How do you sell the intangible? That’s the dilemma of every integrated marketer promoting a services business or application. For Avanade UK, a business technology solutions and managed services provider, the decision to raise awareness of one of its key service lines resulted in a scalable integrated marketing campaign that could be highly adoptable for any small-to-midsize business.
Opportunity for Fast Payoff
Avanade started where all smart marketers do: by outlining its goals:
- Support a sales pipeline — The brand never lost sight of the reason for the campaign: customer acquisition and sales revenue. Creativity for the sake of cleverness would not be enough.
- Identify key gaps in the media where the brand could drive its messaging — All budgets have a cap, and Avanade assessed where they could invest their marketing spend to yield the biggest return.
- Leverage key events — Every business has a sphere of influence and opportunities to get in front of key decision makers. Avanade opted to piggyback onto industry events and other milestones to tap built-in audiences and traction.
- Drive a three-month campaign reaching key customers, partners and employees — Avanade decided to sprint and set a short window to reach their goals. This also is a great strategy for SMB marketers who have near-term needs to book revenue.
Solutions Built for Speed
Too much marketing is done in a vacuum, with brands cutting customers — the very people they want to influence — out of marketing planning. Instead, Avanade conducted a research study to let its customers evaluate its value proposition. Although Avanade worked with a third-party research company to conduct the outreach, most SMBs can devise their own. Read here for ideas.
This value proposition was then used to develop a number of key marketing assets, all designed to generate demand and traffic to a dedicated microsite. In addition to that site, these tactics included:
- Targeted marketing emails
- Collateral, such as a playbook, flyer, case studies, press releases and infographics
- Event sponsorship that garnered them a speaking engagement
- Social media advertisements
Because Avanade took the time to vet their value proposition and marketing messages, they could speed up the roll out of their tactics and hone in on the vehicles that packed the most punch.
Results Even CFOs Would Love
With a short three-month ramp, Avanade could measure the results of the campaign quickly — something every SMB marketer can appreciate. Their strategy paid off, with 10 new business appointments, including one contact met during the sponsored event and another prospect who responded to a LinkedIn advertisement. These results help us deduct some pretty powerful lessons from Avanade:
- Conversion is easier when decision-makers are on board with you.
- Customer acquisition takes less time when you’re certain of your target audience.
- Create only the marketing assets your target audiences will see and value.
- Consistent messaging wins every time.
“This campaign has had a huge impact and shows the value of getting all the stakeholders together and agreeing on a value proposition before execution,” explained Caroline Overholt, marketing manager, Avanade, in a case study for B2B Marketing. “We were very clear from the start who we were trying to target, which helped us to shape the campaign and the assets created to talk to the right people with consistent messages. It showed the power of telling our story a number of times through a number of touch-points to get the messages to resonate.”
