Case study

How Football Business Speakers reached 13 qualified leads a month from a standing start

Football Business Speakers launched on LinkedIn with 1.6 million views. The content system we built now delivers an average of 13 qualified inbound leads every month.

Headline figures

1.6M

Views generated during launch period

13

New inbound leads per month on average

37k+

Follower audience

About Football Business Speakers

What they do

Premium speaking agency representing figures from football

Industry

Events

Engagement

Content, Strategy

TL;DR

Football Business Speakers is a premium speaking agency founded by former Premier League footballer Paul McVeigh. Credibility was there from day one; attention was not. noticed. launched the brand with a two-month LinkedIn campaign, then converted the launch audience into a repeatable system.

• Launch: 1.6 million views and an audience of more than 37,000.
• Ongoing: an average of 13 new inbound leads every month since.
• Method: a launch that built an audience, then a system that converted it.

Challenge

All the credibility, none of the awareness.

The line-up was elite from day one. The event organisers, HR leaders and CEOs who actually book speakers simply did not know the agency existed.

Launching a business where the credibility is already real is a different problem from building credibility. The job is distribution, not proof.

The launch

Two months, built around Paul as the voice on high performance in sport and business.

A launch campaign has one job: assemble an audience fast enough that the system built afterwards has something to work with. Built around a named person with a genuine claim to the subject, that is achievable in weeks rather than quarters.

High performance was the bridge. It is what Paul can speak to with authority, and it is what the audience buying speakers actually cares about.

Turning a launch into a system

A launch is an event. The leads come from what replaces it.

Most launches spike and then stop, leaving an audience and no mechanism. The campaign was converted into a repeatable content system aimed squarely at the people who book speakers, which is where the monthly inbound comes from.

• Aim at the booker, not the fan. The audiences overlap and only one of them has a budget.
• Keep the voice, since the launch worked because it came from Paul, and a handover to brand-voice content would forfeit the reason it worked.
• Measure the inbound, not the launch number. 1.6 million views is the start; 13 leads a month is the business.

Aiming at the booker, not the fan

A footballer's audience and a speaking agency's buyers are almost entirely different people.

This is the trap for any business launched off a sporting profile. Content about football reaches people who like football, and produces reach figures that look excellent and book nothing. The people who book speakers are event organisers, HR leaders and CEOs with a budget and a date.

• High performance as the bridge, a subject Paul can speak to with real authority and that the buying audience genuinely cares about.
• Written for the person signing off the fee, not the person who remembers the career.
• Measured on inbound, because 13 leads a month from the right audience is the business; the 1.6 million views were how it started.

Results

A two-month launch, and the system that replaced it.

Launch reach

1.6 million views generated during the launch period.

Audience

More than 37,000 followers.

Ongoing pipeline

An average of 13 new inbound leads every month since launch.