Working in the comms and marketing department of a small charity can feel like you have a huge mountain to climb without the correct tools and funding to make it to the top. In this episode, Hayley Wright, communications and engagement manager at Citizens Advice talks through the difference between marketing at a regional versus national level and how to adapt to the change in resources and budgets.

Astra
Hello, and welcome to this episode of, On The Same Landing Page as always I’m Astra, Head of Advertising at Web Presence, I’m joined by my co-host, Jason. Hello, Jason.

Jason
Hello.

Astra
And this week we are lucky enough to be talking to Hayley Wright, who is the communications and engagement manager at Citizens Advice. So, Hayley welcome, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for coming on.

Hayley
Thank you.

Astra
Hayley, can you give us an overview of Citizens Advice? I’m sure it’s kind of a household name in many respects, and many people know it as this kind of online resource. But the work that Citizens Advice do stretches far beyond that, doesn’t it? So I know it’s a big question, as it has so many facets but could you discuss a little bit about an overview of what Citizens Advice does?

Hayley
Yeah, of course. I think a lot of people have, know a bit about it, but yeah, it is quite broad. So generally we’re here to help people find a way forward, let’s say, whoever they are, whatever their problem. And so we’re made up of a network of, I think 270 ish local Citizens Advice offices across England and Wales. So we can help people with any issue, whether it’s housing, money, benefits, employment, energy, consumer issues. And so really broad. And we help as a network, we help. I think the most recent figure was 2.5 million people a year. So really, really big impact. And I think the side that people know less about perhaps is the kind of policy side of the work that we do.

So we don’t just give advice to individuals and we obviously see so many people, over 2.5 million people a year. And that gives us a really unique insight into the kind of problems that people are facing right now and over time and how that changes. So we can use that knowledge to campaign on the big issues, whether it’s local or national issues. So in one way, we’re kind of helping everybody, not just the people that we directly support.

Astra
Yeah, I was going to say I didn’t know until speaking with you that there was any sort of policy involved in it. And but you touched a little bit there obviously you do speak to people, the face of the organisation has somewhat changed over the years as of everything. It’s gone largely online. I remember being young and my mum going to the town hall to speak to Citizens Advice, whereas now I think fast forward 27 years, I had to speak to them a few weeks ago and I had a video call online with someone. And so kind of I guess my question is not that I’m implying that you’re old enough to know, but what are pros and cons of having the more in-person approach for the advice versus the digital side of things.

Hayley
Yeah. So I think it has changed a lot, mostly for for the good. But I would say when the charity was founded, which was 1939, so just after the war was declared, that was when Citizens Advice sort of started and it was obviously all face to face. Then how can people with like lost ration books, homelessness, you know, finding family members and things like that.

So it was, you know, face to face is always been a huge part of the service, I think is what people think of us, you know, becoming an open to an office or to a library and speaking to somebody and and ignoring the the COVID years where everything everything changed and we immediately cease all face to face. And we do offer face to face, and we always have done.

But it’s part of a suite of options for people. So and there’s now it’s changes depending on the local office because we’re all so independent charities. We all work slightly differently, funded slightly differently. But certainly where I work, which is SORT groups so Stockport, Oldham, Rochdale and Trafford, and we offer face to face advice, but also phone, which is sort of our busiest service.

We have what’s called an advice line, and then we have like video advice, WhatsApp and loads of online self-help, which some people prefer to access. So I think at the moment about 10% of everyone that we see visit us face to face, whether that’s, you know, in a community location or one of our bases. And so it’s still quite a significant part of the service.

And yes, I think there is something for everybody, not everyone, is going to want to pick up the phone, not everyone is going to have the time or the inclination to sort of get a bus across to where they come in and see somebody. So we’re able to help people, you know, outside of office hours and things like that. Whereas in the past that was, I think, a limitation of face to face.

Jason
How do you, at the local level, kind of get the name out further. So how do you market citizens advice, Because I’ve seen your TikTok general level like at that kind of central level is amazing. You’ve got some really good marketing there, but I can imagine the budget is quite different. So what and the like the the ceiling of what you can do essential compared to a local level. So what does that look like for you in terms of marketing citizens advice?

Hayley
Yeah, I mean, I think what’s what’s really good for a local for all of us local offices is that we’re part of that network. So we kind of benefit from especially support and that the sort of bigger marketing and the TikTok and stuff that the national charity is able to do. So we’re able to tap into that and utilise content, which is fantastic.

But yeah, certainly at local level and I think I can sort of speak of other local offices as well. Much of what we are doing is on is on zero budget or very tiny budget. So we have to kind of prioritise and focus our efforts and think about where we can make the most impact. So we have the office I work for, we have a comms and engagement strategy that we’re kind of constantly tweaking because things change so quickly and but you know, in that we do need to be sort of smart and focussed on needs to kind of align with the wider organisation’s goals.

