Expanding a business is hard going. Expanding it abroad? Well, that's even harder.
When a prospect approached us because their traditional methods of lead generation, data mining, and appointment setting weren't yielding the results they wanted, we helped them equip themselves with all the data they needed to try again.
Marketing challenges - Jumping the hurdles
Imagine a company that's truly embedded within the UK's social housing sector. They have successfully rolled out thousands of their smart thermostats, which allow social landlords to proactively identify properties at risk of condensation, damp, or mould, and flag potential fuel poverty in real-time via data collected by these smart thermostats.
But, when you enter a new country, those tried-and-tested techniques just aren't cutting it. And you've also promised your CEO 500 named contacts in the new country within a few months to help feed the Business Development Manager on the ground. Eeek!
What do you do when your marketing team is also solely focused on the business's other top priorities? Sound familiar?
The inspired solution - The cavalry arrives!
Enter The Inspired Marketing Group. We swooped in like marketing ninjas, allowing a sole focus on the task at hand without derailing the business-as-usual marketing plan and execution.
Within weeks of that first exploratory call, we had set a marketing manager to work along with a paid media specialist. They worked as an extension of the existing team, but apart from initial fact-finding sessions, acted with minimal support and checked in with the in-house team weekly for progress and status updates.
The terms of the contract were flexible too, and they worked three days a week on specified days from the business to help minimize costs.
The battle plan - Rolling up our sleeves
First, the big-picture stuff. We kicked off with some heavy-duty stakeholder mapping. Over 500 potential contacts that we could start to nurture. How? By rifling through a list of companies handed to us, scouring LinkedIn, and basically doing some very rudimentary marketing analysis.
We also had to translate job titles and navigate a foreign market to understand which role titles were responsible for decision-making in that country. It was different from the UK, and one of the reasons why previous activity might not have achieved the desired results.
We also worked with the local Business Development Manager to create some 'inside sales' outreach content and a lead-generation landing page, which they helpfully translated for us into the native language.
As our marketing lead was deep in the details, they also (with permission) gave their UK database a little sprucing up.
Physical execution - Paid media & content
But we didn't stop there. Once we had the prospect companies worked out, we created audience sets for our Level 1 nurturing campaign, creating the assets for the business to sign off on, rather than constantly asking the already-stretched team more and more questions. This enabled the business to start warming up leads on a mass scale within a number of weeks of starting.
The results - Unlocking new markets
So, what's the moral of the story? In just two months, we didn't just tick off a to-do list. Well, we did, but we added more value than that. We enabled the business to really focus on entering a new market without overloading their existing team.
We left them with a dataset and assets that didn't exist before and would be invaluable to them as they incorporated this extra activity into their business-as-usual processes.
And their Head of Marketing could fulfill their promise of 500 named contacts without overloading their in-house team?
It's an all-too-familiar tale…
Your next move - Let's chat!
Sound all too familiar? Believe us when we say we've been there, and that's why we started The Inspired Marketing Group. We have over 50 marketing specialists ready to help solve your marketing headaches.
We've even created the ultimate guide to hiring a freelancer if this is your first venture into outsourcing some of your marketing challenges.