Case Study: Lead Generation for Podcasts booking platform
In this Lead Generation Case Study, we would like to outline how we managed to attract almost 200 B2B SQL Leads in just 3 weeks! We have targeted prospects from different niches to offer them an opportunity to become a podcast guest.
Podcasts have become an ultimate form of content marketing that just cannot be ignored by businesses anymore. If you have a considerable network of entrepreneurs — you must have noticed that everyone is going insane about podcasts.
Here are a couple of stats, provided by Edison Research to prove this point:
- 32% of Americans listen to podcasts monthly. (Comparing to 26% in 2018)
- 22% of Americans listen to podcasts weekly. (Comparing to 17% in 2018)
- 54% of Podcast listeners are more likely to consider buying an advertised product.
As you see, the popularity of Podcasts is growing rapidly, making this format attractive for companies who need to broadcast messages to their communities.
Client
The client is an owner of Podcast Booking company that connects business people who want to empower their personal branding with various podcasters, providing both with a high-quality support. There are 2 main services they deliver:
- Help business people to appear on a popular podcast as a guest.
- Help podcast owners to find respectable guests to appear on their podcast.
Considering the rapid growth of podcasts as a medium, these services are extremely useful in a B2B environment, which couldn’t do but influence how the Lead Generation campaign went.
Challenge
The client has contacted us with a need to generate qualified leads for his services. Considering the popularity of B2B podcasts, it was obvious that their target audience is present on LinkedIn.
Our Client tried to contact people by himself and even had some success. However, it was an extremely time-consuming and unscalable process. That is why he made a reasonable decision to use our LinkedIn Lead Generation service.
Solution
Profile optimization
Because Client has considerable experience in building a personal brand, no wonder why his LinkedIn profile was also optimized properly. That is why we were able to skip this stage (usually, we make our clients’ profiles look all-star before starting a campaign).
Target audience setup
Considering the specificities of Podcast Booking services, we had to reinvent our approach to creating LinkedIn search filters because of several reasons:
- Prospects’ industry was not as crucial as it is during other LeadGen campaigns simply because there are a lot of professionals from different industries, who might be interested in running a podcast.
- Instead of companies, we had to focus on individuals who need to develop their personal brand.
- We had quite a vague buyers’ persona that included Coaches, Authors, Entrepreneurs, Influencers, SAAS product owners, etc.
That is why we needed to pay special attention to the prospects we would like to connect in order to make sure they might be an interesting guest for podcasters to invite. Basically, we had to find people with decent personal brands and to offer them an opportunity to empower their brand even more.
Message script preparation
When creating a message script, we relied on the Client’s expertise and communication manners. All the messages were written in a friendly, easy-to-read style, introducing the concept of Podcast Booking and inviting a prospect to book a call with the Client.
The script in this project is a representation of the “less is more” rule. There were no difficult statistic data, no sophisticated professional language, as well as no official jargon.
We were focused on building an honest personal interaction with every prospect we have contacted. We have also convinced people to conduct a call almost instantly, without long conversations on LinkedIn.
Overall, it was a simple 3-step (Invitation message, Connection Message, Follow-up) messaging script with personalized answers on the 3rd step. Here’s how it looks in our working spreadsheet.
Outreach
We have been looking for relevant connections daily, sending dozens of personalized invitations. After 3 weeks we have had a couple of thousands of requests that converted into more than 600 MQL connections. It was a considerable database for us to continue working with.
Considering the fact we had quite a vague buyer persona, we needed to use additional filters in order to make our search more precise. However, we couldn’t just get away with setting filters up. Instead of that, we had also to make initial research about every prospect to figure out if they suit our needs.
Results
Since the 13th of June until the 5th of July, we were able to connect 2200 people, reaching pretty impressive rates during the campaign.
- The overall Acceptance Rate was 27%;
- While the Reply Rate was 29%
Our activity resulted in generating 173 hot leads who either asked for more details or were interested in further communication with the Client.
On this chart, you can see the number of leads, classified by their replies. We add people who replied in a negative way because our practice shows that they are more likely to be converted into a sale then neutral ones.
Conclusion
This project had such an unprecedented success that Client had to reinvent the whole onboarding process. He is now looking for some solutions to automize it because processing such a flow of leads manually is extremely time-consuming.
Usually, there is a delay (3–5 days) between the moment we send invitation it gets accepted. Due to this delay, there were, even more, leads generated by Client’s profile after we have sent our last report. The overall number of leads was 230 but we do not count them because they were connected after the campaign was finished.
This project is prominent evidence of the idea that cooperation between a company and a marketing agency is the major key of a successful Lead Generation.
The Client knew exactly who to target, as well as what messages to sent in order to provoke prospects’ interest. Besides that, Podcast Booking services are extremely useful for the people he was reaching out.
Combine all these factors and you will receive a Lead Generation campaign that brings more than 10 leads daily.
