Southill Community Energy - Community Engagement Campaign

Challenge: Southill Solar, one of the UK’s last solar farms to launch before the feed-in tariff was removed, had a clear purpose to deliver community-owned energy, however, they needed help. With dwindling investment, they had just four weeks to raise £1,000,000 in the Southill Community Energy share offer. They needed to reach and persuade investors. And fast. What we did: Working closely with the team of directors we firstly developed a marketing plan with objectives of raising awareness of Southill Community Energy’s offer, increasing engagement in the local community (off and online), and building confidence in the offer. After some lightening fast local insight research, a communication strategy and community engagement campaign that both engaged existing investors, and spoke to target investors was developed. The community engagement campaign was completely integrated and harnessed local events, email and social channels, local print and PR. A clear content strategy ensured we had the right mix of content across the media mix for all investor profiles. Results: The target investment was raised and the success of the campaign was reflected in key metrics across our website and social channels. Web traffic increase of 150%, facebook followers up 200% with engaged users up 839%, and a total organic reach of unique users up by 569%. , twitter following grew by 98 new organic followers in the period with impressions by nearly 100%. There was also a 38% increase in click-through rates and a 40% increase in email subscribers. The marketing campaign was shortlisted for the BusinessGreen Awards.