Case Study | Lead Generation | EMarketz | Corporate Training Agency, Leads from India

The Corporate Training Market in India is expected to grow with a CAGR of 16.3% in FY’22P and FY’27F. Majority of the training demand is dominated by the requirements from the service industry and the IT/ITES sector is the backbone of the Corporate Training Market in India. Large organizations are the largest revenue generator for the corporate training market in India, followed by medium and small-scale companies.

These industries require a multitude of corporate training, everything from sales product training to leadership and personal development for their employees. Our client had previous training partnerships with industries in the Engineering, IT, Logistics and PSU space. They provided instructor led classroom programs with a huge course spectrum especially in the IT and Business fields.

Background

From May 2021 when Work From Home had become a policy norm for most industries, even the ones serviced by our client, they organically shifted their business completely online and this was also due to the fact that companies were now more than ever actively enabling and encouraging employees to acquire progressive development through online training. The grim reality, however, was that the leads generated actually fell through the cracks, the cracks that were mostly created by online training startups and dozens of new and enormously funded companies who offered nuanced upskill opportunities to corporations looking to optimize their employee performance.

The Result: Our client saw their leads generated drop from 78 leads per month (average report as of March 2021). The proceeding months April and May saw leads totalling to 23 and 32 respectively. The months from May 2021 to July 2021 were underwhelming to a great extent - with leads consistently dropping from a high of 31 in May 2021 to 18 in June and 12 in July. This also brought down the average leads generated for the past 6 months to a record low in the company's 5 year history.

The Conversion Analysis: The conversion rate was the most challenging aspect with vastly underperforming figures throughout the course of the report. The company was only able to convert 15.56% - average conversion rate during the three months spanning May 2021 to July 2021. Check out the detailed conversion report in the chart below.

The company was seeing constant downfall in lead generation and fragile conversion rate, even with multiple sales and marketing initiatives, they saw that the improvements were scarce, if any, the COVID lockdown and consequent restrictions involving direct meeting and canvassing were only further deteriorating their condition.

Emarketz Solutions for Lead Generation

Once the client had approached us with the issue, we immediately conducted a thorough inspection into the persistent failure of leads generation and conversion. The diagnosis revealed the following:

• The strategic deficiency in inbound lead generation through things like SEO, content marketing, and social media.
• Poor audience targeting or not having a clear buyer persona which was heavily disruptive considering that the range of training offered specifically catered to the necessities of some organizations.
• Poor website design – Having a poorly designed website or not focusing on user experience.
• Lack of testing – Not testing different versions of ads or emails to see which ones are more effective.
• Lack of effective follow up – Not following up with leads after their initial contact.
• Heavy reliance on referrals which led to lower quantity lead generation and some referrals also fell through because certain in-demand training pricing was too expensive with alternatives online that sprung up during the COVID period.

After our effective diagnosis of the issue that has been plaguing the lead generation efforts of the company we devised a strategic plan with a 3 month implementation and cumulative results within 2 months, that is, a total of 5 months to improve the situation.

STRATEGIC STEPS

• We started the process with a comprehensive reshaping of the company’s training platform outreach online
• A complete revamp of the website and alluring landing pages for the multiple corporate training and courses offered by the company
• Deep SEO research - the SEO experts identified long-tailed keywords to be included in the content to target the relevant audience
• The courses and training offered by the company to the various industries were classified separately and our content creators proceeded to furnish a minimum of 5 strategically worded, SEO scripted articles and blogs specifically targeting the buyer personas which included the key players in the respective target industries
• Distribution of the content - the content was distributed and promoted by our professional lead marketing team with a dive into the community of corporate professionals using our various access points, website directories and targeted ads
• We also designed multiple ads for the campaign and used geographic segmentation to concentrate them in the areas our client required, with multiple trainings shifted online during the period, we also helped them broaden their lead targeting.
• We helped the sales and marketing team of the company with our further support in filtering the generated leads - considering that they faced huge issues in converting the leads. This involved ideas such as demo training and introductory videos of their training packages and courses to interested and inbound leads.

Honing Outbound Strategy

Outbound campaigns for corporate training have to be specifically catered to the right players because even within a corporate organization separate departments do not require certain training offered. This is why helped them level-up their contact acquisition strategy in-order to better utilize the outbound marketing techniques they have been relying on.

Why did Outbound not workout? - Emarketz Inspection Report

Outbound marketing does not always work for corporate training lead generation because it relies on a “spray and pray” approach and does not target specific audiences. Outbound marketing tactics like cold calling, email marketing, and direct mail can be effective for lead generation, but they require a great deal of time and effort and have a low rate of success. A more effective approach to lead generation for corporate training is inbound marketing, which involves creating content that attracts customers and encourages them to reach out to your company on their own. This strategy is more effective because it targets customers who are already interested in what you have to offer.

IMPACT ASSESSMENT

The Emarketz partnering began in August 2021 and was offered a 5 month (timeline detailed above) lead generation improvement run. The comprehensive report was curated by our analytical team on January 2, 2022. The summary of the details show that the lead generation improved from an average of 20 leads per month (recorded as of July 2021) to 5X increase with an average of 110 leads generated per month (recorded as of January 2022).

The conversion efficiency saw the best increase in the company's history, with the conversion rate at 15% (average recorded as of July 2021) to an average of 66% successful conversion rate with a month recording a staggering 71% conversion (despite a cumbersome rise in the quantity of leads generated).