So for us, and I’m sure this is the same for pretty much all Citizens Advice is that we want to help more people because demand is increasing and probably won’t stop increasing. And we also want to demonstrate our impact because we need to show the impact that we’re having on society to be able to keep funding the services that we deliver, you know, and to kind of meet that continued demand.

So, yes, I think it’s just that we have to be very we have to prioritise and kind of be focussed on what we want to achieve. One of the things I’d say that we do, certainly where I work we’ve got really diverse communities that we serve, so we want to make sure that we’re reaching those communities.

And so one of the things that we do really regularly is kind of look at our local data. So we capture loads of rich data every time somebody accesses our service, whether it’s through the website, phone or whatever. So we’ve got all of this rich kind of background information that’s anonymised off of who’s seeing us, what age are they, what kind of demographic are they, what ethnicity are they.

And and in looking at that data and kind of digging around a bit, you can see where there is maybe gaps. So who are we not seeing that we feel that we should be seeing based on the area that we work in, the communities that we serve? And so then we would focus quite a lot of our marketing efforts on reaching those communities.

So that might that could be something like paid advertising, like targeted advertising, where we know we’ve got a specific goal or it could be as simple as going to an event that a partner organisation are running or a community event. We’re going to be able to kind of engage or reach a certain group and they similar, but just we have to constantly prioritise and and I think it’s easy, particularly when we’re seeing what the National Charity Day or the National Charities Day and you think, Oh, that looks good, you know, I’d love to do, but I think we can tap into things that have already been done.

Sometimes we copy things, the national Citizens Advice are doing and and use their insight and think, okay, we’re going to try that or learn from what hasn’t worked, you know, what other organisations are doing. And so yeah, I think it’s just constantly refocusing why we’re doing what we are doing.

Jason
Yeah, it’s refreshing to hear you’re kind of like data let you look where the holes are in terms of who you’re reaching and then focus on that. That’s really good to hear and it can be tempting just to go off of what’s current and go there and do a campaign on this because other people are doing that. So that’s good to see.

And is it fair to say you give a kind of before Google you were Google for citizens requests and support if you didn’t know an answer to something, you couldn’t just Google it before, but you could go to Citizens Advice. So I’d love to know because obviously a lot of our work as marketers is knowing what people Google. What do people ask like most commonly? What are the most common requests and has that changed over time?

Hayley
Yeah, I think I think it does change. I think it tends to reflect what’s going on in the world at the time, you know, what’s going on in wider society. Say, for example, when there’s been a recession, you know, we’ve seen increases in queries about debt and we see more people in poverty. And like when we have the referendum, there’s a really clear correlation there that suddenly everyone’s looking at our Brexit advice page or once has covered queries around Brexit.

So and yeah, so it changes over time and I’d say that right now, and obviously because of the cost of living crisis, as I’m sure you can imagine, and we’re seeing more and more people come to us in a crisis situation which wasn’t the norm. I don’t think we were necessarily seen as a crisis service. You know, it was more if you’ve got a struggling for money, but certainly now we’re seeing more people that have got a negative budget, so they’ve got more money going out than coming in and facing eviction or, you know, can’t afford basics, can’t afford food.

And and of course, energy problems at the moment is huge. I think even when I started working for the charity, which was about four years ago, no one really talked about energy advice as being a thing. It wasn’t like, you know, it was really something that was a big issue. People have always had a obviously and it in household bills, but obviously with the huge rise in energy prices and that’s kind of the most common issue that we’re seeing at the moment.

And because of that, we’ve had to set up a dedicated energy team and a dedicated crisis team. Whereas as I say, that’s that’s all relatively recent, but it’s the everyday issue that kind of comes up time and time again. And I think what’s helpful as well know I mentioned earlier about kind of data and policy, but because of that data that we have, we are able obviously the certain things you can predict when you know that there’s going to be a big policy change, it’s going to have a huge impact on on the people we support.

But through the data we are often able to kind of spot trends as they’re just starting to emerge and kind of identify the fact that this is a problem and this is probably going to get worse. But this group of people say so we can kind of plan with some things, you know, where we might need to additional resource within the service. We might need to kind of mobilise or we might need to do some kind of campaign work.

But certainly I think the cost crisis is quite well, the pandemic probably as well, where there’s no there’s no real way of dictating like this. And certainly, you know, all the questions were. But we were thinking, I don’t I remember thinking, I don’t know what’s early on.

Hayley
You know, you’re kind of learning as the people are what’s going on.

Jason
Yeah. So, yeah, that’s so interesting. No, I didn’t consider that there would be so much data management and analysis involved and that your functions and the way you operate would be would need to react in real time to questions and queries like a number of queries in one area. If that shoots up, that changes how your department is then kind of you have to be resourced your department to act. Is that right?

