Gateway Media Enews Bulletin - August Edition
This edition focuses on our recent move to Canary Wharf and the relaunch of our website and blog.
4 weeks ago
Spot 'Black Shuck' the Wolf
Pictures from a visit to my home town of Lowestoft, the most Easterly point in the UK.
5 Steps to Successful Sales Campaign Preparation
Here is a break down of my take on how a Sales Campaign should look.
A couple of years ago the social enterprise Media company I manage had success in winning a contract with a major construction firm. Using the portfolio and contacts gained from this initial job has given us the opportunity to be a key provider of media services for the construction industry, and we now work with many of the largest construction firms in Europe.
I thought it might be useful to give insight into the way I have approached our latest construction industry sales campaign, to help others adapt it into the field they operate within.
Step One - Market Segmentation. Immerse yourself in the market, use past experience to understand who to target (both individuals and firms), gather targets contact details. Ask for support from current clients in gathering contacts for the campaign and feeding into what will make the offer most effective.
Step Two - The Offer. Make sure that what you are offering is hitting the sweet spots, see my post on ‘selling with pain’. I got in touch with some of my clients to feed into our approach to Stakeholder Engagement and Communication in the construction industry. The offer you create should be immediately attractive, so if it is complex, use a diagram to show how it works, as I have done:
Step Three - Use a Viral / Social Media element. Make it easy for your initial contacts to spread the word for you. We created a show reel that is posted around our blog and social media channels. This is easy for people to share around:
Step Four - Put all your information in one place. However you contact you targets -CRM system, 3rd party e-mail service (Mailchimp), meetings, phone calls or networking - always invest in a good landing page with a clear call to action, this is your shop front. The landing page for this campaign is personalised to let people know who they will be dealing with when they get in touch. It incorporates all of the elements needed to gain interest - the show reel, similar projects, testimonials, offer and a clear call to action. Click here to view the finished result.
Step Five - SELL!
Here is a short video we produced to promote our office move from Whitechapel to the steel and concrete of Canary Wharf.
Shaal is ambitious, always willing to say YES and to put the maximum effort in. He has a lot going for him, which we recognised early on during a Media course we ran at our parent charity, City Gateway. He has gone on to perform well on a 6 month apprenticeship at Gateway Media, to eventually be taken on in full time filming and editing role. The last chapter of Shaal’s life has been full of challenges and he is about to enter into his biggest yet. Following a chance visit by senior managers of Channel 4 and ITV at our Limehouse Youth Club, Shaal has now been chosen by Four Talent for a position as Junior Camera Assistant on feature film ‘Rafter Rafter’, directed by David Higgs, who was Director of photography from ‘RocknRolla’. So although Shaal will not be with us for the next 5 weeks, we are proud that he has come so far and will be flying the City Gateway and Gateway Media flag from inside the British Film Industry. Shaal, we salute you!
London Evening Standard Article on City Gateway, our parent charity
The media company I manage, Gateway Media, is part of a larger youth training charity called City Gateway. All the profits we make go into this charity, which gives us the social enterprise status we enjoy. This article in the Evening Standard shows insight into the background of Nabil Ahmed, a new apprentice at City Gateway.
While giving sales training to some of the wider City Gateway staff last week, I had my first proper opportunity to spend time with Nabil. At the time I didn’t know his background, only that he was ambitious and keen to learn. He picked up on the training well and is putting his first sales campaign together now, which I am looking forward to helping him deliver soon. Nabil is an inspiration to me, of what can be overcome and why social enterprise and charities like City Gateway are so important.
LinkedIn as a lead generation tool
Fresh back from a visit to the Marketing Week Live conference, I decided that I should comment on the use of LinkedIn as an increasingly important business tool with key benefits for small business.
Kevin Eyres, managing director of LinkedIn, gave a talk about LinkedIn’s use as a tool for expert groups in the medical field. I was lucky enough to grab a word with him afterward to discuss an idea I have for using LinkedIn as a way of supporting gap year students and people on sabbaticals, which he seemed interested in.
An area that Kevin didn’t cover in much detail was lead generation. Aside from LinkedIn being a good place for an online portfolio, career progression, recommendations and keeping in touch with other professionals and clients, I have found it to also be a effective way to create leads. Having had some success creating business through Twitter I gave it a go using the following method.
Step 1
Establish yourself - Complete your profile to 100%, it is not a CV so only put information that is necessary for those you want to engage with and get recommendations from colleagues and clients.
Step 2
Join a group in the area most appropriate to your business. If there isn’t a group for you then MAKE ONE! I created the Young Social Entrepreneur Group which today gained it’s 200th member.
Step 3
Get involved. You have heard it before and you will hear it again - don’t sell, just offer advice, guidence and help to those with questions. This is how you will generate leads. You can do it through the groups you join or lead, through your own status updates and through the questions and answers section of the site.
In my experience these steps can successfully generate high quality qualified leads and if you don’t manage the same success you will still have created an effective tool for your personal career progression.
Next Monday will see us move into our new Canary Wharf based office, it’s the small red building nestled in front of one Canada Square. This is an expanded office space based on the doorsteps of some of the largest corporations in the world. I hope to capitalize on this new location but first we need to let them know we have arrived; we are working on a Canary Wharf specific promotional video and have plans for a launch event.
For the whole of January I was visiting Kenya to explore a country that I was born in but I had never properly visited. Here are a some of my landscape images to give an idea of how amazing the place is. I will be adding other categories of shots over the coming weeks including a social enterprise I visited.
