Project7 are a Global Management Consultancy and specialists in Performance Improvement. The company operates from a UK based head office, with 4 strategically placed additional locations across Europe, North America, Asia Pacific and Australia.
The company were looking to improve their existing process and procedures for customer acquisition, with a particular focus on targeting North America. Our client was conscious that existing contracts in the North American region were coming to an end and now wanted to proactively target this market, in a planned and sustainable way.
Project7 chose Studiowide as their preferred supplier for their North America campaign. This was based on the results we had demonstrated on similar campaigns in the professional service sectors.
Challenges
The company had previously experienced peaks and troughs in their sales pipeline. This was as a consequence of solely relying on their Management Consultants as a resource for developing new business.
Once each Management Consultant was placed on a new contract, their prospecting activities would cease. This was something that the company sought to address. Further analysis uncovered that whilst it was a challenge alone to get sufficient leads into the sales funnel, this was further compounded by the lack of consistent processes to turn these quality leads into new clients.
Any proactive approach led by Studiowide had to be backed up with the right type of content. It would simply not be enough to begin a campaign with limited collateral. We needed to produce content appropriate to the services that we were promoting in these Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul companies, across North America.
Whilst Project7 had the information required to gain the attention of the target customer, it resided in the Heads of each Management Consultant and needed to be ‘drawn out’ and formalised.
A further challenge was also identified. The company had somewhat good but isolated success in finding and winning new contracts. However, it was mainly the senior leaders in the business who were identifying and winning those contracts. The company did not have robust sales & marketing procedures in place, independent of those key personnel.
5000% return on investment was achieved after winning a contract with a world-leading manufacturer of civil aircrafts.
Solution
Prior to any recommendations, we conducted a series of marketing diagnostic events with the client, to fully understand their situation and to highlight any gaps prior to our intervention.
The following assessments were undertaken:
- Core Competencies Diagnostic
A general organisational audit to identify areas for improvement and make solid recommendations based on our assessments. This also quickly identified strengths & weaknesses within the Project7 organisation.
- Modern Marketing Capabilities Diagnostic
To understand how capable their teams are and identify any gaps in their marketing department. This diagnostic also allowed us to benchmark their activities with similar organisations that are world-class in their marketing activities.
- Sales & Marketing Alignment Diagnostic
To identify gaps in alignment between the sales and marketing departments. This diagnostic covered the following areas: organisational relationships, lead generation & pipeline management, culture, systems & technology.
Following our diagnostic events and subsequent feedback reports, it was agreed to create a bespoke Lead Generation and Client Acquisition Programme. Developing these processes and procedures enabled the client to identify and secure new business in the North America Aerospace sector.
Phase 1: Lead Generation
The starting point for the lead generation activity was to begin a dialogue with prospective customers. We sent targeted communications – auto-triggered by specific actions such as opening and clicking on the communication (or by visiting the web page), to educate, inform and keep Project7 ‘front-of-mind’ with the recipient.
We used persona profiling and content mapping to link the required messages with the buying stages for each target customer. This helped us to formulate a content plan and enabled us to approach each Project7 Management Consultant to get the information that we needed and then convert it into engaging content.
Our overall priority at this stage of the process was to motivate the prospect into engaging with the content and to click-through to a landing page, ‘warming them up’ for further communications. We found that even on occasions where the recipient did not click-through from the email, they were still becoming increasingly familiar with Project7 as a brand. The regularity of the communications put Project7 on a path to developing a relationship with that company. This lead generation activity delivered structured communications to educate prospective customers and companies about the benefits of dealing with Project7. All leads that were generated were moved into the next phase of the campaign.
Phase 2: Client Acquisition
The number one objective in Phase 2 of our campaign was to secure appointments for the Project7 Management Consultants. We switched our focus from nurturing prospects to getting appointments.
We started Phase 2 using the leads that we had generated from Phase 1. Whilst our focus was to get appointments, we broke this goal down into smaller milestones.
At this stage, we went back to our customer persona profiling and identified a problem that we knew existed within each company. We then created a short guide that provided insightful information about how to solve the problem.
Once this core content was created, we also identified a complementary diagnostic tool that could be used as a giveaway.
The conversions soon started to roll in. We took each one through a further qualification process to see if Project7 wanted to work with this potential Client. The ones that still satisfied the profiling criteria were responded to personally.
This final step was to provide the potential customer with another value-rich offer that they couldn’t refuse. We knew these remaining contacts had already signalled their interest in the content upgrade, so it was highly likely that they were going to be very interested.
We offered a 1hr consultation, whereby Project7 would give an hour of their time to help this potential customer to build a plan of action, specifically starting with the original problem that we identified in the opening communication.
Those contacts who did not take up the offer still had the full experience of this professional and systematic approach, which at the very least, distinguished our client as someone who has a reputation of delivering value.
Results
- From a cold data list of 5,452 Suspect contacts, 52% were identified as prospects. (A prospect is someone who has opened more than one communication).
- From the 2,840 prospect contacts, 30% were identified as leads. (A lead is someone who has opened, then clicked a communication and gone through to the unique website landing page).
- 64 appointments were generated from the 841 leads. Following further qualification of those 64 companies, it was deemed that 48 were still a sufficient fit for Project7.
- 1 contract with a world-leading manufacturer of civil aircrafts has been awarded to date. This equates to a 5000% return on investment.
- 3 ongoing contract and budget discussions are taking place as a direct result of this campaign.
- Unquantifiable brand recognition for Project7 has been achieved within major MRO Aerospace companies.