Hayley
Yeah, certainly. And I know I mean we have advisors that work at different levels and we’ve got specialist debt advisors, some people that are more energy focussed advisors, but within that there is a lot of movement. So obviously like with the pandemic, the face to face advisors weren’t doing that anymore. Everyone kind of had to pivot or there’ll be times where certain team members will take on additional training because they need to be kind of moved into to a different service or they need to start providing support like digitally, whereas that we used to working on the phones sort of thing.

Astra
And yeah, yeah, I also found it interesting. I always thought of Citizens Advice as a resource that you go to, but the fact that you try to get out to people who maybe aren’t aware of it is really interesting as well. I never considered that it was like a two way thing, weirdly so.

Jason
Yeah.

Hayley
Yeah.

Astra
So you kind of talked a little bit there on what the current searches are, if you like, and it’s mostly around the cost of living. Is there anything outside of the cost of living because that doesn’t seem to be dissipating at all in the future anytime soon. But anything outside of that, that’s like a big upcoming focus for you guys either at SORT level or national level that you’re aware of.

Hayley
Yeah, I think I mean, as you say, I think there are things that we know won’t go away and will continue to be an issue, like people will be struggling. I think with debt for a long time and the kind of things that we’re seeing through the data that we have and this is kind of data that the national team and the local teams are doing.

So we can kind of tap into that happening across the country. But for example, people who are in a negative budget, that that’s a huge issue at the moment and that’s something I know I’ve mentioned before. But, you know, we’re seeing more people who typically wouldn’t have struggled. You know, ring kind of quite well-paid jobs to sort of two job families.

And we’re actually there’s no way to make the sums add up and and so their outgoings are just higher than that than what’s coming in. And I think that’s something that we are concerned about and buy into certain things that they pay. And we know as well that like one thing we are concerned around is the increased energy costs, but particularly how that affects certain groups

So we know that it’s affecting people who are disabled particularly people who might be relying on certain medical equipment or things, things like that. And also people are on prepayment metres and who are kind of stuck on these prepayment metres and that’s a huge issue. And yeah, I mean there’s a few things I think that we know is kind of coming up.

We all stand around. I know one big area of research and work that’s being done across the whole of policy side of Citizens Advice is around sort of energy efficiency because we know that energy prices may continue to fluctuate, but they’re going to be high and we kind of have to get used to the fact that they’re going to be high.

So it’s thinking what can we do longer term to kind of reach net zero to improve energy efficiency in people’s homes? And yeah, what can we do to kind of mitigate rather than just dealing with what’s right in front of us? How can we kind of look ahead and see, you know, solve some of the problems at the root, I suppose?

Astra
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, you kind of have a unique perspective as well, I guess. As you did a little bit of work as a comms officer at a national level and then have returned back to SORT now. You’ve mentioned previously as well that all of them over
270 individual charities and that all kind of funded slightly differently. Can you just touch on that a little bit at what what you mean by that, how it works?

Hayley
Yeah. So I think it is quite complicated, you could you could obviously speak to different local offices and they would be completely different. So where I work across four local boroughs, we have a kind of we get some funding. So the national charity has certain funded services around debt support. So we’re kind of funded to deliver that support.

And then in certain local offices around the country will sort of paid or funded to deliver that support. But then on top of that, we’re all really actively seeking the funding and in increasingly creative ways. You know, so say, for example, our energy team, we’re constantly sort of looking at how can we increase funding, how can we show the impact that we have and kind of show the impact that we can have in future if this funding is continued.

But certainly we’re facing the same issues, I think, all charities are facing where funding is not consistent. You know, and even certain pots of money that have been quite secure over the past few years and you sort of plumb that in, you know, what’s expected next year, might be even less. So, yes, it was a service. I think we have to be really mindful of how the money we have changes and how we can kind of futureproof charity because demand won’t go down.

So we have to kind of think what ways can we increase demand. Can we meet that increasing demand without just throwing money at it without bringing in more people? Yeah. So that’s the the, the eternal challenge, I think.

Jason
I love that. It’s like, yeah, being more creative, which just means like okay so there’s no more money we’re going to have to brainstorm this again. Yeah, we, you do get some of the best sometimes the best work out of those where we’ve got budgets that a smaller than we’d like. We do have to get creative but there is like a limit on that there is a ceiling where you’re just like okay, we could really do a lot more with, with a little bit more budget as a team, isn’t there interesting though.

Hayley
I was just going to say there’s definitely things where I mean, I, I try and be I try and see the limits of the funding as a exciting challenge rather than a you know like wouldn’t it be great if we have this and and I know like during during the pandemic we were able to secure small parts of funding from our local councils, we’re talking like £500 here or there and, and the briefs around that where to kind of reach certain audiences.

So it might be people who are particularly vulnerable in a certain way. And and that, you know, that was quite fun because they would have these kind of quite strict targets that they wanted us to reach. And then obviously, you’ve got this very small pot of money and this kind of thing. Can how much can we do with this? And sometimes well, I think all the time you can do more than you think. You can say, yeah, it’s that creative.

