Orca is one of the leading whale and dolphin charities globally. The marketing team came to us wanting to grow its Citizen Scientist community. We used a focused Meta campaign to generate sign ups to an education course, building them a primed audience ready to be nurtured into donors, subscribers and future course participants.
Orca is one of the leading whale and dolphin charities globally. The marketing team came to us wanting to grow its Citizen Scientist community.
The brief was simply to get as many people as possible signed up to its free training course.
We set a target of 2,500 sign-ups in four weeks. With a media budget of just £2,000, there was no room for extensive testing. We had to be super-focused and optimise quickly.
Why we went all in on Meta
With a budget this tight, channel discipline was far more important than channel breadth. We put the entire spend behind Meta (Facebook and Instagram), for three reasons:
- It's the strongest platform for lead generation at this budget level
- Its CPCs and CPMs go further than Google or LinkedIn
- Its targeting tools let us build precise audiences around marine wildlife interest, conservation behaviour and lookalikes modelled on ORCA’s existing supporter base.
Before ads went live, we built custom conversion tracking so the algorithm could optimise against real course sign-ups (instead of clicks or reach).
We crafted an effective messaging hierarchy
The creative approach put the offer first: free, expert-led training, framed as a gift to anyone who cares about the ocean. ORCA’s mission and credibility followed, lowering the barrier for people who’d never encountered the charity before.
We constantly optimised
Targeting was reviewed periodically and creatives were refreshed regularly to prevent fatigue. Remarketing consistently outperformed prospecting which gave the proof that the funnel was working end to end.
Two real challenges
Two things made this harder than a typical campaign.
First, ORCA runs two websites, which complicated conversion tracking; we solved it by building and testing custom events before launch, so every sign-up was captured accurately.
Second, as a small charity, ORCA had a limited library of creative assets to work with. We played with colour variation and stock visuals to create social-first campaign imagery. We experimented with lots of variety to find out what worked best.
The results
Against a target of 2,500 sign-ups, the campaign delivered 2,755 (110% of goal), for a total spend of £1,979.80.
That’s a cost per result of £1.39, less than half the industry benchmark of £2.75 per lead for the not-for-profit sector (M+R Benchmarks Study, 2026).
The campaign reached 187,924 people, generated 4,994 link clicks and drove a 469% increase in new website visitors compared with the previous period.
But the number we’re proudest of is 2,755. These people are now in ORCA’s community, ready to be nurtured into donors, subscribers and future course participants.
What’s next
We loved working with ORCA on this and we’re excited to keep supporting the charity as it grows its citizen scientist movement.
If you’re a charity or purpose-led brand with a small budget you'd like to go further, get in touch.
