Business Challenge:
With the sudden outbreak of COVID-19, the Company needed to quickly replace physical events with an online medium to generate leads.
The Solution:
The Company launched a series of webinars to educate prospects on why now, more than ever, is the time to invest in building their online presence and reputation so that they will be in position to win locally when business returns to "normal". To draw prospect attendance, the company implemented an aggressive performance-based demand generation campaign consisting of organic and paid social, digital direct response mailers and website banners. As a result of the campaign, the Company was able to schedule demos for 50% of attendees of which 20% converted to sales.
Business Challenge:
The Company needed a venue to relaunch after its rebranding to create buzz and awareness. After doing considerable market research and customer target planning it was determined that the Salesforce user base would be highly-qualified prospects for its newly released AI marketing automation tools. However, just buying a tradeshow booth at Dreamforce does not guarantee any ROI as the Company would be competing against @6,000 other Salesforce partners for attention. The Company needed to find a way to make a buzz and generate qualified leads at the show with a limited budget, if the launch was to be a success.
The Solution:
With aggressive networking and negotiation, the Company was able to broker a deal with Salesforce's exclusive partner marketing team to do some cross promotions. The strategy was two-fold: connect with Salesforce account executives (AEs) who were commissioned to promote partner apps as well as target end-users of Salesforce. In order to get the attention as well as stay top of mind with 850 Salesforce AEs, the Company orchestrated Chatter promotions, desk drops and weekly campaigns. To target end-users, the company did five consecutive weeks of direct mailers; banners on the Salesforce App Exchange homepage, newsletters and admin sites; promoted tweets; sponsored local user group events; secured the bag insert sponsorship at the event; and designed PR and social media campaigns. In addition, the Company was able to recruit two case studies and get them on the conference agenda as track session speaking slots. As a result of this integrated campaign, the Company boosted its AE Chatter followers from 0-109, secured 600% increase in app exchange downloads, and generated more than 750 qualified leads which converted into 199 opportunities.
Business Challenge:
The Company needed a forum to gather its customers and prospects to announce new product offerings, strengthen customer loyalty and retention as well as cross sell and upsell its software and subscription services.
The Solution:
The Company designed a 3-day industry event called Cloud Summit. To create excitement, and to recruit more than 1,400 attendees, an integrated digital marketing and PR campaign was launched consisting of organic and paid social media, PPC advertising, HTML mailers, website banners ads, targeted direct response, remarketing and numerous digital promotions. To fund the event, the Company sold sponsorships to 76 vendors, which resulted in generating a net marketing margin of 29%. As a result of the event, the company greatly bolstered its pipeline by eight figures and generated significant buzz and interest from new prospects through its media coverage.
Business Challenge:
The industry's largest trade show was less than two months away. It was essential to "stand out" at this event and relaunch the Company brand to assure potential buyers of its stability after the recent departure of the CEO and other senior executives.
The Solution:
With a limited budget, the Company used innovative events from breakfast seminars to 'lunch on the go' promotions and publicity stunts to create a buzz around the show to draw booth traffic. Unlike other companies who all hosted evening events/parties overlapping with each other, the Company broke tradition and hosted breakfast seminars with analysts in the convention center at times when no other vendor was presenting or holding an event. By aligning with analysts for these events, the Company also generated third-party credibility by association and also got meaningful time with the analysts to better educate them on the Company's product and services so that they were better prepared to recommend and send referrals to the Company. In addition, the Company issued several PR announcements at the show and secured last-minute speaking slots on the agenda. As a result of the guerrilla marketing program, the Company engaged with 853 attendees at its sponsored events, secured 241 qualified prospects, touched 409 unique organizations and built an eight figure sales pipeline directly from the show.
Business Challenge:
The Company struggled to get quality face time with C-suite executives from their customer/prospects. They needed to build more strategic relationships/partnerships to elevate their vendor status from being an IT supplier to a strategic partner.
The Solution:
The Company designed a 3-day, invitation-only, white glove Executive Forum event. The agenda was crafted to provide attendees with a healthy mix of thought leadership, industry networking as well as tactical takeaways to help their organizations better prepare for cyber attacks. A key part of the program was the one-to-one interaction with Company executives, opportunities for clients to share war stories with other attendees and a chance to get insight and provide feedback on the future products being developed. The inaugural Executive Forum was a huge success with more than 45% of customers attending. The event also bolstered the pipeline for a new product launch by more than 60 percent and helped close critical sales enabling the Company to achieve a record Q4.
Business Challenge:
Having booked an aggressive trade show schedule, the Company needed to generate a higher volume of qualified leads to ensure a reasonable ROI from these events.
The Solution:
Pre-show demand generation campaigns were launched with calls-to-action that helped qualify prospects prior to trade shows using an inside sales model. As a result, the Company was able to regularly schedule appointments and demos and bring qualified prospects to its booth at trade shows, rather than relying exclusively on traffic on the show floor. Within six months, 74% of leads collected from trade shows were classified as legitimate, qualified opportunities on the pipeline.
Business Challenge:
The Company needed to boost its professional services/training revenue and create a cost-effective forum to introduce new products to existing customers.
The Solution:
By reinventing its annual User Group Conference to focus on multi-level product training, the Company was able to boost attendance 300% and increase its training revenues 65%. With the majority of users now attending, the Company was also able to create a forum to introduce and demo its new products and significantly bolster its sales pipleline and customer retention.
Business Challenge:
The sales team struggled to secure face-to-face quality time with c-level prospects and decision makers which was critical to transitioning the sales model from product selling to enterprise solution selling.
The Solution:
The Company launched a series of events which included a User Group Conference for end-users and an Executive Forum for c-level management. To draw attendance, the agenda was designed around sessions with industry experts and thought leaders, educational and networking value-added events. This provided a forum for Company executives to get prospects in a controlled environment which they used to build stronger and more personalized relationships, ultimately leading to significant new enterprise solution platform sales and pipeline growth.
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