Texas-based Intervoice is a world leader in using voice to automate customer services. With European offices in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, regional offices throughout Asia, South America, the Middle East and Africa it is a global company facing global communications challenges.
Intervoice’s solutions mix ranges from voice messaging to IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems to speech driven applications, with their sales channels covering the corporate enterprise market and mobile carriers – often via a network of resellers and partners. Customers include O2, Telefonica, Mastercard, Citibank and Vodafone.
Whilst online media are a crucial part of the overall communications strategy, search marketing is of particular interest to Intervoice, chiefly as a tool to drive traffic to its websites, but also as a means to gauge market movements and learn more about potential customers. It currently runs multiple campaigns via the Google and Overture search marketing systems.
These campaigns feed into other ongoing activities such as customer profiling and email marketing. Developing a sophisticated model of the buying and relationship lifecycles of its customers is a key marketing goal. This will be used to develop ever-more effective communications and services over the coming months.
Simon Edwards, director of international marketing at Intervoice, comments: “Our customer base is varied, and spread globally across many regions and cultures. Search marketing provides us with an ideal way to target individual geographic areas with specific messages.”
He goes on to explain that the complexity of having many horizontal product lines, and selling these to vertical market sectors, demands a multi-pronged approach.
“The successful sale of one of our high-value solutions involves effective communication to a complex decision making unit, delivering relevant and timely messages to each person within that unit over an extended sales cycle and over multiple communication touchpoints. Search marketing is the central element of an overall online strategy that can deliver on this need.”
Creativity online
Intervoice appointed Manchester-based Flame Digital to work with it on strategy and creative, and to manage the implementation of its online activity.
Flame Digital is a creative-led digital marketing agency, with a focus on ‘brand experience’ – which it says is key to gaining and retaining customers in today’s economy.
Dom Rodwell, creative director at Flame Digital, says “Interactive media are by definition experiential, and increasingly in the B2B space marketers are finding – just as in aggressive consumer markets – that their customers are becoming loyal to the quality of user experience provided to them by brands. We see that for companies such as Intervoice search marketing is a key starting point for initiating and channelling that user experience.”
He continues, “As buyers become more empowered and more time-constrained, sellers have to become all that more innovative and agile. The future of digital B2B marketing lies in smarter, more relevant packaging of content and services – delivered when and in the manner that is most appropriate and valued. Capturing and understanding audience is the starting point, and that’s what we’re trying to achieve here.”
Putting search at the centre
Although not all components of Intervoice’s long-term strategy are in place, the decision was taken to use search marketing from the start, to begin to capture leads and guide the development of new content and services. Over the course of 2005 more elements of an evolving strategy will be rolled out, and search marketing will remain a valuable component of the overall mix.
Current activity is focused on building traffic, and understanding the market through a combination of search marketing, email communications and specialised, issue-driven content. Tactical promotional campaigns involving closely co-ordinated on and offline media are also starting to play a large part in meeting various objectives.
Intervoice clearly has big ambitions for using digital media to power marketing activity. The company also sees it not only as a means of support to enable its partners and resellers to increase efficiencies, but also as a platform to create a seamless dialogue from lead generation to post-sales support.
“Our work with Intervoice is focused on moving them from being a company that uses the web effectively, to a company that has sophisticated relationship management and sales channel support capability,” says Rodwell of Flame Digital. “In doing this we hope to deliver significant cost savings and tangible results. It is key to us that all activity is held to account and measurable.”
“Good digital marketing is like all marketing, it doesn’t need mystifying and dressing up. It’s simply about creative solutions to business problems, and search is a vital driver,” concludes Edwards.
