From Course to Real-World Impact: Building Cancer Support Netherlands’ Digital Marketing Strategy

Learning digital marketing is one thing. Applying it when the brief is live, the audience is vulnerable, and the consequences are real is another entirely. 

That’s why the Employer Project sits at the heart of the LSE Digital Marketing Strategy & Analytics Career Accelerator, an online programme from The London School of Economics and Political Science, delivered in collaboration with FourthRev.

The final six-week capstone project is where learners move from “I understand the theory” to “I can execute good decisions in the real world”.

For Fernanda Aventurato, that shift carried extra weight.

“Because our decisions would directly affect a real charity and its community, I felt a deeper sense of responsibility.”

This case study tells the story of how learners in small teams partnered with Cancer Support Netherlands (CSN) – a newly registered charity with limited resources and a deeply sensitive mission – to develop a digital marketing strategy that could genuinely be implemented.

The Employer Project, in context

The Employer Project is the culmination of the LSE Digital Marketing Strategy & Analytics Career Accelerator. 

Learners work in teams to respond to a live organisational challenge – not a simulated case – and produce an end-to-end strategy grounded in evidence, feasibility, and professional judgement.

It’s designed to mirror the business world these learners are re-entering: real stakeholders, real trade-offs, and real accountability.

The employer and the challenge: Where empathy comes first

Cancer Support Netherlands (CSN) exists to ensure that no one walks the cancer journey alone – including the many people living in the Netherlands who don’t speak Dutch and can struggle to access support.

As a new, volunteer-led organisation, CSN faces the classic early-stage charity reality:

• Limited time and capacity
  
• No established marketing infrastructure
  
• Little to no usable historical data
  
• A multicultural audience with real language and cultural barriers
  
• A cause that demands sensitivity, trust, and ethical care.
  

For learners, this wasn’t simply a “growth marketing” activity. It was a challenge to build awareness and engagement without compromising compassion.

Fernanda captured that tension clearly:

“The organisation is driven almost entirely by volunteers, which means limited time, fluctuating availability, no data available and without any established marketing infrastructure… Balancing these factors made it clear that any digital marketing strategy had to be practical, compassionate, and sustainable.”

The brief: What learners were tasked with

CSN needed a strategy that could help them move from early momentum to sustainable growth. 

Learners were tasked with creating the organisation’s first digital marketing strategy and campaign plan, including:

• Clarifying target audiences and refining personas
  
• Shaping messaging that was inclusive, culturally sensitive, and realistic
  
• Selecting channels CSN could actually maintain
  
• Designing a campaign plan that balances awareness, engagement, advocacy, and fundraising
  
• Recommending lightweight infrastructure to capture and nurture community interest
  
• Building an experiment-led approach to validate assumptions early.
  

This wasn’t coursework. Learners were operating at a mid-level-to-senior digital strategist standard, producing work intended to be used.

As CSN board member Jill Murray put it:

“The balance of strategic thinking and practical application really stood out… Their ability to connect academic knowledge with real-world impact was impressive.”

Inside the project: How learners approached a complex, sensitive brief

The project began where real strategy begins: listening, researching, and pressure-testing assumptions.

Teams explored the landscape of cancer support services in the Netherlands, analysed where gaps existed for non-Dutch speakers, and built a clearer picture of how CSN’s audience discovers support – often through fragmented offline touchpoints like hospital flyers and word of mouth.

Branwen Bindra, one of the group team leaders, described a key shift in mindset:

“The challenge was not simply to promote a campaign but to build a foundation with a clear digital pathway that could reliably capture, nurture, and retain people seeking support.”

From there, learners translated theory into practical choices, prioritising what could be implemented by a volunteer-led organisation, not an idealised marketing department.

“This meant prioritising low maintenance systems, simplifying workflows, and focusing on the channels that aligned most closely with their community’s real behaviours.” – Branwen

For Fernanda, the work became personal. As an immigrant, she recognised the vulnerability CSN’s community can feel and how important it is for messaging to be human, not transactional.

“That feeling of vulnerability and disconnection stayed with me… CSN serves people who face similar moments, and it does so in a culturally and linguistically sensitive way.” 

That lived understanding shaped the tone, channel decisions, and feasibility lens throughout the project.

The solution: Strategy, infrastructure, and campaigns designed for real constraints

Across teams, recommendations focused on building a sustainable foundation CSN could grow with, not a complex plan that would collapse under operational reality.

