Building a Peer Group for Family Business Owners and Leaders

Overview

SmartAcre worked with Compass Point to develop, launch, and promote “The Collective,” a new type of event for Compass Point created to build a peer group exclusive for family business leaders and owners while also attracting new prospects and organizations.

Challenge

Compass Point, a leading family business consultancy, desired to increase its stream of new leads by engaging a new audience while showcasing the expertise of founder Tom Garrity within the Family Business space. Previously, the company relied on word of mouth and referrals to gain new clients. As the company celebrated its 20th anniversary, the team knew they needed to do more to scale the business beyond the Lehigh Valley and Pennsylvania and further into the mid-Atlantic states.

SmartAcre developed a demand gen campaign to attract the net-new leads and bring together family business leaders in a small, peer-group-like format. Built exclusively for family business leaders, this informal virtual coaching and peer session provided Compass Point an opportunity for outreach with a genuine interest in creating connections.

The Collective’s pilot program launched with an event in June and a follow-up event in July. During each hour-long session, Tom provided a short lesson with insights on a timely topic facing family businesses. Resources were shared to help attendees solve their challenges and real-time Q&A allowed attendees to get answers to their most pressing questions. The event also gave attendees the chance to hear the challenges their peers faced including real examples of how they solved their issues. The success of the pilot would determine whether or not more sessions were added.

Goals included:

• Re-engage leads in the database
• Produce referrals from existing clients
• Obtain 15 registered attendees per event with 10 net-new leads overall

Approach

While the overarching goal of The Collective was to drive net new leads, we also wanted to engage with Compass Point’s existing contacts and customers, have them attend The Collective events, and refer their friends to the event, ultimately helping grow the database.

SmartAcre created a promotional strategy for the campaign including a landing page with details about the event topic and a registration form, a pop-up on the website, email outreach, organic social media posts, and a paid approach on LinkedIn.

The initial announcement and invitation emails were sent to the database from Tom while the Compass Point team invited their personal contacts to give it a more personal and exclusive feel. Additionally, follow-up emails were sent post-session to thank attendees for coming, share resources including the session video, and encourage registrations for the next event.

Before each event, SmartAcre met with Compass Point to rehearse the presentation, check that no gaps existed within the information, and ensure enough time for Q&A and discussion.

Outcomes

The two events generated 39 total registrations (June: 13; July: 26) with 44% attendance and 3 leads.

The five promotional emails performed higher than the database averages:

• 39% open rate (database average is 34%)
• 2.41% click rate (database average is 1.2%)

The landing page is the second most visited page of the website this year with 911 page views. LinkedIn content resulted in 18 clicks from organic and 11 clicks from paid.

Despite delivering just under our goal numbers, Compass Point considered the pilot program a success and will continue it in future months. The pilot program provided insights into improvements and enhancements to The Collective so the desired goals can be achieved.