The Situation

A creative marketing firm, named one of the "Top Agencies" in the United States in 2008 and 2009, was eager to grow. With 25 years of business, the firm had established a reputation for helping companies launch new products and initiatives.

Unfortunately, only a small number of potential clients knew of this firm's sterling reputation.

With a small opt-in e-mail list and previous marketing efforts being inbound focused—the firm wanted a reason to reach out to new potential clients.

It had decided to launch a webinar campaign long before calling Rally Point. The firm realized webinars:

• Allowed the firm to introduce itself to new prospects through meaningful thought leadership and to display its unique culture and personality.
• Provided a reason to proactively reach out to past prospects, subscribers to publications, followers on social media, and friends and allies.
• Offer an ideal way to integrate inbound and outbound marketing tactics.

The Campaign

The firm committed to a series of webinars—delivering a minimum of one per quarter on various "hot" topics and tactics within the B2B marketing world. To provide cutting edge research and an additional channel to market the event through, the firm brought on an outside speaker.

The firm established several goals for the initial webinar campaign:

• Generate leads
• Nurture leads in the house list
• Create an event that builds relationships with key prospects

The firm established aggressive registration goals—goals that required over 25% of their house list to register for the live event.

Rather than lessen the goal, Rally Point and the client firm worked to develop a diversified event marketing plan. The entire marketing campaign took place within two weeks of the live event. The tactics included:

• Paid eBlast through publication
• Rented list through a database
• House list eBlasts
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Posts on the firm blog
• Posts on the expert speaker's blog
• Press releases
• Prominent ads on the firm's homepage and blog
• Event announcements on all of the firm's Outlook email signatures

All tactics were timed and coordinated to deliver the greatest registration rates.

The Results

The integrated event marketing campaign surpassed the aggressive registration goal by 33% and grew the firm's house email list by 32%.

Not only did the marketing effort exceed expectation, it also yielded marketing intelligence. Each marketing tactic had a unique link (or source code) that the registration system tracked. The registration system was therefore able to report which tactics generated which registrants. The summary results revealed:

This information will enable the firm to create an even more effective marketing campaign next time, funneling more effort into the tactics that worked and adjusting the less effective tactics so that they work better.

The firm is still in the process of qualifying and following up with the generated leads and has firmly committed to delivering three more webinars over the next six months.

Items to Consider

When developing a campaign with many different tactics, the focus should be on the end number of registrations – not trying to make each tactic a "star." Together they build momentum while individually the results they generate may look "small."

Consider bringing in an outside webinar speaker. It can build credibility with your audience and provide a whole new channel to market through.