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LCM had a FOAK carbon-negative construction product and needed the right buyers to find it and marketing that could keep pace as the company scaled from university spin-out to National Highways supplier. Every stage brought different demands: building credibility with enterprise construction firms, amplifying milestone moments like the Earthshot Prize and a royal visit, and supporting commercial conversations with named prospects.
Became LCM's fractional marketing team over 4+ years - evolving from building the foundational website and channels to running campaigns around major industry milestones, coordinating a full rebrand ahead of the Earthshot Prize, supporting the CEO's profile as an industry voice, and turning moments like the Prince William visit and M11 motorway pilot into content that reached procurement teams and investors.
Low Carbon Materials manufactures carbon-negative aggregates for the construction industry - products that replace traditional materials in road surfacing and concrete blockwork while reducing embodied carbon. Their materials have been used in UK road projects for National Highways, Tarmac and local authorities. A Durham University spin-out, LCM was named an Earthshot Prize finalist in 2022 and has been featured by CNN, the Financial Times, and BBC World News.
Low Carbon Materials (back then known as Sphera) came out of Durham University with a first-of-its-kind carbon-negative aggregate made from waste materials. Twice as light as conventional alternatives, it could drop straight into existing concrete blockwork manufacturing. The science was proven but the company was pre-commercial - a founding team of researchers with a product ready for market and no commercial team.
When Adopter came on board in April 2021, there was no website, no marketing team, and a social media post every few months. The company needed the right people inside construction firms and investment funds to find them, take them seriously and respond to outreach.
The website was the foundation. Not a shop window for mass traffic, but a credibility tool aimed at a specific audience: technically rigorous enough for a concrete block manufacturer evaluating an unfamiliar material, commercially compelling enough for a VC assessing a pre-revenue startup.
"Thanks to a Growth-Driven Design approach suggested by Matt, the process was quick, efficient and resulted in a great, aesthetic website perfectly matching our brand. After the website's launch, Adopter further expanded it based on our needs, growing it alongside LCM's scaling."- Dr Natasha Boulding, CEO & Co-Founder
The website gave LCM a credible front door. The next step was giving the right people a reason to walk through it.
The first blog posts Adopter published were guides to carbon terminology in construction, explainers on scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions for building materials - content aimed at the specification writers and sustainability leads who would eventually need to evaluate products like LCM's. The articles started ranking in Google within months, pulling in visitors who had never heard of LCM but were already searching for answers in exactly the space LCM occupied.
LinkedIn worked differently. Instead of educational content, the focus was on real milestones - a pilot confirmed, a partnership signed, a technical result published. Construction professionals and investors began following not because they were sold to, but because LCM was visibly doing things worth paying attention to. Within the first year, engagement rates were running at three to four times the industry benchmark, and the follower base was heavily weighted toward the construction sector.
By mid-2022, the two pieces were starting to compound. Someone at a construction firm might find a website article through a Google search, then see LCM appear on LinkedIn a week later. Or an investor might follow LCM on LinkedIn, then click through to the website and find technically detailed product pages instead of a thin startup placeholder. Organic search had grown from nothing to roughly a third of all website traffic. Enquiries were starting to come in.
"Their team was able to grasp complex ideas and convert them into engaging and informative articles and posts. This helped establish [LCM's] position as one of the leading voices on Net Zero innovation in the construction sector." -Dr Natasha Boulding, CEO & Co-Founder
Then, in November 2022, LCM was named a finalist for the Earthshot Prize - Prince William's global environmental award. The company was still publicly known under an old name that didn't clearly communicate what they did. An urgent rebrand to Low Carbon Materials had to be coordinated across every digital channel before the announcement went live.
Adopter treated the Earthshot window as a campaign, not a press moment. The goal wasn't just visibility - LCM would get that regardless. It was making sure the attention landed with the right people and converted into something lasting. Content was pre-planned and ready to deploy the moment the news broke. Alongside LCM's own announcements, Adopter sourced and published video content from partners, supporters, and voices across LCM's network - third-party validation that carried more weight with construction buyers and investors than anything LCM could say about themselves.
Media coverage from CNN, BBC, and the Financial Times followed. But the commercial impact came from what that coverage drove people toward: a website that now looked like an established, credible company, a LinkedIn presence full of technical content and real project milestones and a clear path to get in touch. The Earthshot attention didn't spike and disappear. It settled into a new baseline - more traffic, more followers, and critically, more enquiries from exactly the kind of organisations LCM had been built to reach.
"Going into the Earthshot period without Adopter would have been extremely difficult." - Jenny Ashton-Smith, Head of Marketing
By 2023, LCM's product was moving out of the lab and onto real infrastructure. The content strategy shifted with it. Every milestone was now a piece of commercial proof aimed at exactly the audience LCM had spent two years building - procurement teams at major construction firms who had been watching LCM's progress and were now seeing evidence they could act on.
2024 brought three moments that each became a campaign. In March, LCM's asphalt aggregate was used to resurface a public road for the first time. In May, Prince William visited the company's headquarters. In July, National Highways announced a pilot on the M11 motorway. Each gave Adopter material that no amount of thought leadership could manufacture: named clients, real roads, a royal endorsement. The kind of evidence that moves a procurement conversation from "interesting" to "let's talk."
The results showed who was paying attention. LinkedIn reach more than doubled year-on-year - even with fewer posts than the year before. But the composition of the audience mattered more than the size: construction was the number one follower industry and over a quarter were Director-level or above.. The website was generating hundreds of product enquiries a year from construction firms, contractors, and infrastructure developers. LCM had gone from chasing attention to fielding inbound interest from the organisations it most wanted to work with.
"Adopter showed a high level of attention to detail, clear expertise in the green technology and built environment space, as well as flexibility and ability to work in a very fast-paced environment. The event was a big marketing success and a publicity boost for our business." -Jonathan Duckmanton, Head of Operations
Four years in, the work Adopter has done for LCM compounds on itself. Blog content created early in the partnership still ranks on Google's first pages for industry search terms - the carbon terminology guides, the product pages, the thought leadership articles pull in visitors searching for exactly the kind of material LCM manufactures. The LinkedIn audience keeps growing in the right direction: more construction professionals, more senior decision-makers and more of the people who can sign a purchase order.
LCM went from no website, no social media, and no marketing team to a company that construction firms, investors, and infrastructure developers find on their own - and get in touch with.
The numbers only matter because of who they represent. On LinkedIn, construction is the number one follower industry, over a quarter of followers are Director-level or above. VC and private equity firms are the eighth most common website visitor industry.
60% of website traffic comes from the UK. The remaining 40% spans 170+ countries.
"They took time to thoroughly understand our business and clients, proactively finding tailored solutions to our challenges and advising on the best course of action. They communicate effectively and promptly, which perfectly matches the fast-paced nature of our scaling start-up."
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