---
title: "Reaching new audiences with paid social: lessons from Great Big Green Week"
date: 2026-10-06T11:36:22Z
modified: 2026-10-06T16:12:54Z
permalink: "https://forwardaction.uk/blog/reaching-new-audiences-with-paid-social-lessons-from-great-big-green-week/"
type: post
status: publish
excerpt: ""
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categories:
  - Blog
  - Webinar
tags:
  - Blog
  - Webinar
  - Campaigning
  - Creative
  - Strategy
  - Testing + Optimisation
featured_image: /wp-content/uploads/2026/10/gbgw2.jpeg
featured_image_alt: A hessian banner printed with the Great Big Green Week logo hangs among tall purple delphiniums in a sunny garden.
timestamp: 2026-10-06T16:12:54Z
---

Watch the recording of our webinar to dig into the topic even further, or read on for the key takeawaysMost causes want to reach people beyond their core supporters. On social media, that’s getting harder. Comment sections can be rough places right now, and anything that looks like a contested issue can pull in trolls before it pulls in supporters.

[Great Big Green Week](https://www.greatbiggreenweek.com/) knows this well. It’s the UK’s biggest celebration of community action on climate and nature, run by [The Climate Coalition](https://www.theclimatecoalition.org/) with more than 120 member organisations and over 4,000 community organisers. **In 2026, over 1.6 million people took part in nearly 10,000 events, from repair cafes to wildlife walks.**

Offline, it reaches new people brilliantly. Online, the content was mostly engaging people who already cared. So The Climate Coalition came to us with a challenge: **how can we use digital channels to reach and engage people who don’t know about Great Big Green Week, and wouldn’t usually interact with climate content?**

We worked together to answer it with playful, community-rooted paid social ads on Meta. Here’s what the ads achieved:

- 13% average click-through rate
- 96% of comments positive or neutral
- 67,000 people visiting the Great Big Green Week website, 85% of them for the first time
- 16p per landing page view
- 5% click-through rate on the event finder button, once we’d optimised the page

![Great Big Green Week paid social campaign results: 13% average Meta ad click-through rate, 96% positive or neutral comment sentiment, and 67,000 people visiting the website.](https://forwardaction.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GBGW-Webinar-2026.png)

Headline results from Great Big Green Week’s paid social campaign

So how did it work? We’ve pulled out four lessons from the campaign. You don’t need to be a climate organisation to use them. They’ll help any cause that wants to reach people beyond those who already agree with it.

### **4 key lessons for reaching new audiences through paid social:**


#### 1. Know your audience

For The Climate Coalition, having a clear picture of exactly who they wanted to reach made every other decision easier, from the creative to the targeting.

We used [More in Common’s seven segments](https://www.moreincommon.org.uk/seven-segments), which group the UK public by values and worldview rather than age or income. Values shape how people respond to a message far more than demographics do. For climate and nature, the [Britain Talks Climate and Nature toolkit](https://climateoutreach.org/?btc_year_qv=2025) looks at each segment through a climate lens.

We picked two segments: traditional conservatives and rooted patriots. Together they’re around 28% of the population, and they’re part of the “silent majority” that Great Big Green Week already reaches offline but has struggled to engage online.

> “If we want lasting support for climate and nature, then we need these segments with us.”
> 
> **Helen Meech, Executive Director, The Climate Coalition**

Here’s how we turned those insights into a paid social approach:



| **Traditional conservatives** | **Rooted patriots** |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Content that works** | Nature-led, nostalgic, proactive, non-activist | Community-led, practical, cost saving, non-activist, non-institutional |
| **Journey** | Short, transparent, establish trust | Short, transparent, local signposting |
| **Platforms** | Facebook, Instagram, Nextdoor | Facebook, Nextdoor |

So each segment needed slightly different content. But from running paid social campaigns with lots of partners, we know a few principles work for almost any audience, and they applied to both segments here.

You only get a couple of seconds to hook someone’s curiosity before they keep scrolling. **Ads that feel native to the platform, more like an organic post than an advert, are much better at making people stop, and that means keeping them** **authentic rather than polished.** We also wanted every ad to invite conversation in the comments, to get engagement up and get people talking to us.

**Then came targeting.**

Meta limits how far you can narrow by interest, so we used interests as proxies, like community organisations and gardening. Gender stayed broad, age was set to 30–65+, and each segment got its own ad set. The two audiences behaved differently. Rooted patriots had a lower cost per click, while traditional conservatives were more likely to go on and find a local event.

We also excluded anyone already warm to The Climate Coalition: people who follow or engage with them on Meta, website visitors and their email list. It’s not foolproof, but 85% of website visitors were new.

If you take one thing from this section, make it this: **the creative is the targeting.** Meta is getting very good at finding people. **Build content that genuinely speaks to your audience and the algorithm will do a lot of the work for you.**

**How to put this into action:** 

Pick one or two values-based segments. Before you brief any creative, write down what each one needs from your content, and which platforms they actually use. Then exclude your warm audiences, so your budget goes on people who don’t know you yet.

