Currently 94% of small to medium businesses in the UK class themselves as ambitious, but many do not have the technology that allows them to be truly innovative.

Vodafone’s story is one of investment and innovation. As a total communications provider, they have a suite of solutions moving beyond mobile to make sure that UK businesses are always connected. With above-the-line activity in market inspiring their audience to prepare for the future of technology, Vodafone’s lead generation campaign focused on the benefits of technology in increasing productivity. 

Statistics communicating the benefits of joined-up communications were intended to support key decision makers to build a business case for one of Vodafone’s business solutions. These were supported by content focusing on three themes: empowering employees to work from anywhere, workplace productivity, and enablement of innovation to stay ahead.

After an audit of all existing assets, customer journeys were developed across small-medium and larger businesses, intended to nurture future prospects.

With the launch of their global strapline, ‘The future is exciting. Ready?’ in October 2017, Vodafone took this opportunity to highlight how the future of business connectivity in the UK, could in fact, be exciting.

BACKGROUND

Vodafone is one of the world's leading mobile communications providers. Across the UK, they have almost 19.5 million customers and made the first ever mobile phone call in January 1985 from London to their Newbury HQ. Today, they’re still located in Newbury,  employing over 13,000 people across the UK.

They have a proud story of investment and innovation, and as a total communications provider, they have a suite of solutions to make sure their customers are always connected.

Business decision makers spend a lot of their working lives navigating jargon and yearning for simplicity. Implementing new ways of working also seem insurmountable. Though they may understand the benefits of digitising the way they operate, they often do not understand the benefits to help them build a business case for change. 

Across the Vodafone business, each of the different sales teams had pre-existing assets, and sales strategies that addressed their audience. To develop a combined lead generation strategy, there was an inherent need to audit all materials, to realign these into a nurture stream that answered the questions of each audience and reflect new brand guidelines.

Vodafone needed to change their mindset into seeing change as an opportunity.

BUDGET

Creative Agency – Strategy and Production: £74,000

Media Agency: £181,000

OBJECTIVES

Vodafone had an opportunity to help businesses overcome these challenges, providing the tools to digitise their businesses with quantifiable evidence, creating relevancy for joining-up their communications. This, in turn, would nurture these prospects to select Vodafone as an integrated communications partner.

Though intriguing facts across ATL communications may have sparked their interest, engaging the audience with information that responds to perceived barriers further nurtured the audience, supported by case studies of businesses of a similar size or industry as their own. Supported by the below approach:

·     Think: I knew my business could be more productive; joining-up my communications will make a big difference

·     Feel: I feel reassured that Vodafone are thought leaders and have the communications solutions I need 

·     Do: Speak to Vodafone to create a business case for change

In turn, this approach helped achieve the following measurable objective:

Generate 215 leads for One Net Business in Q3, 2017

STRATEGY

The campaign commenced with a reverse engineered approach to develop the customer journeys. All campaigns, assets and activities across the segments were audited to align with the above-the-line campaign creative, producing effective lead generation that utilised media activity in support of what we already knew about our audience.

For businesses with 10-149, and 150-499 employees, the nurture journey was as follows, allowing different entry streams relative to business size:

Stage 1:

Prospects that engaged with Facebook promoted content for the above-the-line campaign were retargeted with a paid Facebook lead-gen post and accompanying form, promoting a thought leadership report titled ‘Unlocking Productivity: Working in the UK’, produced in partnership with Vodafone after surveying over 3,000 business professionals in the UK. 

Once their data had been captured, a link was sent via email to download the report.

With a regional-first approach, paid Tweets were served to various audiences across the UK, presenting a regionally specific fact drawn from the main report, which was linked to a campaign landing page. To download the report, they needed to enter their personal data to build an audience of prospects.

Additionally, an Inbox Insights email was deployed to a pre-established audience of subscribers, along with organic posts created on LinkedIn by key Vodafone stakeholders, each linking to the same campaign landing page, allowing them to download the report.

Stage 2:

A series of three productivity emails were then sent on to the audience, pulling out key facts and offering the option to download additional supporting content, as follows:

1)    Regional Fact Sheets

2)    Productivity Infographic

3)    Video Case Study

Stage 3:

Those that interacted with this content received an invite to attend a webinar highlighting the three key levers for workplace productivity, based on primary research. To maintain interest, they also received follow up emails with attendance reminders, and after its scheduled date, a recording of the final webinar.

They also received further content stemming from the main productivity report, allowing them to download regional specific sheets, and a master Infographic.

Stage 4:

Once their interest was established after the supply of the recorded webinar, they were separately sent four product emails, introducing them to the Vodafone solutions that suited their business needs most. From this, they were categorised into a sales force management system, to then be contacted by the Vodafone sales team.

Across all creative constructs, the approach, look and feel always linked back to the overarching above-the-line campaign assets.

RESULTS

-      Social media lead gen form – 18,000 clicks

-      Emails deployed – 16,500 opens, 299 clicks

-      Content downloads – 1,341 (across all sources)

-      866 new leads generated for One Net Business