Jason
There are lots and lots of ways to achieve the same thing, especially in the digital space now, isn’t there? And I’d love to know what your kind of day to day is like. And because you’ve kind of done a stint at national level and the local level, what is the role of a comms and marketing person like at Citizens Advice?

Hayley
Yeah, so I suppose the dif the main difference is the remit, you know, that you would have. So like I say, at the moment I’m a local office but working across four, four offices we have a sort of 1.8 person Commons team. So it’s me and one other person and that’s kind of covering anything that you could put the word comms in to.

So it’s anything kind of external sort of profile reading social media, anything to do with the website anything to do with press kind of media work. And it also includes the kind of local campaign side of things. So the research and campaigns looking at our local data and sort of identify these trends and and thinking about what we want to do and who we want to influence, who we want to speak to, and also things like the internal comms as well, which is quite a big part of the roles it’s keeping.

And all of our advisors who mostly a remote we’re all working either from home or out in the community. So we’re very rarely all in one place. So that’s quite a big part of the role, as well as thinking how can we all be connected and sort of support each other and, and it also includes things like internal events. So, nationally and my, my sort of stint at National was within the network comms side. So it was internal comms, so it was how the national charity engages with the local offices across the country. So in that sense it was much narrower, you know, So you work with bigger numbers at the national charity because I think that to the whole area of the country, but at National Citizens Advice, there is a there’s that network comms team, which is like the internal comms, I guess.

And then there’s also like a brand and marketing team. You know, there’s a news team, there’s a policy team, so they’re specialists in those areas. I think one of the things I found working for a local office is that sometimes you can feel that, you know, I don’t want to put myself down here, but where you kind of you can do a bit of everything but you’re not a specialist in anything, you know.

So I think sometimes that can be challenging because you see what other people are doing, anything. Oh, God, I wish. I wish I could do that. Then you have to kind of remember oh no that’s like one person who’s in a specific team just doing that one thing. And but as I say, I think you kind of get the best of both worlds with a charity like Citizens Advice, because you work locally and you doing all the day to day stuff and kind of doing your best like we all are.

But you can also tap into the expertise at National. So for example, if I’ve got say if we’ve got immediate requests that for whatever reason feels a bit challenging or I’m not quite sure if it’s something that we should be kind of picking up on or when I could speak to the national press team and get that guidance and that kind of reassurance that, you know, just for somebody to say, Yeah, we agree with you.

Oh no, or we’ll take it, you know, we’ll kind of we’ll kind of deal with it. And same with brand and marketing. And, you know, there might be things that there might be ideas that we have as a service, but we don’t have the resources to do it. So that could be like an idea that we might kind of pitch to the national team who might then pick it up across the country and it’ll have more impact for that in that way. And yes, I think you get the the best of both worlds. Really.

Jason
Yeah. It’s such a different experience, isn’t it, that you i found it so interesting when you said anything that kind of comms can be attached to is part of that. But that is, that is almost all of business except for you obviously can say, well, external stuff. So it kind of doesn’t just become everything your job, but when you are local, when you’re in a smaller team, you do just have to kind of do everything don’t you but you do just kind of figure it out.You have some people to lean on but at a national level it’s so different because yeah, you have a remit that’s very specific and you don’t want to kind of stand on someone else’s toes if that’s their role. I’ve worked for large and small organisations and I’m with you, it’s such a different challenge and you have to be much more aware of what’s seen as a good thing in terms of proactive working and maybe stepping on someone else’s area. It’s like it’s a whole it’s a whole different game, isn’t it?

Hayley
Yeah, and I think you have to be good. You have to get good at sort of saying no to things as well, because I think if I’m sure this is the same with all kind of all kind of work roles, but it’s quite easy for somebody to sort of say, you know, Oh, Hayley, I’ve seen this thing like we should do that, you know as like it’s nothing.

Feasible other than if it finds you and says, I don’t do that. It’s like I’ve had this idea and, you know, and yeah, sometimes it’s quite hard. You think? You kind of think, yeah, great, that sounds brilliant. But then you sort of look around and you think, well, when who’s got, you know, and yeah, sometimes it’s managing the what you, what you can realistically do.

Jason
That’s, I mean I have a habit of agreeing to things on a happy Friday that then i have to pay the price on Monday Tuesday. And i’m link damn, why did I say yes.

Hayley
You’re a different person then aren’t you?

Jason
Oooo the inbox is full now it’s not as easy . Last weeks Jason was not it was not helpful. I’d love to ask about how you deal with, there’s a lot of work you do, especially now in your local. You probably come across first hand the impacts of kind of gaps in government services and support that.

You probably come across quite a lot of stories. You know, even we run charity campaigns and people mistake them as us being a charity. So we get exposed just a tiny percentage because people think we were charity and then we’re not. So you must see so much of that. How do you deal with like the stories that you come across, like providing support as a Citizens Advice communicator?

