The Situation:
In one recent case, our client, a b2b marketing firm, was preparing to develop, pitch, and sell a marketing campaign to a leading telecommunications company. Their client creates accessories for cell towers and 5G antennae.
The Complication:
The 5G market is complex. Over and above the new and multifaceted nature of 5G technology, multiple stakeholders, influencers, and decision-makers must be considered for marketing and campaign programs. City planners, governments, and citizens are concerned about the performance and aesthetics of 5G infrastructure. Telecom providers must meet cities’ needs without overextending municipal budgets. Hardware manufacturers need to ensure that any required accessories do not degrade their products’ performance. This set of situations presented a unique challenge for our client’s advertising and marketing plan pitch.
The Need:
In order to win over their prospective client, the b2b marketing firm needed to quickly get up to speed on the elaborate aspects of 5G infrastructure, customers, government partners, and trends – imperative steps to prepare a successful business pitch and effective advertising strategy.
The Solution:
In order to win — swiftly — our client and the Expert by Big Village team agreed that our Virtual Expert Workshop was the best solution. We conducted this virtual workshop using three proven steps:
- Discover and Design
We performed a detailed review of the topics and stakeholders our client needed to understand about the 5G market. We collaborated to create a timeline and flow of communication that allowed our client to begin forming concepts for their pitch before all the interviews and workshop were completed. This agile design enabled our team and theirs to work in parallel and meet the aggressive due date of the pitch.
- Recruit, Vet, and Interview Experts
Because we have over 300 telecommunications SME’s already enrolled in our own panel, Expert by Big Village was easily able to recruit and vet a strong collection of leading 5G experts. We recruited city government leaders and planners from the “wild” by leveraging our unique set of custom recruiting tools and techniques. These newly recruited experts and professionals were invited to participate in the project — then, per our normal process, to join our panel. Many of these consultants joined and are now available for smooth recruiting and participation in future projects.
After recruiting a dozen experts and industry professionals, we conducted hour-long in-depth interviews with each consultant to help our client amass a detailed understanding of the issues and stakeholders involved. This series of interviews gave our client initial insights to begin forming their pitch ideas. It also gave our team a deep understanding of each expert’s knowledge, enabling us to determine which to invite to the virtual workshop.
- Facilitate the virtual workshop
Once we had completed the interviews, we invited five experts to join a virtual web conference with our client. Big Village coordinated and facilitated the entire workshop. During this virtual conference, our client ran four possible pitch ideas by the experts to gauge initial reactions, assess the pros and cons of each, and determine whether any particular idea stood out as the winner. Our client used these insights to finalize their pitch and target the key themes the expert panel deemed most critical. Most importantly, the expert insight we provided enabled our client’s pitch to win over their competitors!
Our client was presented with a unique challenge: Create a pitch for a client faced with their own problem, technical knowledge, and industry awareness. To devise an effective, insights-driven pitch, our client had to quickly develop an understanding of the issues facing this telecommunications leader. Expert by Big Village solved our client’s problem by nimbly connecting their team with 12 thought leaders offering technical and industry insight from a variety of angles. The result? Our client won the pitch!