#### 2. **Test your ideas before you build them out**

A bold idea feels much less risky once you’ve watched real people respond to it. **Testing gives you the confidence to take the leap, and the data to back it up.**

After a co-creation session with The Climate Coalition’s members, we had two concepts to test. The first, If the Streets Could Talk, used voice notes from everyday things on your street, like a bin ready to “spill the dirt” on the area, or the local oak tree. The second, What On Earth, used CCTV-style clips of neighbours carrying household items and garden tools, with captions asking what on earth was going on.

![Four Facebook ads from The Climate Coalition's Great Big Green Week paid social campaign. Concept 1, "If the Streets Could Talk", shows a talking bin and an oak tree sharing voice notes about local climate action. Concept 2, "What On Earth", uses CCTV-style videos of neighbours behaving mysteriously, teasing what's going on in the area.](https://forwardaction.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GBGW-Webinar-2026-1.png)

Two creative concepts from the Great Big Green Week paid social campaign: “If the Streets Could Talk” and “What On Earth”.**The oak tree was one of our favourites – listen to their mysterious voice here:**

**We kept the test quick and cheap.** The team filmed the clips themselves on phones and CCTV cameras they already had, and brought in voiceover artists for one concept. We put £500–1,000 behind the ads on Meta and watched the data for a few days.

The ads linked to a basic Typeform page. It explained that this was Great Big Green Week and asked if people wanted to find an event near them. It took about an hour to build, and you could run the whole test in under a week.



| **If the Streets Could Talk** | **What On Earth** |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Cost per ad click | £0.42 | £0.23 |
| Click-through rate | 3.4% | 8.5% |
| Cost per event finder click | £4.94 | £3.48 |
| Comment sentiment | Very warm | Warm |

Either concept would have worked. If the Streets Could Talk got warmer comments, but What On Earth reached a broader spread of ages and genders. Reaching a more diverse audience was the priority, so What On Earth won. It was a genuinely hard call.

**Testing also makes it easier to get buy-in from senior colleagues.** The Climate Coalition’s brief asked for something joyful and bold that never felt preachy, so when a playful idea came back, nobody could say it was off-brief. And because the work was framed as a test, with a small budget and clear measures, saying yes was much easier.

> “We very much framed this as a test… so that made it much easier to say yes to something bold.”
> 
> Helen Meech, Executive Director, The Climate Coalition

**How to put this into action:** 

Before you put your full budget behind a bold idea, test two rough versions for a few days. Send the clicks to a simple page with the action you actually want people to take. Then take the results to whoever needs convincing.

#### **3. Humour can turn a comments section from toxic to positive**

Climate content gets more than its share of trolls. The Climate Coalition is a small team without much capacity for moderation, so they were nervous going in. Then the results came back: **96% of comments were positive or neutral.**

The ads asked people to guess what their neighbours were up to, and people really went for it. Some had a go at an answer (“fishing for tadpoles?”). Others shared memories, like buying rock pooling nets for their grandchildren, and that nostalgia matters a lot to both audiences. The lamp ads set off long chains of people trying to out-pun each other, which was really fun to read.

![Facebook comments on The Climate Coalition's Great Big Green Week paid social campaign. Some people guessed what their neighbours were doing, such as "fishing for tadpoles" or a scout leader meeting kids at a pond. Others shared nostalgic memories, like buying rock-pooling nets for their grandchildren. The Climate Coalition replied to each comment, including a link to the campaign website.](https://forwardaction.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GBGW-Webinar-2026-2.png)

Comments on the What On Earth ads fell into two main themes: people guessing what their neighbours were up to, and sharing nostalgic memories. Replying to each comment kept the conversation going and pointed people to the Great Big Green Week website.

Hardly any moderation was needed. The Climate Coalition replied to people who were on the right track, or who mentioned nature and climate, and that pushed those comments up the thread. Once the tone was set, it stuck.

> “It just grew a momentum of its own in a really positive way.”
> 
> Helen Meech, Executive Director, The Climate Coalition

Getting the tone right took some adjusting. Early captions leaned too far into suspicion, and feedback suggested people might assume the neighbours were up to something sinister. We dialled the intrigue back until it felt curious and friendly.

**Worried your jokes will fall flat? These are the things that helped us most:**

- Try different variants
- Keep it low-res and realistic
- Never make your audience, or your issue, the joke
- Let the visuals and text carry the humour
- Get feedback on the risk as well as the giggles – The Climate Coalition’s Great Big Green Week working group, made up of member organisations, was the key sounding board here
- Make the reveal quick and change tone carefully (more on that below)

It helps that Great Big Green Week is rooted in place, too. Content about everyday people improving where they live seems to attract fewer trolls.

**How to put this into action:** 

Pick one campaign where a lighter tone could work. Test a few variants and get feedback on the risk as well as the laughs. Before launch, agree how you’ll reply to the comments you want more people to see.

