Client – Major Media organisation
The Gap
Traditional media organisations have for the last 20 years been in a constant state of flux as digital media and changing consumer habits have impacted their traditional business models. As a result these businesses have had to reshape their organisations regularly, becoming leaner, whilst also looking for new revenue streams that their platforms and brands can provide.
Initially, we were asked to look at a business related hub to work out how to bring more advertising and sponsorship revenue in. The company had recently cut 30% of its commercial (sales) team and didn’t have enough sales people to cover all of the product offerings.
The client couldn’t divert any of its own sales resources or bring in additional headcount to revive the product.
Our Solution
We researched the platform, scoped the market and uncovered a large audience profile of companies that weren’t in the client’s universe, but would value the exposure and the credibility that the client’s brand could bring. These companies were smaller than their normal clients but could prove to be commercially lucrative.
Plugging The Gap
- Developed A New Proposition – We developed a new video content proposition based on short form documentaries that would appeal to companies looking to generate high quality PR for their companies.
- Profile Targeting – We targeted our data research teams to find examples of great companies who have interesting stories that would fit well within the business hub.
- Lead Generation – We created a lead generation approach built around a sequence of personalised emails.
- Enquiry Handling – We recruited video producers to handle incoming qualified enquiries and segment these accordingly.
- Sales Discovery – We built a discovery call sales process to establish relevance and sales framework for follow up calls.
- Sales Conversion – We taught and coached the video producers to become effective at both selling and crafting good story lines to make good content.
- Project Management – Our video production team managed the making of each of the films with film directors allocated to each project. We delivered the film and written content to the media organisation for upload to the business hub and helped the video clients utilise the video for their own marketing purposes.
- Longevity – Our media organisation client now has a whole new product and business stream and their only involvement is to upload the content on to their site. For the video clients, they get an exceptional piece of branded quality content, exposure and endorsement on a major media site.
Results
This project was commissioned from a pilot initiative into an on-going proposition delivering over £8 million of new revenue with no additional staff or headcount required by the client.
The Gaps We Plugged
The client commissioned us to look beyond their traditional products and clients, allowing us to identify a new demographic and product proposition for an entirely new client base
- We researched and built new datasets of target prospects
- We developed a process-led and effective email lead generation strategy
- We recruited and built a different sales approach and team, staffed with very different skills from a traditional national media outlet, and run in a very different way to the clients’ existing sales approach
- We created and formatted the content-led product on behalf of the client (the client still retained final sign off on any content to be uploaded onto their media channels)
- We managed a turnkey process on the commercials, handling contracts, invoicing and credit control on the project
Much of our work is centred on commercially sensitive projects and our clients are uncomfortable sharing their challenges and more importantly the fixes they have worked on with us. Because of this, we have anonymised all of the cases studies.