Hayley
Yeah. So I think I think what’s been hard particularly with the cost of living and I think more certainly more so for our advisors faced faced with people who are struggling every day, you know, and and in those difficult situations, I think certainly our advisors have kind of said that there are some situations where actually there’s nothing you can do like there are we have run out of tools to help this person.

You know, we’ve we’ve done the debt check, we checked the benefits we’ve done maximise their income as much as we can. And actually still this person is still in a crisis and what do you do then? You know, and of course these are these are people’s lives and there’s a lot of emotion. And I think our advice is obviously take that on

And we saw how increase in people who are in crisis, as I say, or whether this may be safeguarding issues and things where an advisor might, you know, have to make a judgement call of is this person actually, you know, this person’s perhaps made a reference to wanting to take their life or something like how do you make that call, what you do?

And so I think certainly internally we do a lot around how we just support each other in dealing with these difficult situations. So our advisors, for example, have supervisors who are kind of on call effectively. They’re really able to take time out of the difficult calls. And we have people in the service who are trained as mental health first aiders and we also have a counselling service that’s available to to everybody within the charity.

And and I think on kind of a comms level. And so myself, my colleague, you kind of have access to the social media side, which we do get a lot, but particularly through the nights I would say, because that’s when people can’t contact anybody. So you often get those kind of messages that you think, I don’t really know what someone’s just offloaded, really.

You know, you can sort of imagine someone can’t sleep or whatever. And I think, yeah, knowing what to do in that circumstance is really challenge. And certainly within my team, we kind of we’re not both on social media every day, so we kind of and both, you know, we do it on like a rota kind of basis so one person can just not look at anything and same with the news because it’s quite important for us to be having one eye on what’s what’s going on, what might be coming up, what’s being said in the local news, what’s happening in the national news.

But that’s, you know, draining because it’s never good news. And I think you can get you can get really kind of burnt out by it. So I think it’s just an yeah, having having the space for people to take time out and and just understanding that the the Yeah. That the challenges really of working for charity. I think one thing that helps certainly helps me is knowing that is probably there and the policy side of the work that we do and I hope that’s kind of the same for our advisors as well, that where there are situations where you think, oh gosh, you know, the had a really awful day, everybody I’ve seen has been in

like this awful crisis. You know, I’ve not felt that I’ve able to move that person forward or this is a problem that just keeps coming up again and again. And, you know, it’s it’s it’s frustrating. And I think the kind of hope comes in the work that the charity does around actually dealing with issues at the root. So whether that is kind of influencing government, whether it is kind of an yeah, using the evidence that we’ve gathered to actually create change cause I think without that it could feel a bit like just bad on bad you know, and I think we will have to keep that hope as well and what we can do to actually kind of improve things in the future.

Jason
Yeah, I mean, that’s it really does pay in like kind of paying your weekends and evenings, especially on the social media side as well. That’s so interesting that you guys take a break from it because you have to because you’re kind of operating behind a logo, obviously. And that logo does a lot, obviously for protection, but it also does a lot for making people forget that they’re talking to someone real.

So you’re kind of know, trying to provide solutions to what probably feels like a, you know, a really difficult situation and is a difficult situation. Sometimes people don’t want it to be fixed necessarily or they don’t see your solutions as being helpful. And they can really be quite harsh back and forget that, you know, you’re human and you’ve got to face your person and you’re not the kind of uniform company.

So, yes, I mean, it must be so difficult. I think a lot of marketing and comms people experience that in terms of people commenting and just forgetting that that I was just doing the job and tried to help as best I can and I’m actually trying to help. And I’m being you know, in our case, we’ve got TikTok ads so we get like some nasty comments on that.

And you’re like come on man you didn’t have to come at me like that. We use the same thing where the same person whose ads have gone out, if we’re in front of video, wont review the comments because they can be harsh. Yeah. And it sounds like you have a similar process in place. It does stay with you when people say stuff like that, doesn’t it?

Yeah, definitely. Awesome. I think it’d be good to talk about if you got a few more questions on advertising Astra or you want to go into section two?

Astra
No, I just have one more question not relating to advertising but in terms of what kind of resource you do have, like you said, sometimes you run out of tools to help people. Is there, because I know across the charity sphere there’s lots of like I will put you in the direction of perhaps a new the charity who can help you.Is that something that you guys do? So, you know, negative income. Will you send them to a food bank and that sort of thing?

Hayley
Yeah, I see. We have so we work and I think we have to do this because of the demand on the service. But we can’t be kind of experts in everything. So it’s about tapping into other organisations and we work with we have partners across our four boroughs, we work within and local Citizens Advice I am sure similar across the country.

So you’ll work with organisations in your area, but I suppose in having these partnerships we’re able to kind of refer directly rather than say, Oh hey, here’s a number, call it so you’ll find if someone’s come to you, you need to do something there and then they won’t necessarily have the courage to ring another, you know, and so we’re able to kind of do these internal referrals without sort of losing that person.

