Marketing is the backbone of business growth, and innovative strategies can make a significant impact. As the times and trends are changing, businesses must adopt unique and effective marketing tactics to stand out and achieve substantial growth. To gain deeper insights into how marketing strategies can lead to remarkable business success, we reached out to industry experts who shared their experiences and successes.
These experts have successfully implemented a range of marketing strategies, from leveraging influencer partnerships to adopting highly personalised account-based marketing techniques and launching engaging livestream platforms. Their stories provide valuable lessons and inspiration for businesses looking to enhance their marketing efforts and drive growth. Here are their insightful responses:
Dan Gray
Founder, Blorange Marketing
As the CMO working with the founder to launch the first-ever Running World Cup, one of the first virtual running events globally, we had a vision to have over 100k individuals take part in year one. With a tight budget but a hefty goal, I needed to create a strategy that drove maximum awareness with runners whilst turning every £ spent into numerous runner sign-ups.
Whilst paid social media was a key way of driving awareness, the biggest and most exciting strategy I developed was that of country captains. An idea to maximise reach and impact for £0—a unique approach to an influencer marketing strategy. Over the course of a couple of days, I researched influential runners from 50 countries via Instagram and reached them directly, giving them the opportunity to captain their country at the first-ever Running World Cup, in return for some key activations on their social feeds.
The results were incredible. Running influencers almost without fail were keen to take part for free, countries all over the world suddenly started acquiring hundreds of runners, with zero paid ads, and the captains themselves did such a fantastic job of building further PR and excitement pre-, during, and post-event. The result was major traction before, during, and after the event, resulting in major sponsors coming on board, and the Running World Cup achieving over 150,000 sign-ups in year one alone.
Cristiano Winckler
Director of Digital Operations
One of the key approaches we’ve used to see successful growth in our clients’ businesses, along with a reduced sales cycle, is account-based marketing.
This approach encompasses using traditional digital platforms (Paid Media, Email, CRO) but with a highly personalised touch, aimed at clearly identified accounts and leveraging data to inform an extremely targeted marketing effort that results in real conversions.
One example I can give is of a software security client that was brand new to the cloud security space, with a revolutionary solution that was also new in their industry and category. This meant that their ideal customer didn’t even know they needed this security solution yet.
Using an ABM approach, we helped the client identify key customers to convert and determined where they were in the sales cycle. Through careful orchestration and integration of PPC, CRO, and Email, we saw a 59% increase in market-qualified leads and a 41% increase in MQLs moving into the purchase phase.
Chris Howard
Marketing Executive Director
This year we’ve just launched our own live stream platform—HR on the Offensive Live—with the view that delivering impactful, insightful content that is relevant to our audience (Senior HR professionals) that is in short-form video content is easily digestible and demonstrates that LACE Partners are a thought leader when it comes to trending topics that HR professionals are talking about.
We host a weekly live stream that goes out across our social media channel feeds, delivered through a hosting platform called Streamyard, which has built-in graphics, branding, and videos (for the intro and outro music) that we can manage in real-time.
The live stream also gets added as an ‘on demand’ feature to our YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter timelines.
The reason we decided to add this in is because we recognised that short-form video content was an area that we haven’t produced a great volume of, but is something we could quickly deliver to our followers and grow our following. We have already seen significant gains across Twitter (which had been a stagnating follower platform for us), as well as LinkedIn and YouTube (at the time of writing we have just added an additional 22 followers in June on YouTube—across this channel we’ve been used to adding one or two a month but suddenly after launching in March this year we have seen a big uptick, and in the four months to June 2024 since launch, we’ve had over 4k views of the live streams.
They are 5–10 minutes long on a particular topic that is either relevant in the news to HR professionals or bigger topics that we come across when speaking to clients (HR operating model, ‘unbossing’ / delayering, etc.).
How does this enable business growth? For us, we have improved those who are connected and following us, but it is also important to establish a cadence of providing good content that will interest potential customers. Our ethos is that we want to be front and centre of our clients’ minds, and producing regular thought-provoking content is important in our marketing and lead generation strategy. As a consultancy that has long lead times on projects, building trust and relationships is important; constantly reinforcing that by regularly providing content enables us to be at the forefront of our customer’s minds. They may not need us today, but if we continue to show value even if we are not working with them, then when they do require our services, the brand recall as a result of our multi-channel content approach helps to secure business for us.
The insights shared by Dan Gray, Cristiano Winckler, and Chris Howard highlight the power of innovative marketing strategies in driving business growth. Dan Gray’s creative approach to influencer marketing through country captains, Cristiano Winckler’s personalised account-based marketing techniques, and Chris Howard’s use of engaging livestream content all demonstrate the importance of understanding your audience and leveraging unique tactics to reach them effectively.
These strategies not only resulted in increased engagement and lead generation but also helped build a strong brand presence and trust among potential customers. By continuously providing valuable content and maintaining a consistent presence, businesses can stay at the forefront of their customers’ minds, ensuring long-term success and growth. As these experts have shown, a well-executed marketing strategy can turn ambitious goals into remarkable achievements.
If you are interested in becoming a thought leader featured on Expert Circle click below to discover our latest topics.
