Our client Littelfuse faced an interesting challenge this recently when coming up with a campaign to replace its successful Speed2Design IndyCar promotion.  The company created a racing-themed promotion the year before to take engineers “behind the scenes” at four IndyCar races as a way to tie its circuit protection devices to high performance technology.  And you can’t get much more demanding in terms of engineering performance than IndyCar racing.

Or so we thought, until Littelfuse marketing executives came up with the idea of taking engineers behind the scenes to Mars, or, more accurately, visits to two NASA facilities.  We knew engineers would love the IndyCar theme – most are attracted to racing technology if not as avid fans than admirers of the technology-pushed-to-the-limits nature of the sport.  But the response this year showed they REALLY love NASA, as we discovered that engineers are typically fascinated with all things space.

In wrapping up the campaign, we completed an analysis of the numbers.  They were pretty impressive:

• 72% increase in contest entries over 2012 levels
• 173% increase in the size of the company’s prospect database
  
• 1010% increase in social media followership
  
• 138 PR articles (including social media)
  
• Explosion in web interest for the company, with 1312 links from external sites pushing people to www.speed2design.com, and visits from 155 countries        

These types of increases could be explained easily by a larger budget, but the budget for
  was flat compared to the year before.  Our campaign was tighter, more efficient and more focused, and certainly more appealing in retrospect to the engineering community.

As a lead generation campaign, it has few equals.  And its success was tied to the integrated approach it used, employing online advertising, PR, social media and video to generate attention.  Read more about the impact of integrated campaigns with our latest Lead Gen best practices ebook.

Written by Joel Goldstein:
Goldstein Group agency president who builds “Measurably Better Marketing” programs that create WOW experiences for clients.