And particularly at the moment, people’s problems are more complicated than they perhaps have been in the past. So you might you might have somebody who comes in and says, I can’t pay my energy bill, but you’ll do a bit of digging. And that’s not the only problem. You know, that they can’t pay their energy bill because I don’t know.

They’ve lost their job or something’s happened and there’s often kind of four or five different issues within that problem.

Astra
Yeah.

Hayley
It may be that they need like a debt assessment, which is something that our debt team could do, but for example, if somebody needs specialist and housing like legal advice or employment advice, that’s not something that we can offer locally because we’re not funded to do the kind of in-depth, like employment law stuff or housing law. But we can refer through the local citizens advice offices who do have that funding or, other local charities.

And yeah, so it’s it’s a really good way of us kind of and for all of the people involved really to kind of make sure that we’re supporting somebody in one place. So that kind of customer journey to make it sound really.

Jason
Really cool.

Hayley
You know, is it’s just there, they just come to Citizens Advice and we’re helping them, you know, they’re not then going out to sort of six or seven of the places.

Astra
You that makes that makes sense. I know that they that’s actually wanted to speak to Citizens Advice and I know that the inner city Manchester one is housing related and employment funded. Yes. So if anyone listening needs that. Yes they go.

Jason
Are you going to talk about your personal needs now?

Astra
Yeah. I’ll tell you all about my landlord if you want.

Jason
On Oh yeah, maybe let’s move into section two. So as always, we’re going to do a very short quiz called Fake Facts, in which we’re going to cover three statements of which two of them are true, and one of them is false. I’m going to read them out. So if you’re listening, you can play along too. And I’m going to be hosting today with Astra and Hayley competing.

And I think with these, this tends to be a we’ve kept it relevant, obviously, to the conversation. But please don’t feel like this is a test of all your knowledge on Citizens Advice because there’s so much to know. But it’s more of an opportunity to raise people’s awareness about the work that you guys do. So let’s go into it.

So the first one,

1. Citizens Advice, was made up of over 7700 advisors and 18,800 volunteers in 2020, 2021.
2. During 2020 and 2021 Citizens Advice’s advice pages were viewed 10 million times
3. In 2020 2021 Citizens Advice helped 58,000 people face to face.

Astra
Do I feel like the bottom one because the 2020 2021 with the COVID year is fake?

Jason
Oh yeah, good shout.

Astra
Hayley you’re nodding are you in agreement there?

Hayley
But definitely that feels very low. Yeah, because I know that like, I think we I think just my small one of those local offices helped about 45,000 that year. So surely, surely it’s high and.

Astra
Maybe you are the only one working throughout the year Everyone else was furloughed

Jason
So lets see, you’re both going for number three.

Astra
I think so, yeah. Oh no.

Jason
It’s number two, that is actually 60 million worth of traffic. Oh. During the year on the Citizens Advice pages that website is getting absolute users.

Astra
I guess that was also a COVID year that everybody was at home. So probably, like you say, Googling furlough and what happens now and.

Jason
Yeah yeah it was we had kind of had it was it was it the.

Astra
Where the 2020 was the start. That was the first of the first lockdown.

Hayley
I think the 60 million because I know that I know that during that year when COVID started, we sort of started to be listed on a lot of the government kind of guidance as a as a place to go. But it’s a big spike from that as well that we were kind of just listed on a lot of things. Whereas, you know, I think that would account for people.

Jason
That must yeah, that must do wonders for traffic. I mean you must get a lot of you if you get a lot of requests for people to get their links on your website because you must have a high, you are essentially up there with the government websites and universities as a really good source of a link that would help people get natural Google rankings. Do you get loads of requests like that?

Hayley
I think we do, but we do have like the national charity has an I think they call called like the experts advice team. So that because obviously things change because of so much content on the national website, you know you can go into housing and then within that there’s so much and things change constantly. So that there are people at the national charity who are kind of constantly updating, making sure that, you know, has there been any changes in advice, a link still active, a kind of date, still, right? I think most of the local Citizens Advice services will have their own their own website, like we have our own website, which is more of a landing page because when it comes to advice, we signpost it out to the national. You know, we’re not duplicating all of the content and looking at it. We But yeah.

Jason
That makes sense. Yeah, that’s, that’s I mean is, is insane numbers as well in terms of traffic so some heavy work to be done on the domain and server side. Yeah right. Let’s go into the second one then.

1. 700,000 people contacted Citizens Advice for advice on benefits in 2022 21.
2. Every year Citizens Advice saves the government and public services £20 million
3. Citizens Advice estimates their total, total social and economic value to society to be £4.3 billion.

Astra
Hayley, I’ll let you take this one first.

Hayley
They I can imagine that the bottom one would be true. And again gosh, I’m not not good with the numbers. I feel like that’s one for me. I feel like that could be higher if we had if my figures were right and we’d helped about two and a half million benefits is like such a big part. A big chunk of the advice that we gave because it fits so many things within it. But I know say the middle one that feels low I’m going to go middle one, but with very little confidence.

