When you get started on your first raise, you will need to develop key messaging to inform communications planning. Considering the target audience, and the content we need to develop for your web pages, there are some important elements to consider in your messaging:
This programme is going to be new to residents, and the idea of investing in a council is not something most people will be expecting. So it is important to announce your investment strongly, underlining the key benefits, and showing clearly and simply how people can get involved.
The overriding positive outcome for residents of investing is the ‘win win’. They get to use their money to support local green projects - something that is important to them - and they also get a stable financial return to help support their financial plans. These are both important goals for them, and so this is a benefit of the investment.
Another side benefit is the council can raise money at a cheaper cost than borrowing from PWLB - so the council saves money on borrowing costs as well, which is then good for the council - more details on this here.
This third ‘win’ can be a relevant supporting message and underline the ‘everyone wins’ feeling of the investment proposition.
This is a low risk investment, which can be appealing to lots of residents, even those who are not familiar with investing. So keep this in mind in your messaging - particularly early in your investment programme - that not everyone who will be engaging with this investment will be especially familiar with making investments. The minimum investment is just £5, so this inclusive element of the investment is really important.
Remember to think about the benefits for the resident in your messaging development. After all they are in the centre of the communications plan. Refer to this page to remind yourself what is in it for them. Also, local investors will receive 50% match funding from Esmee Fairburn - that is worth considering in your messaging stack
It is important to define what the council intend to use the funds raised by your investment for. This might vary over time, of course, particularly if you plan to raise a large amount of money over a number of raises.
But the principle here is tangibility and building trust. Initially, you need to be clear what an investor’s money will help deliver, and ideally seek to bring that to life through your communications plan.
That means that people can get a clear idea of what their money will do - which is important to our target audience - and gives you an opportunity to demonstrate delivery on that - which builds trust.
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You don’t have to be super precise about what you are going to use the money for. If you have specific projects you know you will be funding, great. We should use this in the messaging.
But if your goal is more generic - to decarbonise council buildings, for instance - that is fine. The important thing is that we try to bring whatever the goal is to life as much as possible to ensure people understand the type of things they are investing in.
You will require support from the wider project team to get details on the intended use of funds.
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This investment is part of your overall climate plans. So we need to ensure we have the correct language in place to describe the investment in keeping with those existing strategies, to build confidence and ensure consistency across the comms.