to be realistic.
With limited internal resource, there was little value in creating an ambitious marketing plan that would be difficult to deliver. The recommendations needed to work within the team's capacity while supporting wider goals around donations, awareness and community engagement.
What we did
We started with the bigger picture.
We reviewed the charity's existing marketing activity, audiences and objectives to understand what was already working, where there were gaps and where the greatest opportunities existed.
From there, we developed detailed buyer personas covering key audiences including supporters, donors and volunteers.
This gave the team a clearer picture of who they were speaking to and helped shape the messaging, content and channels within the wider strategy.
We then developed a practical marketing strategy around those insights.
This included recommendations for:
- social media, with a particular focus on Facebook and Instagram
- segmented email marketing for existing and potential supporters
- content designed to educate, inspire and demonstrate the impact of the charity's work
- relationships with local businesses, influencers and media
- stronger community engagement
- measurement and reporting
But we didn't want to hand over a strategy document that simply sat in a folder.
So we translated the strategy into a clear action plan the team could use day to day, including content schedules, weekly and monthly activities, social and email templates, and clear measures of success.
The outcome
The strategy gave the charity's marketing team greater clarity around its audiences, priorities and activity.
Rather than trying to do everything, the team had a structured plan for where to focus its time and how different marketing activities worked together.
Buyer personas helped inform more targeted communications, while the wider strategy provided a framework for strengthening social media, community relationships and donor engagement.
Most importantly, the work gave a small team a marketing strategy designed around the resources it actually had available, making it something they could put into practice rather than simply a set of recommendations.
Need a clearer marketing strategy?
A good marketing strategy shouldn't make your marketing more complicated. It should make it clearer what you're trying to achieve, who you need to reach and where to focus your time.
If your organisation needs that clarity, we can help.