Digital marketing strategy for Church Army

The brief

As a charity, Church Army had experienced a recent period of change within the organisation, combined with fundraising challenges and a need to clarify their brand position.

They approached Arkyard, who were already engaged as their retained digital agency, with the need to have a digital strategy created that would help them to focus on what was required over the next 12 months and beyond in terms of digital activation to engage existing and new key audiences, including supporters.

There was also a need to have internal capabilities assessed, to highlight what was required in terms of skills, processes, tools and other digital transformation elements.

The approach

To help Church Army with their requirements, the project had three key phases.

Digital Review

Before creating the strategy, Arkyard needed to assess the current state of digital, both in terms of channels used and internal capabilities. This involved:

• Situational Analysis – reviewing the situation for the charity, plus the current digital marketing activity and approach.
• Digital Maturity Audit – quantitatively measuring the overall level of digital maturity across seven key areas.
• Digital Marketing Skills Analysis – measuring the level of competency of skills within the team members and identifying opportunities for improvement.
• Channel Audits – reviewing the effectiveness of the digital channels, including the website (content, UX and conversion journeys), organic social media, email marketing and paid media.
• Audience Mapping – collaboratively mapping out the key external audiences for engagement, using Empathy Mapping within a workshop.

Strategy Creation

Using all of the insights captured during the digital review phase, Arkyard created the digital marketing strategy, which was made up of the key components of:

• A vision for digital marketing at Church Army to aim for.
• A strategy statement summarising what would be achieved, how and the impact of this.
• Broad digital marketing goals that align with the wider Engagement strategy and charity aspirations.
• Specific Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to indicate what would be achieved and how impact would be measured.
• Internal strategic pillars which show what is required to support the strategy and transform digital.

Digital Activation Plan

The final phase of the strategy was to use all of the insights from the previous phases to create a digital activation plan. This was separated into external and internal opportunities for improvement, then prioritised into Now, Next and Later workstreams.

The results

As a result of this project, Arkyard have provided Church Army with a robust digital marketing strategy framework that’s designed to be used for the next year and beyond to help them reach their Engagement goals and transform their digital capabilities.

It can be used not only as a guide for the team and all future digital activity, but also will help them to measure the impact of their work.

The addition of a digital activation plan means there is a clear roadmap for both external and internal opportunities, which can be implemented immediately.