Client: Ahead Partnership
Sectors: Education, Professional Services,
Services: ESG and Sustainability Communications Consultancy, PR & Communications, Strategy,
Ahead Partnership is a market-leader in developing ESG solutions that deliver measurable social impact. Since it was established in Leeds in 2004, Ahead Partnership has worked with employers, developing programmes, events and workshops to help young people achieve their full potential and understand the career opportunities available to them.
As Ahead Partnership has grown and expanded, it has also entered into new geographical areas and sectors. This has opened up new opportunities for the business to reach new audiences and build new relationships.
Having supported them for a number of years, we had generally taken a more local, press-office driven approach, but following the introduction of their new business strategy, we were tasked with building awareness of their brand amongst businesses within their key sectors including: built environment, professional services, health and care, and digital and technology as well as those with green and digital skills requirements.
As an SME with a limited marketing budget, we also needed to make sure that we were delivering maximum return on investment, prioritising the tactics and stories that were best placed to generate cut through.
With the diverse sectors that Ahead Partnership works across, it was essential that we developed a strategy that reflected the complex nature of its work, focusing on targeting businesses within these key sectors to help raise their profile. As well as this, we looked to highlight the organisation’s knowledge around the green and digital skills gap and emphasise its credentials within the ESG space.
As well as identifying publications that aligned with Ahead Partnership’s desired audiences, we built on our approach to focus more on thought leadership and media scanning for proactive feature opportunities. This enabled us to diversify our output and increase coverage opportunities. We have also assisted with making strategic introductions between Ahead Partnership and other key stakeholders, as well as identifying speaking and event opportunities to help build awareness amongst target audiences.
We have successfully achieved coverage in a number of their key target trade titles. One standout example of this was when we identified a proactive opportunity and secured coverage for them in Silicon UK on bridging the tech skills gap. This piece saw Ahead Partnership positioned alongside leading tech businesses such as AND Digital and SEO Works, and allowed us to deliver a hard-hitting piece of coverage in a crowded market.
Building relationships has been instrumental in the success that we have achieved to date, and we have managed to forge strong contacts at a number of key titles including the Retail Times and FE News, which has helped to introduce Ahead Partnership to new audiences.
We also continue to leverage our existing strong relationships to generate fantastic local and regional coverage in Leeds and West Yorkshire. In addition, we have created and nurtured strong journalist relationships in other priority regions for Ahead Partnership, including the West Midlands.
Over the last year we have achieved 23 pieces of coverage across a range of titles, reaching an audience of 172m and receiving 651,000 estimated views.
