Google Maps in India wanted to run a marketing campaign that targeted a select group of leading businesses in a place called Hauz Khas Village in New Delhi, India.
Google’s mapping department makes money by putting companies on their map and then selling them advertising so they get noticed.
The existing campaign structure aimed for mass appeal; they invited me on board to help calibrate it for a more intimate dynamic.
Their initial campaign involved approaching businesses, showing them how to get on Google maps and then asking if they wanted to spend money on advertising. I helped redesigned this structure so that each encounter with a business was broken down into three stages.
The first point of contact was to be a maximum of 5 minutes. It involved congratulating the company for being one of the few in the area that was using Google Maps to their advantage. We wanted to help them leverage this benefit by giving them business a sticker for their entrance that showed their customers that they were on the map.
The team I worked with chose the image above as the sticker. It was one of the three designs we presented. The idea was to have it placed beside the usual ”We accept Mastercard” stickers on the main entrance. If the business was not on Google maps, then we asked if they would like to be and got the job done for them.
The point of the initial encounter was to establish face-to-face contact with the business owner or an executive for the company’s marketing budget. For the first encounter to be successful, all we needed was the executive’s contact details so that we could arrange a second meeting.
We arranged the second visit in advance and asked for less than 20 minutes of their time. It involved showing whoever controlled the advertising budget stats for the traffic on their Google Maps marker. We then explained the benefits (as opposed to features) of investing in a small Adwords campaign, followed by a menu of three different Adwords packages.
We prepared a pitch where the key message we wanted to get across stood out and interesting snippets could easily be easily repeated. If the person we were speaking to was not an executive, we made it easy for them to champion our service by telling someone what we discussed.
We were asking for a considerable amount of money and the chance of a cash transaction on the spot was low. The goal of the interaction was not a hard-sell but to show the advertising executive just how simple and efficient online advertising could be.
If the sale was successful, the third meeting involved returning to the business one month later and reviewing the results of their AdWords campaign (to either continue or increase their spend). If the sale was not successful, then the third phase involved showing them the benefits that other businesses were reaping as a result of investing in Adwords.
Google worked with a media agency called Pensa Media. Their designers fleshed out the design for the stickers.