How do you reach senior not-for-profit decision-makers with a niche B2B product?

Summary

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A six-week founding engagement, reviewed in spring 2026, introduced a UK software provider's grant-funding discovery platform to senior decision-makers in larger not-for-profit organisations. The platform helps those organisations find and manage funding opportunities.

The campaign was a test of format and audience, so the story here is what a small, disciplined test taught about reaching a niche B2B audience, rather than a count of leads.

Challenge

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Larger not-for-profit organisations are a narrow, senior audience for a niche B2B platform, and one that is rarely browsing for software in the way a consumer audience shops. The objectives were to generate qualified interest among those decision-makers, build awareness and trust in an unfamiliar product category, educate the audience on what a grant-funding discovery platform actually does and use retargeting to support acquisition once initial interest was created.

Strategy

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Two channels with two different jobs. LinkedIn carried prospecting and retargeting. Video, single image and carousel ads were tested against a cold audience first, so retargeting budget could go on the format that actually worked rather than a house favourite. Google Search ran two ad groups in parallel, one on generic grant-search terms and one on sector-specific funding search terms, to compare a broad audience against a more precisely defined one.

Execution

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• We tested video, single image and carousel formats on LinkedIn in the prospecting phase before committing further budget to any one of them.
• Once video proved the clear winner in prospecting, we ran the same video creative to a warm, previously engaged audience through LinkedIn retargeting.
• We ran two Google Search ad groups side by side, generic grant-search terms and sector-specific funding search terms, to compare intent quality between a broad and a narrow audience.

What the reporting showed

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Retargeting the winning video to people who had already engaged gave the campaign its strongest response. On search, the broad grant-search terms responded more strongly than the sector-specific ones, while the sector-specific terms showed a well-defined audience actively looking for targeted funding support. Across both ad groups, search ran well ahead of our own planning benchmark for the sector.