Aug 15, 2007
Case
Study #CS787:
SUMMARY:
Don’t have enough marketing material at the beginning of your lead cycle? A
software company servicing the banking industry turned a client’s speech at
the industry’s big trade show into an educational podcast.
As a
result, their cost per lead dropped 71%. They also closed millions of
dollars in new business, and the podcast is still being used to generate
leads.
When Michael Williams was Marketing
Director at Global Management Technologies Corp. (GMT), he had to please a
frustrated sales team. The sales cycle for their workforce optimization
software for the banking industry lasted at least six months, but the sales
reps had no marketing materials available to start conversations with
prospects early in buying cycle.
“All our marketing materials were
product focused -- we offered spec sheets and other product-centric
documents. Even our Web site was more like an online brochure,” Williams
says.
Williams, who now consults for GMT, and his team needed to
develop new material that would educate prospects about their software and
generate leads for the sales team. He had experimented with white papers but
saw the marketplace flooded with software white papers.
Instead, he
wanted to try a podcast, but his bosses were skeptical. For starters, they
didn’t think C-level banking executives listened to podcasts. Plus, they had
other marketing priorities and didn’t want Williams dedicating time and
resources to such a long-shot tactic. Williams needed to test a podcast that
required minimal investment, yet would be compelling enough to generate
high-quality leads.
CAMPAIGN
Williams saw a solution
in the company’s annual appearance at an industry conference. Their big
investment as an exhibitor gained them a speaking slot. If they could craft
a great presentation, record it and make it available online afterward, they
could stretch the impact of their costs while gain the lead generating
content they needed. Plus, they would have a marketing tool that helped
differentiate GMT from their competitors.
Here are the six steps
Williams and his team used to turn that trade show appearance into a lead
generating podcast:
-> Step #1. Select customer to give testimonial
presentation
GMT usually sent an executive to give a product-specific
presentation at the annual banking conference. But Williams knew that a
presentation from a satisfied customer, describing the results they achieved
from the company’s software, would be more compelling.
Williams went
though their customer list to find what he called the “top five customer
champions” -- companies that reported significant cost reductions and
efficiency improvements from the software. They interviewed a key executive
from each to learn more about the results they achieved and to gauge how
exciting or eloquent a public speaker they might be.
One customer
who hadn’t already gone public with their results was singled out. This way,
the testimonial provided a new case study for prospects. The customer had
impressive results to relay, including:
o $2.2 million in savings in less
than a year
o 8% reduction in full-time hours
Williams asked the
customer if they would agree to give a speech at the trade show, which would
be recorded for download later. He convinced the executive by describing it
as a presentation to a select audience of the bank’s peers and offered to
pay for the speaker’s trip to Las Vegas, where the conference was held.
-> Step #2. Publicize the presentation and podcast before the event
With the speaker secured, Williams publicized the presentation to conference
attendees.
- Using a list from the trade show organizers, they sent
an email two weeks before the show, inviting attendees to the presentation
and highlighting the chance to learn about the customer’s positive results.
- The preshow email also invited attendees to preregister for the podcast,
which would be available one week after the show. The preregistration offer
was a way to gauge the potential interest in a podcast among bank
executives.
-> Step #3. Record the presentation
Williams
admits he “had no clue how to make a podcast” when he devised the plan.
However, after reading about it online, they were able to get ready in time
to record the trade show presentation.
They bought a $100 digital
voice recorder with a jack for an external microphone. The day of the
presentation, he asked the audio-visual team running the trade show’s media
to hook the recorder directly into the public address system in the room so
they would get a high-quality recording.
-> Step #4. Edit recording
for podcast
As Williams hoped, the customer presenting his
testimonial was very articulate, giving a good raw file to work with. Still,
they made some minor edits to turn the audio into a podcast:
- Using
free MP3 editing software, they cleaned up extraneous noises, pauses and
other distracting moments. For example, they cut out the “ums,” and times
when the speaker coughed or cleared his throat. They also cut the gap
between the speaker’s introduction and the time he actually started
speaking.
- They deleted sections of the presentation not directly
related to the customer’s success with GMT software. For example, a section
during which the customer talked about a subsequent technology purchase that
they made in addition to GMT’s product was edited out.
- Theme music and
a voiceover that described the origin of the recording and introduced the
speaker was added.
All told, the editing reduced a 45-minute talk to
a 36-minute podcast, just slightly longer than Williams’ goal of 30 minutes.
-> Step #5. Host MP3 file on company homepage behind registration form
They hosted the podcast on the company’s Web site in order to collect
registration information and pass leads to the sales team. The registration
page described the podcast’s content and highlighted some of the key results
from the customer testimonial.
To access the MP3 file, users were
asked to provide:
o Name
o Job title
o Financial institution
o
Email address
o Telephone number
The registration page was
integrated with the company’s CRM software program so leads automatically
populated the sales database.
- After registering, listeners could
either download the MP3 file to play on their own computer or listen to the
podcast online through their browser-based media program, such as Windows
Media Player.
- Registered users also could choose to have the
podcast sent via RSS feed to a personal homepage, such as a MyYahoo! page or
a Google homepage.
-> Step #6. Promote the podcast with email and
search campaigns
To reach as many prospects as possible, Williams and
his team also launched simultaneous email campaigns to different lists and a
search marketing campaign. “You have to cover all your bases. Don’t rely on
any single method to promote your podcast campaign.”
Email campaigns
included messages to:
o The company’s existing prospect database
o
Conference attendees who didn’t sit through the presentation
o Selected
peers of the company featured in the podcast based on the size and profile
of the bank and using subject lines and body copy that invited them to learn
how their competitor reduced costs and improved efficiency
They also
designed a Google and Yahoo! pay-per-click campaign based on relevant
keywords for the podcast’s content, such as:
o Bank teller staffing
software
o Workforce optimization for banks
RESULTS
The podcast not only convinced his company's skeptics, it surpassed
Williams’ expectations. More than nine times the number of people who
attended the conference presentation listened to the podcast. Of those
podcast listeners, 16.7% were considered highly qualified leads that their
sales team aggressively pursued. They have already closed two deals with a
total value of more than $2 million and have several more in the pipeline.
Williams is optimistic about closing even more deals because the podcast
has given the sales team an opening to deliver more marketing content. All
of the highly qualified prospects who listened to the podcast have since
received a demo of the software, and historical data shows that prospects
who receive a demo have a 60% closure rate. “Sales has a better chance now,
because on the front end they have a really compelling podcast that gives us
an edge.”
The podcast also dramatically increased the ROI from the
trade show expense. Thanks to the additional leads generated by the recorded
file, the company’s cost per lead declined 71%.
Their analysis of
where listeners came from proved the importance of a multichannel marketing
strategy. Roughly a third of listeners came from the email sent to the
conference attendee list, a third came from the email to the company’s own
prospect database and a third came through search.
While the email
messages to prospects and conference attendees garnered the most C-level
executive listeners, the search campaign delivered one of the largest deals
closed so far.
Useful links related to this article
Creative samples from GMT's trade show podcast:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/gmt/study.html
Audacity - the MP3 editing software GMT used:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net
FeedBurner, the
program used to make the podcast available via RSS feed:
http://www.feedburner.com
Michael Williams’ Web
site:
http://mwilliams.bravehost.com/
Global Management
Technologies Inc.:
http://www.gmt.com
Michael, We need you on my team! Awesome article and great marketing program. I love the success factors included in this article.