Astra
I’m going to go for the bottom one because I need to be different from you, Hayley and B, because Billions seems really high and it’s a number that I can’t get my head around. So I don’t I’m not giving you a real number. So I’m going to say that will.

Jason
You’re you you’re right, Hayley. Every year Citizens Advice actually saved £618 million for the government and public services.

Astra
Blimey.

Jason
So much more. A huge amount I know I said you were saying how you use it the first or didn’t you. So is it, is it still one one.

Regardless. Yeah. So Hayley’s ahead now going into the final round. So these facts are focussed around the help through hardship helpline . Okay. All right.

1. In 2020 2021, the help through hardship helpline answered over 49,000 calls.
2. In 2020 2021,the help through hardship helpline helped to feed 60,000 people
3. In 2020 2021, the same helpline secured £1 million in expected financial gains for clients.

Astra
Oh, I feel like 49,000 is quite low.

Hayley
I do and I feel. But I also feel like, well, a million in expected financial gains feels quite low, but it just depends how many people say the help through hardship Helpline is kind of something that’s managed like through the national charities. It’s not something that I really know about at local level and I’m going to say I’m going to say the bottom one, maybe which.

Astra
I think the top one.

Jason
It’s one and that means that Hayley is the winner. It’s actually 8.5 million. And the Help through Hardship Helpline has secured in expected financial gains for clients in 2020 and 2021.

Astra
And I just want to hear you say help through Hardship helpline again.

Jason
And for some reason 2020, 2021. I’ll hand over to Astra for the random recap. Yeah.

Astra
So in this final section we put a random word generator, which I’m trusting now, and with whatever word it generates, we will try and sort of recap some of the key themes from today. It doesn’t have to be serious. It can be very serious, but we’ll use whatever comes up. So the word is currency, then anyone wants to take a dig first currency.

I feel I feel like we’ve talked obviously a lot about currency in the sense that and Hayley, your marketing budget is quite low and there’s lots of people to reach. So you have to be quite experimental with how far you can stretch that pound, so to speak but also in terms of, you know, people have less and less money and that’s part of the reason that’s putting the pressure on your services in the first place. So that’s my recap. I don’t want to go too far into that because I might stay low there.

Jason
I so I it’s hard to go last to be honest because it is like it was one of the things so yeah currency just yeah yeah it’s the currency the metric and I think it might seem easier to kind of measure how effective a company is because they have a profit and revenue and, and you just got to make money, pay salaries and that’s the kind of metrics and currency there with this is a little bit more obscure and you’ve kind of touched on a few a few few ways because as well as the funding for for Citizens Advice, your currency and your success is measured in how well you can help people, which is such a difficult thing to measure. And you talk to them about how queries influence kind of how the operations of the business stack up. And that’s so interesting because that’s a currency in itself or a metric in itself that no other business I’ve worked in or seen or was spoken about has to consider. So yeah, currency has been a bit of a subject that’s been quite relevant

Hayley
Yeah. And I think as well like I know some not all outcomes can be kind of measured as that as a number or a cost like of money saved. So I think there are also things that we would measure around how people feel. For example, at the end of a phone call, you know, like, so what kind of impact might it have had on somebody’s mood or on somebody’s mental health?

So we not, for example, have been able to give them the outcome they thought they wanted, you know, well that they’ve kind of contacted us about, but they might have got something off their mind and they might have like a next step. They might have like something, you know, somewhere they can go with a problem that previously was just kind of all encompassing.

And I also feel like and I don’t know if I’ve got the meaning of the word currency wrong is highly, highly likely. I guess currency can also be like kind of tools that you have as a charity. So I’m thinking in terms of I mean, you know, where we don’t necessarily have money to like deliver certain services. We do have that the kind of network around us that we can utilise.

It’s kind of a very much a two way and like a back and forth thing. So we’re kind of making the most of the resources that we have available around us rather than expected. We can do everything so that we can be an expert, absolutely everything. But yeah, I certainly think when it comes to and money, you know, I mean there’s a lot that I feel particularly around social media and kind of advertising.

So we have had in the past we’ve been able to get bits of funding for paid advertising like for Facebook ads and things. And we do have like the the the Google apps, you know, as a charity, which is brilliant. But I think there’s a lot to be said for and the kind of organic side of social media and trying to build those meaningful relationships even though the figures don’t look so great.

You know, in the back of your mind, you sort of think, you know, I want to increase this, I want to increase that. What more people see this and reach more people. But I think certainly with the the kind of the the content that we’re just putting out and the kind of things that we’re creating with no budget, it’s easier in some ways to then measure what’s working and what isn’t.

Things can get a bit skewed, I feel when we’ve kind of dipped into paid advertising, she think, Oh, that’s going really well. But then you think, Well, of course.

