Case Study: Lead Generation for Digital Marketing Corporation

Lead generation / demand generation 7 min read

All out Lead Generation campaigns are client-specific and tailored precisely to meet clients' goals. That is what makes all our Case Studies slightly different from each other. However, the project outlined in this Case Study is special for several reasons:

  • One of the most long-lasting campaigns. The total duration of this project is 16 months (and counting);
  • Omnichannel marketing. It involved 8 LinkedIn profiles, more than 200 Twitter profiles, and a drip-email campaign;
  • Corporate-level B2B marketing. We delivered our services to several companies that form a whole Digital Marketing Corporation.

Client

Just like we have mentioned before - Nimble Media is a set of digital marketing companies that work as an entire corporate entity. Their streamlined services cover professional copywriting, PR, lead generation, and consulting for SMBs in various industries.

Here's a list of companies that Nimble Media includes:

To be totally clear, this Case Study will highlight our collaboration with ArticleWriting, PowerfulOutreach, and GetWrittn. We are currently working with GetSocialLeads as well, but this project will be outlined in a separate Case Study.

Challenge

Considering the fact that Nimble Media has been providing their services since 2011, they had a considerable pool of clients at the moment. They hired us to help them scale their business throughout different industries.

Our client needed to generate more leads for copywriting and PR services, so we needed to focus on SMBs who could benefit from outsourcing these processes.

The ultimate KPI for us was the number of scheduled introductory calls with Nimble Media sales team.

However, lead generation was primary but not the only goal for us. We were also focused on:

  • Generating traffic for Nimble Media's websites.
  • Providing a constantly-renewed database of connections throughout LinkedIn and Twitter.

Solution

This campaign was mainly focused on leveraging social media to generate a constant flow of leads by raising the level of awareness, growing relevant audiences and introducing client's services to the prospects.

Just like we have mentioned before, this campaign involved LinkedIn and Twitter, so this section will be divided respectively.

LinkedIn Lead Generation

Just like our usual lead generation campaigns on Linkedin, this one involved pretty much the same processes but was scaled up to 8 profiles. It is important to know that we have launched this campaign using only 3 profiles, scaling them up to 11.

Note: In order to provide you with precise reports, we will use the data from 8 profiles, the ones we have worked with for the longest period of time.

1. Profiles optimization

All the profiles we have used belonged to the Nimble Media team members, so there was no necessity for us to create additional ones. The only thing that needed to be done is profile optimization. We had to make sure these profiles look all-star before launching the campaign.

You can find a detailed description of this process here.

2. Target audience research

We have used 8 different LinkedIn profiles in order to set up different target audiences. Each profile was targeting different target audience, as we were experimenting with industries and seniority levels.

Targeted industries included:

  • Digital Marketing;
  • Real Estate;
  • Legal Services;
  • eCommerce;
  • Dental Services;
  • Cyber Security;
  • CBD products.

As you might see, our targeting scope was rather wide, comparing to other campaigns we implement.

The other important metric was the seniority level. We would target C-level prospects only with executives' profiles, while middle-level people were targeted using middle-level profiles. That is how we were able to provide peer-to-peer communication for our clients.

3. Message script creation

Considering the fact that our clients promoted copywriting services, it was obvious that they will prefer using their own messaging scripts. All we needed to do is to revise all of the messages in order to provide the most personalized outreach possible.

Mostly, Nimble Media used a simple 2-step communication strategy that included:

  • Short connection message. This message was less than 300 characters due to LinkedIn limitations that outlined the main reason why are we reaching a particular person;

Note: This limitation is even harsher now, allowing you to send 160 characters maximum.

  • Introductory message + CTA. The next message outlined some benefits of the service we were promoting. Also, this message included a call-to-action that encouraged a prospect to book a suitable time slot for an introductory call. Usually, this message was 500 characters maximum.

In some cases, we also added a follow-up message that was sent to all the prospects who have accepted the invitation but never replied to the second message.

4. Outreach

As soon as we have our Profiles, Target Audiences, and Message Scripts prepared, we were able to launch the outreach. However, our experience proves that all of these aspects may need to be adjusted during the campaign. That is why we have decided to start with one Linkedin profile, growing the outreach gradually.

This chart represents how the number of requests changed month-by-month. Please mind that we use aggregated data from all the accounts, so the numbers you see are the total numbers for all 8 profiles.

Twitter promotion + email campaign

The other branch of our activities involved Twitter promotion and emailing. This process was held simultaneously with LinkedIn Lead Generation.

1. Profiles setup

The first step of our Twitter campaign involved creating dozens of niche Twitter profiles that will publish the client's content and grow a relevant audience.

We have started at 70 profiles, then gradually growing up to 240. We had 10 profiles per each industry, which basically led us to covering 24 different industries on Twitter. Later, we have decreased the number of industries to make sure we work only with those that perform better than others.

2. Content publishing

After we had all the profiles prepared - we had to make sure that these Twitter accounts are actually valuable for prospects, so we started publishing useful content daily.

This process was fully automated, as we have created a separate pool of tweets for each niche. Then every profile would randomly publish one piece of content daily. We have also experimented with retweeting from other credible sources.

3. Audience growth

When we were sure that our Twitter profiles maintain daily activity - we started following precisely targeted audience, engaging with their tweets in order to raise the level of awareness.

4. Outreach

As soon as a prospect would follow our Twitter profile - we would send them a short message that highlighted client's services, as well as potential benefits from using them. If a person was interested - we would ask them for their email address, so we can add them to the database.

5. Emailing

After all the previous actions - we had a considerable database, full of Marketing-qualified leads, so we were free to send client's offers directly to people who were aware of the services we've promoted.

The initial goal for our Twitter campaign was to generate 120 calls per month. While the campaign was running, we've added more qualification parameters to make sure that all the leads match client's needs. This led us to having 100-110 scheduled calls per month.

Results

To provide you with the most recent results, we will add here a couple of infographics that would represent the main metrics we use to measure the efficiency of our campaigns. This is a breakdown of the last 6 months of our campaign.

The first graph represents the number of Prospects, generated by our campaign. We classify a person to be a prospect when they accept our invite and read the message.

The ratio between the number of Sent Requests and the number of Prospects is called Acceptance Rate.

The next level is Engaged Leads. These are the people who have responded to our messages.

The ratio between Prospects and Engaged Leads is called Reply Rate.

The Interested Leads are people who showed interest in the client's services.

The ultimate KPI for us was the number of the booked calls, so here it is:

Finally, here's the chart that represents the total results of the campaign. Notice how it creates a clearly visible funnel.

Conclusion

For only 6 months, we were able to:

  • Grow client's network with more than 20 000 valuable connections;
  • Generate almost 3000 MQL leads;
  • Schedule 748 calls;
  • Reach average Reply Rate higher than 25%. Considering the fact that we only had 1 follow-up message, it is a great result. With a more aggressive approach, this rate could be even higher.

As we have mentioned before - we still work with Nimble Media, we have several projects currently running and will provide you with Case Studies later.

Feel free to find other Case Studies here or contact us to find out if our services would be suitable for you.

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