Summary
In April this year Intuit launched its first cloud offering in the UK market with QuickBooks Online, an online accounting version of its popular QuickBooks accounting software.
To drive a successful launch of QuickBooks Online in to the UK, the campaign adopted a highly targeted and customer insight-driven approach. Upfront investment was pumped into gaining valuable customer insight and then integrating this across all touch points of the campaign.
Success was measured in terms of brand and product awareness, driving traffic to the website, conversions and ultimately – subscriptions to the service.
The campaign exceeded initial targets and expectations with Intuit set to make a positive ROI in approximately eight months of launch date.
About the company
Intuit is the developer of the QuickBooks brand of financial management software for small businesses.
Strategy – broader business issues the company is facing
With the rapidly-accelerating shift to online for core business applications, Intuit decided to launch
QuickBooks Online, a cloud-based financial management system.
The combination of introducing a highly anticipated new product into a competitive market and targeting a new audience made the launch of QuickBooks Online in the UK particularly challenging.
To overcome these challenges the campaign approach was centred on customer insight – ensuring the product addressed a need in the market and creating marketing material that resonated with the end user and as such accelerated adoption and created evangelists. To achieve a customer focused, fully integrated marketing campaign Intuit focused on targeting a specific audience; tech savvy and Mac using small businesses, and conducted extensive research into this market.
Intuit’s QuickBooks Online global product manager spent six months in the UK in the run up to launch, leading ‘Follow Me Home’ visits where employees follow customers to their places of work to observe them in their natural habitat managing a business. Intuit could then obtain invaluable insight – beyond what they might say via a phone call or survey method – and integrate this into the product offering and marketing efforts.
Objectives of the campaign
1. Increase brand awareness. Extensively use social media and PR to amplify awareness and consideration, positioning Intuit as a thought leader and drive engagement.
Measurement: achieve 30 media hits with an audience reach of 25 million, acquire 50 per cent additional followers on Twitter and increase Facebook fans and YouTube views.
2. Demand generation. Advertisements, banner ads and the use of Quick Response (QR) codes to demonstrate to the target market (tech savvy and Mac using small businesses) that Intuit works in the way they do, and ultimately drive traffic to the website. The campaign actually drove five times more traffic through QR than traditional vanity URLs.
3. Conversion rate. The campaign was geared to ensuring that the effort around demand generation led to increased customer conversion. Activity aimed to lower barriers to purchase by offering incentives such as a 60 day free trial. Measurement: Set percentage of all website traffic that enters the sign-up interview to complete and begin the 60 day trial of QuickBooks Online
The target audience and techniques used
The target market was the tech savvy small business owner and Mac user who is relatively new to business, typically running for one to two years, and who does not currently use any financial management software. Our researched showed these targets are more adept with cloud offerings are more likely to be on the move and time-poor. The campaign therefore adopted an ‘anytime’ and ‘creating time’, message appealing to the new smarter generation of tech savvy and Mac users.
Research into the Mac audience also revealed that they regard style more highly over substance, which was also reflected in all marketing materials, as demonstrated below.
Social media and PR was used to amplify awareness and consideration, positioning Intuit as a thought leader and to drive engagement. A survey was commissioned with YouGov providing insight into the appetite for cloud services amongst small business owners, a press release was issued and the Intuit blog (www.smallbizmatters.com) was used as platform to share information and create dialogue.
Timescales of the campaign
- Research and planning:
December 2009: ‘Follow me home’ programme commenced with Intuit conducting more
than 60 Follow Me Homes.
November 2010: Intuit launched an open beta version of the product inviting 300 customers, accountants and media to test the product to for a five month period.
- Marketing launch day: 5th April 2011 (media adverts placed, customers informed)
- PR launch day: 5th April 2011 (press release issued, website go-live)
- Follow up: Media engagement continued over the course of two weeks with blogs, product reviews and articles continuing to be featured. A webinar with accountants was held on 6th April to drive third party endorsement.
- Reporting and analysis: Weekly and monthly review of figures post launch.
Results
Two months after launch the campaign has achieved the following results:
1. Brand awareness
Sixty-one media hits with an audience reach of 60 million and coverage appearing in target publications including The Telegraph, The Independent, ZDNet and Accountancy Age. Reviews undertaken by leading Mac and IT press including PC Pro, Mac User, PC Adviser, Accountancy Age.
Social media efforts saw @IntuitUK increase its Twitter followers by 419 per cent to reach 5,459, Facebook Fans increased by 88 per cent and YouTube views increased by 277 per cent.
2. Demand generation
New sign ups in the first two weeks beat expectations by over 50 per cent, with solid momentum since.
3. Conversion rate
The conversation rate of visitors entering the start up interview within the first two months is nearly seven times the original goal.
Client testimonial
“Launching a new product is a huge deal for any brand, but having to launch a highly anticipated product against bigger rival players is always challenging. So to enable a successful ‘go to market’ for QuickBooks Online we had to make sure we were extremely focused on the target audience, completely committed to the customer insight we were delivering against and totally integrated across all touch points. With these set as the key pillars for the launch and the whole team (including agency partners) totally aligned we launched successfully, blowing our initial targets out of the water and creating a solid foundation to drive growth within the market. We now have our aim set on becoming the number one online financial management software provider in the UK and this model is being used to launch QuickBooks Online in other markets.”
Melanie Vala, Senior Marketing Manager UK, Global Small Business, Intuit UK