#### 
4. Keep the reveal warm and human

Intrigue gets people to click, but nobody likes feeling misled, so the reveal has to come fast. **People need to know straight away that they’re in the right place and that this is the ad they just saw.** Then they need the punchline: this isn’t someone up to no good, it’s one of your neighbours being brilliant.

We shot two reveal videos with real Great Big Green Week participants, volunteers and staff at Hackney Repair Cafe and the London Wetland Centre. The ads were funny, but the people in the reveals were doing real things, and that kept it warm.

![Three stills from the Hackney Repair Cafe reveal video in the Great Big Green Week paid social campaign. At 1 second, doorbell-camera-style footage shows a man walking down a side alley pulling a vacuum cleaner. At 3 seconds, on-screen text reads "No, your neighbours aren't taking their electricals for a walk…". At 8 seconds, the vacuum cleaner is being repaired on a workbench, with the reveal: "They're taking part in the Great Big Green Week."](https://forwardaction.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GBGW-Webinar-2026-6.png)

The Hackney Repair Cafe reveal video: the mystery is set up in the first second, and the Great Big Green Week reveal lands by 8 seconds.![Three stills from the London Wetland Centre reveal video in the Great Big Green Week paid social campaign. At 1 second, doorbell-camera-style footage shows a man walking down a side alley carrying gardening tools. At 2 seconds, a second man appears, with on-screen text reading "No, your neighbours aren't taking their gardening tools for a walk…". At 6 seconds comes the reveal: "They're taking part in the Great Big Green Week."](https://forwardaction.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GBGW-Webinar-2026-5.png)

The London Wetland Centre reveal video: the mystery is set up in the first second, and the Great Big Green Week reveal lands by 6 seconds.The landing page was simple. It had the reveal, a short bit of text explaining what was really going on, an event finder button and share buttons.

**Then we optimised.** Very few people watched the reveal videos all the way through, and even fewer scrolled down to the event finder button. So we swapped the videos for an 8-second GIF with the same reveal. More people clicked to find an event, and we hit our 5% target.

**Think about the tone of the whole journey, too**. If your ad is playful and the next thing people see is heavy, the jump is jarring. You’ll still need to talk about serious things. Just get there gradually.

**How to put this into action:** 

Click through your own ad as if you’d never heard of your organisation. Is the reveal instant, and can you see the next step without scrolling? Then check that everything after it, from the landing page to any follow-up, sounds like the same organisation.

#### ****What we’d do differently****

Next time, we’d **make the onward journey even simpler.** We’d **add a follow-on journey for people who’d already engaged**, giving them a route to deeper actions. And we’d **keep a closer eye on paid media spend from day one**, as budget went really quickly at the start.

Nextdoor wasn’t quite ready for us either. None of our ads got through its moderation, but we still think it’s promising for local content. It’s good to see more causes advertising there now.

#### **Getting started: decide where to invest and where to keep it simple**

The Climate Coalition is a team of six, and this was their first significant investment in digital mobilisation. You don’t need a huge budget, just a clear sense of where yours will go furthest. **We recommend starting with these four questions:**

1. What can we do in-house, and where do we need outside support?
2. How much media spend do we need?
3. Which tools will we use to test concepts?
4. Do we need buy-in from internal stakeholders or funders?

If you’re short on ideas, a creative freelancer or agency can help you come up with some and turn them into quick test content. A clear, bold brief at the start also gives everyone permission to try something different.

**Look at who’s already doing it well.** Seeing a range of approaches helps you find the kind of humour that could work for your cause, and rule out what couldn’t. [RSPB has built a brilliantly silly presence on TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@rspb?lang=en) that reaches a different audience from its main brand. [CALM](https://www.instagram.com/calmzone/?hl=en) works on the most serious of issues, yet still finds room for humour, often through comedian ambassadors. [CoppaFeel!](https://www.instagram.com/coppafeel/?hl=en) and creator [Oli Frost](https://www.instagram.com/olifro.st) are worth a look too.

#### **Your five-point plan to reach beyond your core supporters**

1. Choose your audience by their values, then let that shape your platforms and content
2. Test rough ideas for a few days, on a small budget, before you build them out
3. Use curiosity and humour to set the tone, then reply to the comments you want people to see
4. If using spoof or satirical content, make the reveal quick and human, so people feel welcomed rather than tricked
5. Keep the onward journey simple and watch your spend as you go

This is what digital mobilisation looks like in practice. People who would have scrolled straight past end up curious enough to go and find an event near them.

---

There’s plenty we couldn’t fit into this blog. Watch Helen Meech from The Climate Coalition and our own Helen Hector talk through the campaign in more depth, including questions from the audience:

[Watch the webinar recording](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPzTQYW9xgo&t=912s)



And if you’d like to continue the conversation and hear about our upcoming events, webinars, and blogs, come find us on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/forward-action).

Want to reach people outside your core supporters, or test a bolder idea before you scale it? We’d love to help – get in touch:

[Get in touch](http://forwardaction.uk/wp-content/uploads/wp-mfa-exports/page/contact.md)

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