From Community Engagement to National Brand Strategy

Female Ventures

Growing visibility, engagement and audience understanding for a women-focused professional community

Female Ventures is a community that connects women through entrepreneurship, professional development, events and meaningful relationships.

When I joined the Den Haag & Delft team as Marketing Manager, Female Ventures already had an active community and a strong purpose. The opportunity was to make that value more visible, strengthen engagement and create stronger connections between the organisation and the people it wanted to reach.

The challenge was therefore bigger than simply promoting events.

How can marketing help a growing community become more visible, relevant and connected to its audience — while creating a stronger foundation for the brand to grow?

I approached this through a combination of audience thinking, campaign development, social media, community communication, event promotion and visual storytelling.

The work started at regional level and eventually developed into a broader national brand role. I was promoted to Brand Lead in the National Marketing Team, where I now help the organisation better understand its community and audience needs, translate those insights into strategy, and support regional marketing teams in applying the brand consistently.

The challenge —
An active community needed more than more communication.

Female Ventures had a strong purpose and an active network, but there was an opportunity to strengthen how that value was communicated.

Several questions needed to be considered:

How do we increase visibility without losing the community feeling?
How do we turn event promotion into meaningful engagement?
How do we reach new audiences while continuing to serve the people already participating?
Do we understand what different people in our community actually need from Female Ventures?

These questions shifted the focus from simply creating content to thinking more strategically about audience, relevance, positioning and brand experience.

My role
From regional marketing to national brand leadership

I initially joined the Den Haag & Delft team as Marketing Manager, supporting the regional community through marketing, campaigns, social media and event communication.

My work included:

Developing and promoting events
Creating social media content and campaigns
Communicating through community channels
Supporting event visibility and participation
Developing campaign concepts and communication
Creating visual content and marketing materials
Working with the local team to strengthen audience engagement

As the work developed, I took on a broader strategic perspective.

I was promoted to Brand Lead in the National Marketing Team.

In this role, my focus has expanded from communicating activities to helping the organisation understand the people behind the community and what they need from the brand.

I now support the national team with:

Audience and community insight
Understanding audience needs and motivations
Translating insights into marketing and brand strategy
Strengthening brand positioning and consistency
Supporting the development and application of brand guidelines
Helping regional marketing teams use the brand more consistently
Finding the balance between a recognisable national brand and relevant local communication

This progression reflects an important shift in my role:

from creating communication to helping shape the strategy behind it.

The Approach

01 — Connect: Bringing communication closer to the community
Rather than treating every social post or event announcement as an isolated activity, I looked at how different communication touchpoints could work together.
An event could create awareness, social media could create interest, and community communication could encourage participation. The event itself could create connection. And the experience could encourage people to stay engaged with Female Ventures afterwards. This created a more connected approach to community marketing.

02 — Engage: Turning events into communication opportunities
Events were one of the strongest ways Female Ventures could bring its purpose to life. My role was not only to announce events, but to communicate why people should care and why they should participate. I worked on event communication and promotion across relevant channels, using content and visual storytelling to make activities more accessible and engaging.

The focus was on moving from: “We have an event.” to: “Here is why this experience could be valuable to you.” This helped connect event marketing with the wider Female Ventures brand.

03 — Learn: Using marketing as a way to understand the audience:

One of the most valuable outcomes of the regional work was not only the growth in numbers, but the questions it raised.

Who is engaging with Female Ventures?

What brings people into the community
What makes them return
What do different audience groups value?
Where are there gaps between what the organisation offers and what people need?

These questions became increasingly important as the organisation grew.

Instead of assuming that one audience has one set of needs, I began looking at the community as a collection of different groups with different motivations, expectations and experiences. This audience perspective now forms an important part of my work as Brand Lead at national level.

04 — Strengthen: From regional communication to a stronger national brand

As Female Ventures grew across different regions, another challenge became increasingly important: How can different teams communicate in their own local context while still feeling like one Female Ventures brand?

I now support the national team with the development and application of brand guidelines, helping regional marketing teams understand how to use the brand consistently across their communication. This includes supporting areas such as:

Visual identity
Brand consistency
Communication principles
Templates and marketing materials
Application of brand guidelines
Local adaptation
Alignment between national and regional communication

The goal is not to make every region communicate in exactly the same way. It is to create a recognisable brand foundation that gives regional teams the clarity and flexibility to communicate effectively with their own communities.

Campaign & Community Activation

The regional role gave me the opportunity to turn the strategy into real communication and experiences. I worked across:

Social Media
Creating content that increased visibility, communicated the value of Female Ventures and encouraged community engagement.
Event Marketing
Promoting events and creating communication journeys around participation rather than simply announcing dates.

Community Communicatio
Using existing community channels to strengthen awareness and encourage participation.
Campaign Concepts
Developing creative concepts that gave individual activities a stronger story and connection to the wider brand.
Visual Communication
Combining marketing thinking and design to make messages clearer, more recognisable and more engaging.

Building visibility. Growing the community.

LinkedIn followers:
Grew the LinkedIn community from around 280 to more than 1,000 followers by September 2026.
Community subscribers:
The subscriber community grew to more than 1,000 by May 2026.
Event attendance:
+50%

Beyond the numbers, the work helped create a stronger connection between content, events and community participation.

It also created something equally valuable for the next stage of the organisation: a stronger understanding of the questions that need to be answered at brand and audience level.

What I brought to the project —

Strategic Marketing: Connecting organisational goals, audience needs and marketing activities rather than treating communication as isolated execution.
Audience Thinking: Questioning assumptions and using community insight to identify opportunities for stronger positioning and engagement.
Campaign Development: Turning events, activities and ideas into communication that creates awareness and participation.
Brand Leadership:
Supporting a growing organisation in developing a stronger and more consistent brand across national and regional teams.
Visual Communication:
Using design and storytelling to make strategic messages tangible, recognisable and engaging.
Cross-Team Collaboration:
Working between regional and national teams to translate strategy into practical communication and brand tools.

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