About the company
IBS is the world leader in distribution resource management software. It has over 30 years experience of helping wholesale and distribution companies streamline, automate and accelerate the processes needed to run their businesses.
It serves 40 countries around the world with partners in several more. The company has sold the flagship product, IBS Enteprise to top outfits like Everfresh, Heinz, Honeywell, Inchcape, Isuzu, Kia, Lexis Nexis, Hitachi, Maxell, McGraw-Hill, Miele, Mitsubishi, Pearson, PaperlinX, Rexel, Univar and Volvo.
IBS has experienced a dramatic turnaround in the past two years after a demoralising spell of losses and cost-cutting.
Strategy
The two main strategic drivers have been:
- Repositioning from a general provider of enterprise software and services to a focused provider of distribution software.
- Re-engaging to bring new distribution businesses into an increasingly sophisticated marketing and sales funnel.
The content marketing campaign is the first major initiative to demonstrate the new IBS to the market and to talk to prospective buyers about their own needs instead of our software.
Campaign objectives
- Consolidate the web infrastructure for global marketing campaigns
- Position IBS as the marketing leader in global distribution software
- Create an online engine to drive international content marketing
- Deliver flexible content for global marketing and PR programmes
- Measure the improved performance of the website and content
- Measure impact of different marketing investment across countries.
- Provide a global content platform for local marketing execution.
- Launch global lead generation programmes linked to CRM systems
Target market
The target market is mid-to-large distribution and wholesale businesses across the world.
The key targets are businesses struggling with the key distribution value drivers: margin, expenses, revenue, cash and inventory.
Media channels used
- IBS global and local websites – Supported by a home page flash box in key local languages and defined landing pages.
- IBS international database – A range of direct email, newsletters and invites to supporting events.
- Media partners – A range of media partners, such as Logistics Business in the UK, Electrico Plus in Italy and Technology Evaluation in the US, promoted the content across banners, email lists and newsletters.
- Email signatures – All key IBS staff promoted the book through their email signatures.
- Event Management – Lead nurturing programmes to support webinars and physical events to maximise the content.
- Public Relations – The countries broke the content down to shorter pieces leading to opinion pieces in key distribution media.
- Social Media – postings on LinkedIn groups, Twitter, blogs, etc
Timescales
IBS started the positioning in September and launched the new website in January. The content marketing campaign is a programme of constant learning, adapting and new generating content.
ResultsConsolidate Web Infrastructure
All IBS websites now work from a single, unified web platform managed with a CMS.
Position IBS as distribution specialist
All IBS marketing teams now use the same consolidated and translated messaging framework based on the challenges of distributors.
Create an online content engine
Global content campaigns are now fed with key content pieces and supported by rich media, promotional and data capture tools.
Deliver flexible content for global campaigning
We planned, researched and wrote “Six Margin Killers in Wholesale Distribution”
Measure web and content performance Web Metrics: highlights
- Visitors up 31 per cent
- Time on site up 14 per cent
- Campaign goal conversions up 51 per cent
- Bounce rates down 15 per cent
- Pages per visit up 19 per cent
Margin eBook Metrics: highlights
- 1050 ebook downloads from over 4000 views
- 26 per cent conversion rate
- 27 countries reached
- > £5 cost per lead
Compare marketing investment across countries
Launched the second eBook in the series on expenses with recommendations on regional variations thanks to campaign tagging and analysis.
Provide global content support for local marketing execution
“The combination of new content and localised adaptation plus best-practices in online execution (such as lead nurturing and live events has proved successful for us.” Marcus Shultz, IBS Australia
“We localized the ebook Margin Killers and put it on our site, used it with all our newsletters and introduced it into a dedicated media partner portal site. It’s of huge importance to us.” Sylvia Lelli, IBS Italy
“We marketed the hell out of the piece: banners on independent websites, read more’ snippets in newsletters, ebook summaries everywhere.” Claire Peel, IBS UK
Launch lead generation
“In the UK alone we reckon about 80 per cent of the leads matched up against the data supplied.” Aylin Can, IBS UK.
Client testimonial
“We started out last summer with three clear objectives: consolidate our web infrastructure, start sounding like a distribution and wholesale software company and use the web for lead generation.
“Look at our website today you’ll see we have a platform that appeals to a defined target group made rich with successful content marketing.
“With a great platform, solid positioning and fantastic content my marketing managers have been able to execute successfully at the local level with some neatly targeted execution and we can support them every step of the way with campaign data gathered from analytics.” Andy Bailey, CMO IBS
