The Marshall’s Mill estate is a hub of creative and digital organisations on the South Bank of Leeds. Just seven minutes’ walk from Leeds central station and situated in the centre of the cradle of industry. The painstakingly restored mill building complex provides quirky and contemporary office space with heritage features coveted by the types of businesses the space attracts. Tenants include creatives such as True North Productions, Elmwood Brand Agency, and Limehouse Films, along with cutting-edge digital businesses such as MediaCom, and Tall amongst others.
+110%
Social Media Engagement
+47%
Social Media Reach
+800%
Social Media Conversions
+32%
Website Session Duration
The Brief
Marshalls Mill appointed Wild PR to support improving tenant engagement, retention and attraction. Attendance of events and tenant engagement remained consistently low even with an incumbent agency and on-site events coordinator. This was due in part to a lack of communal space within the building where tenants could network and partly due to missed opportunities in communication channels.
Due to the estate’s unique position as an established hub in the centre of the redevelopment of the South Bank, placemaking was considered to be a key tool and the values of place imperative to intertwine in the activity. Furthermore, recent trends in wellbeing and mental health awareness were also considered to be values integral to the success of the marketing plan. Wild PR created and implemented an engagement strategy including events, PR activity, social media as a forum for engagement, and regular email communications with a strong drive for increasing sign-ups via the website.
The Results
Wild PR created and implemented an engagement strategy including events, PR activity, social media as a forum for engagement, and regular email communications with a strong drive for increasing sign-ups via the website.
The strategy was reviewed quarterly to ensure that events that were attracting high attendance were continued, and events that did not attract the expected number of attendees were discontinued. It was found that competitions did not have a great ROI when it came to engagement, so these were reduced, but that skills workshops, mental health initiatives and social events/networking were extremely popular.
The lockdown meant that as of March 2020, all tenants moved to home working. In light of this, we pivoted all activity to online, moving all webinars and events to virtual events to continue the momentum. We also ensured we utilised the social channels to act as a community hub, hosting events such as live lockdown workouts and Christmas hamper competitions.
Engagement across social media improved immensely (up an average of 110% across Facebook and Twitter), and reach across the platforms increased by 47% by using relevant hashtags, tagging resident businesses and identifying the best times and days to post to relevant platforms. We also utilised social media to ‘listen’ to activity undertaken by tenant businesses to promote across the feeds too, in turn supporting them to raise their profile and business growth.
There is also an increase in the sense of community when on the estate, and this has been noted by tenants themselves, as evidenced by the following feedback:
Vanessa Schlosser, Front of House Co-Ordinator, All Response Media:
“Marshall’s Mill is a great place to work from, there is always something on! At the office we love the events and activities that are organised and the focus on community which is important.”
Mitali Mookerjee, Managing Director at Publish Interactive
After moving away from The Round Foundry five years ago we are happy to be back. Our new office conveys a professional impression to clients but feels homely for staff. It is also fantastic to be located alongside other like-minded companies who we can work and engage with on our doorstep.”