A practical digital marketing strategy and campaign roadmap

Learners developed integrated strategies to increase awareness and community engagement while acknowledging budget and capacity constraints.

As Leila Ferreira, another learner, explained:

“Our team developed a digital marketing strategy focused on increasing the charity awareness and improving the audience engagement to drive growth.”

A campaign with empathy at the centre

One team developed a campaign concept designed to meet people where they are emotionally:

• “You Are Not Alone” – an empathetic message aimed at people who can feel isolated by language and cultural barriers
  
• A phased, test-and-learn approach to validate messages and channels before scaling.

“We created the ‘You Are Not Alone’ campaign… We recommended a phased approach, beginning with small tests to validate messaging and channels before scaling activity.” – Branwen

Another team built a complementary strategic concept:

“The core of our solution was the ‘Connection of the Heart’ strategy, which combined storytelling, search visibility, and community-centred content…” – Fernanda

Lightweight infrastructure to support growth

Because CSN is volunteer-led, teams focused on systems that were simple, low-cost, and maintainable, including recommendations for CRM and lead nurturing foundations.

Fernanda outlined the goal clearly:

“We designed a lightweight digital infrastructure using low-cost and free tools… and built workflows that volunteers could easily follow.”

Recommendations included practical building blocks such as email capture and nurturing, clearer tracking, and channel planning, with careful attention to consent and responsible use of data.

Confidence-building moments: When theory finally “clicked”

For many learners, the Employer Project is where confidence is earned, not through perfection, but through making real digital marketing decisions under uncertainty.

Fernanda described a moment that changed how she saw herself:

“During one of our planning sessions, I caught myself instinctively knowing which frameworks to use… It was the first time I felt that everything I had learned… had genuinely ‘clicked’… I realised I was no longer just trying to keep up, I actually belonged there.”

Leila had a similar realisation – rooted in connecting insight to action:

“One defining moment when everything clicked was seeing how our research and data insights aligned… Data is the real hero of marketing.”

And Branwen described the moment strategy became tangible:

“When I mapped the messaging, channels, expected outcomes, and measurement approach into one clear framework, something genuinely clicked.”

Impact for CSN and career-readiness for learners

The Employer Project delivers impact on both sides of the partnership, creating tangible value for organisations, while building the confidence and professional readiness learners need to progress their careers.

Value delivered for CSN

CSN received actionable work grounded in research, audience insight, and real operational constraints. Jill Murray summed up what stood out:

“We were genuinely amazed by the strength of the presentations. The strategies were creative, well-researched… [and] offered practical solutions that will help us reach more people and advance our mission…”

She also highlighted the why behind the value of live projects for a volunteer-led organisation:

“For organisations like Cancer Support Netherlands… initiatives like this bring fresh perspectives and innovative ideas that we could not realistically commission or pay for in the real world.”

Value delivered for learners

For learners, this was a portfolio piece that proved they can operate professionally on complex, sensitive projects and deliver work that stands up to stakeholder scrutiny.

Fernanda reflected on how the project reshaped her confidence and career direction:

“This experience was genuinely transformational… I was already speaking with my marketing colleagues at work on a more equal footing… I can say that this project has… helped me feel empowered, capable, and ready to step into digital marketing roles with genuine purpose and enthusiasm.”

Leila echoed the readiness built through real-world practice:

“It gave me… first-hand real-world marketing environment experience… [and] more confidence… in defending my strategic decisions and ideas.”

What career-ready learning actually looks like

The strongest digital marketers don’t just know channels. They know how to make decisions when:

• The data is incomplete
  
• The stakeholders are real
  
• The audience is vulnerable
  
• The organisation can’t “just hire an agency”
  
• The right answer is the one that can be implemented responsibly.
  

That’s the learning environment the Employer Project creates, and why it resonates so strongly with career changers and career advancers looking for proof they can do the work, not just talk about it.

As Jill Murray put it:

“The Career Accelerator clearly equips participants with both the mindset and the tools to address real-world marketing challenges.”

Ready to explore the programme?

If you’re considering the LSE Digital Marketing Strategy & Analytics Career Accelerator, the Employer Project shows what you’ll graduate with: practical judgement, real proof, and confidence to step into your next digital marketing role.

Download the programme brochure to explore the curriculum, learning experience, and outcomes.