Camera, Action, Leads! (GMK Produções Media Case Study)

Media companies often rely on word of mouth and traditional sales approaches to drive their contracts. And that makes sense — let your extensive portfolio speak for itself and allow prospects to come to you!

However, such an approach rarely leaves room for real expansion — whether it is to a new market, or a new audience. It can be difficult to get your foot in the door of market segments and people with no prior connection.

Moreover, a true unification of sales and marketing efforts doesn’t seem realistic for smaller companies that don’t have the resources to have a fully fledged marketing department.

This was the case for GMK Produções — Portugal-based masters of visual storytelling seeking to find new contracts and expand their network of sponsors.

During a month-long campaign the UMG fulfilled the role of their marketing and sales teams, taking care of the finding, identifying, connecting and converting new leads.

Here’s their story.

About GMK Produções

Location: Portugal

Industry: Media Production

Company Size: 1–10

GMK Produções are a Portugal-based video production company, specialising in producing TV shows, corporate videos, live streaming and more.

Challenges

  • Lack of dedicated marketing team. GMK is a small enterprise. The CEO handles most of the projects, on top of sales and promotions. Focusing on delivering a top notch product leaves no room for working out a sustainable business development strategy.
  • Lack of outbound activities. In the past GMK relied on traditional sales methods and word-of-mouth recommendations.

The UMG Solution

The UMG team took on the role of combined sales and marketing departments for GMK and delivered a list of high-value relevant prospects along with compelling marketing materials.

Identify target accounts

The dedicated Account Manager for this campaign studied GMK’s industry and developed an ideal customer profile. Account Manager used criteria such as

  • Industry
  • Location

To find the most relevant companies, and then searched within those companies to identify the specific accounts. They then used ICP to source over 2000+ high-value accounts which would be targeted with the marketing message.

Decide the outreach channel

It was decided to approach the prospects from 2 fronts — LinkedIn for increase personalisation and trust, and Email for the ability to include effective business propositions and additional materials (perfect for GMK and showcasing their portfolio)

Copywriting

One of the biggest advantages of this campaign was the marketing copy. Our copywriter crafted a simple but effective message that 3 key things:

  • Establishing relevance and trust
  • Providing an attractive proposition and incentive without saying too much
  • Clear call to action

Practice showed that a cold email doesn’t have to be extremely unique and exciting, with jokes and clever wordplay. A simple and genuine message with a strong selling proposition does not only deliver results, but is definitely more universal.

Since the target audience was based in Portugal, the messages were translated into Portuguese by our team. Despite the fact that English is the universal language of business, receiving messages in the native language has always proved extremely effective and added a level of personalisation.

Outreach

The prospects were contacted on 2 separate platforms to build trust, follow up and increase chances of positive responses.

In total each prospect would receive 4 marketing messages and 3 follow-ups. Even though it is a sequence, each message is designed to incite a response. If at any point the prospect responds, they are immediately excluded from the rest of the sequence and the communication is handed over to GMK.

Results

Very few people in GMK’s funnel received the final follow-up message. With an amazing response rate of 37%, GMK connected with 70 qualified interested leads after only 30 days of sustained outreach! Moreover, they expanded their prospect database with a further 186 second-degree leads to come back to and nurture in the future.

This is an outstanding result not only for their industry, but for lead generation in general.

Key outcomes

  • Controlled and focused outbound marketing brings results. The secret to outbound marketing is knowing your audience and where to find them. Study your audience and hit them with a message they can’t say no to — and watch leads drip down your funnel right to signing a contract.
  • Simple and confident message in the native language of your audience increases chances of conversion. Your marketing copy doesn’t have to be flashy to stand out. Confidence in your offer and focus on the positive outcomes for the potential client is all that it takes to convince a prospect to reach out back.