The problem
Infinity came to Champion with a problem. It was struggling to sustain growth following international expansion and acquisitions: ‘We need more leads, and we want more of them to convert.’
The Infinity team told Champion that it needed to drastically ramp-up the number of marketing-qualified-leads (MQLs) it was passing onto the sales team. It also wanted to make it easier for the sales team to convert these leads. The sales team told us that the problem was lack of demand and engagement amongst new prospects. Four-fifths (80%) reported that it was difficult to initiate and sustain conversation with decision makers.
SMART Objectives
- Generate a minimum of 100 MQLs for Infinity over a 3-month period
- Flip the statistic so that 80% of business development teams found it easier to start and sustain conversations with prospects
Strategy & Tactical Plan
Champion set out a three part strategy designed to deliver tangible results within six months:
- Drive awareness, interest, credibility and trust in Infinity by showing it was a business worth listening to
- Validate Infinity and educate the market on its solutions
- Support the business development team
From a tactical perspective this involved:
- Emphasise Infinity’s relevance, insight and authority on the importance of good customer service through newsjacking and getting Infinity’s executives into the national debate.
- Demonstrate Infinity’s superior ability to solve its prospects problems by increasing editorial share of voice above that of its competitors.
- Create a bank of prospect-centric content that Infinity’s sales team could easily use to open sales conversations and nurture prospects
After analysing the news agenda, we identified a number of stories to insert Infinity’s messaging into travel disruption due to strikes; increasing energy tariffs; and drastic mortgage increases were all news narratives that were testing consumer’s patience with business and were of concern to the organisations Infinity wanted to do business with. it was important that the business receiving calls from angry consumers didn’t damage the relationship further by getting these calls wrong.
Infinity had proprietary data that could show us trends in call volumes around these news events. For instance, we were able to see that when the Government announced new energy price caps, calls to energy companies using Infinity’s platform increased. The bit that was missing was data that showed us how consumers felt about these calls, and what factors could enhance or impair these calls.
Crucially we wanted to hear from consumers about the things that brands do on customer service calls that would put them off returning to that brand. We knew that if we could get to this, we would have a narrative that would resonate with both Infinity’s target decision-makers and target media.
Champion conducted consumer research, focussing on the pain points consumers felt when making a call to a brand. This gave us the data we needed to create the campaign assets: press releases, infographics, and a downloadable report for lead capture.
After analysing different lead generation tactics, such as webinars, roundtables, and events, we decided that partnering with a media outlet would give Infinity the best ROI. After vetting a shortlist of 10 publications, we decided that Customer Experience Magazine would be best placed to deliver the leads Infinity needed.
Outcome
- The campaign generated 44 pieces of coverage in Infinity’s target vertical trade publications, exceeding the KPI by 146%.
- The campaign generated 120 MQLs for Infinity, exceeding the KPI by 20%.
- Infinity’s sales team directly attributed 16 sales calls/ meetings from sharing the campaign content with prospects in the first month.
Testimonial
Champion’s response to the to the brief has been fantastic. The support and collaboration has been really good. More importantly, it has delivered.
The Champion team was able to quickly create a narrative around our services and solutions that we could use not only from a PR perspective, but also for all our primary lead generation activity.
I’ve been doing this for over 10 years now, and Champion is in my golden list of favourite suppliers. It’s a really, really good relationship. And I think we have done an excellent job together.