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I recently finished work on a pretty successful campaign effort. 

Hundreds of leads were generated in a 3-month period, with a cost-per lead (CPL) lower than nearly anything else we did all year.  Our team hosted seminars, webinars and attended tradeshows.  Major markets were hit and partners were leveraged to offset cost.  We developed an in-house process for list development and cleansing.  We executed on a great demand generation plan using email, the web, phone and media.

However, we found some troubling data around our seminars that seemed to repeat in each market.  There was a 20% dropoff in attendees that had to drive 15 miles or less to the event.  However, we had a near 70% dropoff in attendance for those who driving more than 15 miles to the event.  The ideal way to address this scenario moving forward, we decided, was to:

• Identify a central event location that was within 15 square miles of as many prospects as possible
• Identify all prospects within selected 15 square-mile radius
• Have demand generation team work prospects within radius for event attendees, have inside sales work prospects outside of radius to set up private meetings

This sounded great, but how would we go about it?  The initial prep work reeked of tedious spreadsheets and manual mapping.  I was explaining the challenge to a colleague who introduced me to Microsoft MapPoint.  She was using MapPoint to visualize data on where prospective clients were on a national and per-city basis.  I downloaded the trial and within an hour was comfortable with the program.  I took the basic steps of mapping out where our prospects were.  Then, I did some customization so the viewer could click on a pushpin and see qualification data, key contacts and previous marketing touches.  Here’s a “neutered to protect the innocent” screenshot:

The ability to visualize this data did more than just enable our demand generation team to identify customers in a geographic radius.  We could now prioritize the targets within that radius, focusing efforts on the best qualified prospects already familiar with our brand.  We were able to visualize “hot spots”, or areas that were particularly dense with target prospects and change our strategy to attack these areas.  Our Sales teams could be more efficient in planning travel within their territories.  We’re currently evaluating a plan to integrate MapPoint with our CRM system to deliver a monthly update so our Sales teams and management could visually track territory activity.  While this tool helped in this situation, I thought about how it could be applied elsewhere, to other marketing scenarios.

I called up a colleague that works in the telecom industry.  Within minutes of hearing about the tool’s capability, he figured out a way to map out customer disconnects as part of a per-region competitive analysis effort he was leading.  I spoke with another friend who works in retail.  She mapped out her customers and produced an impressive map of her company’s global reach that was used in an investor meeting.

I’ve always been a big fan of using technology in creative ways.  I’d love to hear what you think of this idea.  How could you use this software in your business?

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