Managed to get it out to like 500,000 people in Oldham. And so I think it can kind of skew your and you know, why we’re doing what we’re doing because it’s not just about reaching loads of people. It’s about reaching the right people, isn’t it, With the different whatever the message is, whatever the thing you’re trying to share. And so yeah, I think in some ways I quite value the, the thinking about actually not thinking about the money side of it as much because it’s on the table.

Jason
Yeah.

Hayley
You know, we do all the things that we create here now and you know, and focus more on the kind of meaningful connections that we can make rather than the biggest or the best, you know, reach of zero.

Jason
I mean, there’s a lot of us there’s a guy called Mike Winnet on on LinkedIn. He often talks about this when it comes to people putting social media and and there’s like ways that you can game the systems. You can get your friends and family to like and comment and stuff. And his point is, why do that?

Because you never get to learn whether it actually connects with the people you want to connect with because you’re just getting your pod in this case or your friends, your community to it. Yeah, more people will see it, but not the people you want, just more of your mates. It’s a way of saying, yeah, if you don’t do that and if you don’t spend money on the post promoting it and it still gets really good engagement, right?

That’s you learning something to make your next post even better. But you never learn if you spend straight away and if you get other people to post on it. So that’s the reason you probably are working out, is that on the on the ground you’re working out will actually vibes with the people that you want to engage. Yeah, I agree with that.

Hayley
Yeah and certainly for us without a doubt the kind of things that do get the most engagement and it’s the our advisors so when they’re sharing stuff, photos of our advisors, like people want to see who would be helping them. So we.

Stories. So it’s being able to I think often it’s hard if your if you’ve got a specific problem, you might think they won’t be able to help me with that. I wouldn’t really know how to explain this issue. But if we can share a story around, you know, whoever that came to us with this problem, we did kind of X, Y, and Z.

They said that they felt, you know, on top of the world I don’t know if you know, that you can kind of make it real and someone can then relate to that and thing. Okay, maybe I’ll pick up the phone like, you know, they helped her, they might be able to help me. So I think we kind of know that the types of content that people want to see and where we get the most engagement.

So yeah, and I don’t think we would have got that if we had just put money where, you know, on messages that we thought were the most important or that we kind of wanted to get out the most.

Jason
Yeah, definitely. That’s really good. I’ve never really thought about that at that point. Obviously, we advocate for paid advertising all the time, but there is that other side to it as a marketing agency, we have to be aware of that too and ask, Is there anything else that you would say to cover?

Astra
No. Do I think so? Hayley you’ve been incredible. Give lots of insight into many different things. So thank you so much.

Hayley
Thank you for having me.

Jason
I just want to ask one more question, which is about whether there’s anyone in the space, in the community or outside that you would like to shed light on Anyone that’s doing really great work in the charity space that maybe we could speak to next so we can share with our followers in terms of their work.

Hayley
Yeah, I mean, there’s lots of people that are kind of just in my personal network that I am, you know, So certainly within Citizens Advice this and people in similar roles to me around the country. So it’s great to be able to kind of tap in with them, you know, check in with them, see what’s working for them, what they do in the resources we can share what’s working and that kind of thing.

So I think I always want to just shout out anyone that’s doing an has a really broad role and is just kind of one person trying to kind of achieve loads so certainly like, for example, Manchester Citizens Advice, Sheffield Citizens Advice and where they’ve got they’ve built kind of a really good way of doing comms and reaching people and keeping it interesting and not being really fixed to kind of these are the things we do well, being kind of flexible.

And I think more broadly like for me, again, working in a small charity where I’ve not really come from. So my background is working in like Careers Advice for a University, so I’ve not kind of got any relevant experience, but, you know, I’ve kind of put into it and learnt as I’ve gone. So I’ve had to kind of tap into training and done like mentoring and that kind of thing.

So I would say that charity comms and has been like amazing for me throughout my, my kind of career in terms of being able to attend different networking events, get an experience with mentor in being able to kind of go to like a 30 minute session on this really specific area of comms that you know, fits in to your day and it’s not taking you away, you know, sort of having to do like a three week course on something, but you can kind of dip in and out of it.

And I think that sort of thing is really good when you I think in some ways it can be a little bit of a lonely role if you’re on if you feel that you sort of on your own and like no one in the organisation understands, you do it, but you know, you can sort of feel a little bit like, who do I go to for help if I’m the comms person and I’m not part of like a team, you know, and maybe you manager’s not comms and nothing to do with comms.

I kind of, you know, they’ve got a bigger remit across the organisation. So I think just being able to connect with all the people in similar roles and tap into skills and, and training from like bigger organisations has been, it’s been really good for me.

Jason
Awesome, thanks. Thanks so much for sharing and I’ve learnt a lot about Citizens Advice about your role and just about in general how the whole thing kind of comes together and the history of it was really interesting as well. I didn’t know you guys started that just after the Second World War. Yeah. So yeah. Thank you very much for joining us on On The Same Landing Page.

Hayley
Thank you. It’s been lovely. I’ll speak to you soon.

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