Raising awareness for Create Growth N2 with strategic digital design
The Create Growth N2 programme offers business support designed to help creative and digital businesses in Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire grow, innovate and scale. It’s part of a national initiative backed by the Department for Culture, Media & Sport and Innovate UK, offering support including immersive tech training, workshops, and investment readiness delivered by the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University.
Sector: Local authority
Client: Nottingham City Council
Services: Social Media | Graphic Design | Website Design | Digital Design and Marketing
The Challenge
The programme needed to raise awareness of its multi-pathway support offer and increase engagement from ambitious businesses across the region. With multiple support streams like immersive tech workshops, specialist cohorts, and funding guidance there was a lot to communicate in a short space of time. And with a major showcase event fast approaching, the digital presence had to land, fast.
The Strategy
Shaping the CGN2 brand
Throughout the delivery of this project, we’ve provided creative brand development shaping a distinctive and consistent presence across digital and physical touchpoints. Rather than being too rigid with the visual identity of the brand from the start, we’ve allowed it to evolve naturally, refining and building as the programme has matured.
This subtle approach maintains a consistent presence and built trust, keeping the brand image recognisable at every touchpoint. This has consisted of development of the logomark so it’s now more prominent and scalable across digital platforms, adapting the brand guidelines so multiple partners can independently use the brand, and brand patterns to add personality across the visual assets. We’ve also designed branded marketing materials, such as roller banners, mailers and flyers, to support programme events.
Website design & development
We started by designing and developing a responsive website to act as the programme’s main hub. It needed to explain who CGN2 is for, what support is on offer, and how to get involved all while staying user-friendly and accessible. Delivered in just six weeks, the site was shaped by SEO best practices and intuitive navigation to help people find the info they need and take action.
With a time-sensitive deadline to publish a responsive website, we focused on the core fundamentals of the programme, what it offers, the pathways, the partners, and upcoming events. We also implemented exciting visual storytelling through the creation of bespoke animated icons and brand development and motion throughout the website journey. Since delivery of the website, we have since maintained its performance and applied the best SEO practices and digital marketing on an ongoing basis.
Raising awareness across multiple social media channels
To support the website, we launched Instagram and LinkedIn channels and curated a consistent content plan to circulate upcoming events, success stories and important industry news.
These social platforms are designed to reach an organic audience across the city and county aiming to cut through the noise and connect with creative founders. The setup laid the groundwork for long-term visibility. With key pages starting to gain traction and a schedule in place, the content strategy is now geared towards organic growth and engagement. As well as creating the content, we’ve provided social media management and scheduling on an ongoing basis.
Telling the stories of CGN2's impact on Nottingham and Nottinghamshire businesses
To showcase the value of the programme, we curated a series of case studies focused on local businesses and entrepreneurs that have received support and investment and the impact it’s had on their businesses. The case studies focused on local entrepreneurs who have received support and how it has impacted their business and its growth.
The case studies serve as a versatile resource as part of the digital design marketing strategy. They’ve been promoted and circulated on the programme website as news articles and promoted across social media, using formats such as carousels and single-page graphics to highlight key quotes.
The Outcome
This launch phase delivered a responsive website presence as a central place of information at creategrowthn2.co.uk, launched multiple social media platforms, and told compelling stories about the impact the programme has had on local entrepreneurs and businesses.
The digital design and marketing strategy engagement has helped CGN2 boost visibility, build awareness, and position itself as a go-to resource for creative business growth. With our help the programme achieved:
- Fully booked cohorts
- Close to 100 businesses engaged throughout the project
- A content strategy designed to scale awareness
- An 11% CTR on a brand new responsive website design
- A further year’s worth of DCMS funding awarded to region to continue to deliver CGN2 throughout 2025/26
Following a successful launch phase, work is continuing throughout 2025/26 to build on the momentum that we’ve built to promote the programme even wider to more businesses across the region.
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