Advertising is the bread and butter for a social media company that builds its business case on free services. For small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB), online advertising has traditionally been a hesitant, contentious relationship. Social media companies often falter when it comes to the additional support these customers need, and the smaller businesses often lack the budget – or experience – to develop a results-driven marketing plan. Our client, a global social media company, recognized this as an underserved market. We were approached to develop a new inbound/outbound sales program specifically tailored for the SMB market that would include lead generation and marketing support. In a nutshell, the goal was to build new business, and help those clients become successful.
Helping companies succeed is what we do every day; with this program, we took our holistic approach and analytics, and applied them to benefit the individual SMB customer on behalf of our client. Here’s how we applied our Customer Acquisition solution into a comprehensive strategy for this social media powerhouse:
Our data analytics and expertise in customer acquisition were leveraged to improve lead generation, nurturing, and qualification. To win SMB customers for the long term, we developed a targeted training that transformed a team of our own sales associates into a resource that would a) acquire new SMB customers, and then b) serve as marketing consultants arming businesses with the skills to succeed, and not just selling space. The next phase was to engage prospective SMB advertisers in a 30-day educational program that taught them how to leverage the platform in a way that would extract optimal value. The team provided demographic analysis to advertisers, built complete ad campaigns, and provided ongoing consulting.
This program has grown more than tenfold in the past two years and now includes click-to-chat interaction. New advertisers are educated, self-sufficient and successful. The social media company sees continued profits and high customer service scores from happy customers.
