When John Watton took the helm at ShipServ, he already had two decades worth of marketing to the high-tech industry under his belt. He took on a tough role at e-commerce business for the maritime industry too – before he took over as its VP of marketing the company faced a problem of flexibility and scale.
Challenge
With only a small marketing team and a limited budget, Watton needed to organically create awareness, demand and a captive community for ShiServ Pages, a supplier directory, and ShipServ TradeNet, an e-commerce trading platform where ship owners, managers and ship yards conduct business online.
In addition, Watton faced the challenge of delivering high quality leads to two different sales teams. The inside dales team based in the Philippines needed a way to distinguish from a sea of online visitors ‘just browsing’ to generate a steady pipeline of new opportunities. The smaller, geographically dispersed sales team meanwhile had a more strategic goal – with multi year purchase cycles they needed to foster a trusted advisor relationship and to acquire a wealth of intelligence about a prospect’s web activity, interests and demographic profile.
Solution
To support sales and build an online audience, Watton developed a multi-phase strategy, anchored by marketing automation, social media and an innovative marketing approach to reach this traditionally paper and phone based community.
Watton implemented a lead-scoring and lead nurturing framework that made the marketing team more efficient and nimble. He also devised a solution to what he terms the “slam down” treatment often dished out to sales reps, particularly in the US. Customers in Watton’s “slam down” campaign automatically received an apologetic email three hours later – beginning the lead nurturing process.
Results
By catering to different market segments with customised landing pages and email campaigns, Watton increased revenue without increasing the size of his marketing team. In fact, ShipServ reduced its campaign management burden by 80 per cent, enabling his team to focus on more creative and strategic initiatives.
One of these included a social media engagement campaign, in which he communicated with potential customers via twitter, LinkedIn, blog posting and a viral video. And he continues to invent new ways to make better use of the company’s existing resources. Last year, he launched a white paper ‘drip campaign’ that yielded 400 downloads. When he relaunched it a few months later, it yielded another 600 downloads at no extra cost or effort.
Watton has improved landing page contact-to-lead conversion rates by 150 per cent and lead-to-opportuinity rates by 50 per cent. ROI of 100 per cent was achieved in just three months, and his social media campaign boosted the number of sales-ready leads by 400 per cent – remarkable figures for such a late adopter industry.
“John’s creativity has opened doors and built bridges for us,” says ShipServ’s senior vice president of sales, Freddy Ingemann. “Regardless of the business challenge, John has a solution for it.”
