Summary
With turbulent market conditions, we recognised the opportunity to raise the profile of SuccessFactors and promote its software as a catalyst for change. Challenged with reaching a target audience with a broad range of roles and behaviours, we recognised the need to develop some engaging content and then to position it in the most effective way. With tight budgets, this was never going to be easy.
In developing the campaign, we aimed to bring the content to life to ensure a positive experience with the SuccessFactors brand as well as ensuring the target audience gained an immediate feel for the way they could make a difference to their business. As a result of providing an interactive tool in the online environment it ensured we could achieve the desired impact and engagement with the visitor.
The phenomenal success of the campaign to date – interactions, visits, downloads, business pipeline – is testimony to the power of developing compelling content but also demonstrates the power of interactive media and the internet for distribution.
The client
SuccessFactors, based in San Francisco, is a software company focused on enabling organisations to align strategy with objectives & manage people performance to ensure execution & results. SuccessFactors’ software helps to bring the business strategy to life by focusing employees on the right task and equipping them with the right tools and information – so all their employees are on the same page and all their efforts are 100 per cent focused on executing the business strategy successfully.
Strategy
With low brand awareness, the strategy for SuccessFactors was to create dialogue and awareness of some fundamental changes that can be made, with the technology available today, enabling HR to play a more strategic role working with their business leaders to manage their workforces better, improve alignment, communication, execution and people performance. Thereby improving business results.
Through the generation of research based-content, the campaign focus was to raise brand awareness and generate business opportunities. The campaign theme focused on identifying who would be the winners and losers in the ‘Next Economy’ as a result of the challenges presented by the turbulent economic conditions.
Objectives of the campaign
Generate at least 10 business opportunities in the EMEA region.
The target audience
- An executive audience, within lines of business eg. operations directors, board level, etc in organisations of 3,000 employees or more, that HR provide support.
Media or channels used
Critical to the brief, was to have a highly effective message for a complex proposition that would enable the delivery of provocative but informative content to the target audience.
To achieve this we developed the ‘What next’ campaign theme designed to be direct, be simple, and create curiosity. In taking this direct approach, we wanted the audience to respond positively by posing a question not only from a campaign perspective but also from a business perspective.
‘What next’ provided a direct link to the next economy which was at the heart of the content for the campaign.
Content
At the heart of the campaign, were two pieces of content: primary research and a white paper. The primary research which was conducted with senior decision makers at 450 organisations in 10 countries, to understand how enterprise-sized organisations were coping with issues such as managing the execution of their strategy and how they align and interact with their employees, etc.
As a result, the research results provided some compelling results, for example:
- 83 per cent of organisations don’t know all of their top performing employees and are unable to develop them for future roles.
- 80 per cent of organisations feel they are not communicating their corporate strategy to their employees very well.
Secondary, a whitepaper was authored off the back of the research to articulate the effect of the results in the real world through the eyes of business execution specialists. It aimed to identify how businesses could use the results to improve the way they aligned their business strategy through better collaboration, improved processes and achieve focused productivity across the business.
Engaging the target audience
We recognised that we needed to deliver more than just another whitepaper in order to give the campaign a point of differentiation and create intrigue. To achieve this, we gave them the opportunity to try the research for themselves via a ‘lite’ version of the research in the form of an interactive tool helping the visitor to benchmark themselves against the original research providing the visitor with a soft engagement in the sales process while ensuring they retained control. Their results from the ‘lite’ research were presented online giving them an instant evaluation of what they are doing well and highlighting the areas where they could make improvements before they had the option to download the full research document and the whitepaper. Through the campaign, the ‘lite’ interactive tool was engaged by a further 182 organisations helping to grow the initial research sample by 42 per cent.
To engage the audience and drive traffic to the campaign website we used a variety of indirect and direct digital techniques to not only optimise the marketing budget but to exploit known behavioural patterns of the target audience, we focused on search marketing to drive traffic to campaign website. With the increasing interest in ‘business execution’ and related terms we identified content seeding as one of the best methods to engage with the right audience online and having a positive impact on brand awareness. This was supplemented with corporate banner advertising, social media and PR programmes to raise awareness of the brand and provide the opportunity to join the debate.
For the direct approach, we used HTML tools (direct and third party), DM in selected countries webinars, podcasts and executive round table events. With the ubiquitous nature of the internet, the campaign reached 76 countries during the first two months. The content seeding activity delivered phenomenal brand and campaign awareness with number one position being achieved for several key campaign related search terms being achieved in the first three weeks of the campaign.
Timescales of the campaign
The campaign started in the UK on March 21st 2011 and has subsequently, been rolled out in 10 countries across the EMEA region and into the Americas and Asia/Pac regions.
Results (at June 8th)
A business pipeline with second stage qualification of £946,000 has been generated to date
- 541 engagements on the campaign website to take the interactive research test or to download the whitepaper.
- 451 downloads of the whitepaper.
- 1,918 unique visitors to the campaign website with 28.2 per cent conversion rate.
- The campaign content reached 76 countries.
- 41 per cent additional research data gathered as part of the interactive test.
- 28 pieces of global PR coverage across all channels.
Client testimonial
We are delighted with the quality of the content within the campaign and the impact it has achieved with the target audience. It has not only resonated across different countries but with all sizes of organisation; small, medium and large enterprise. The talented team behind this campaign totally shared and represented our core values throughout the process, and successfully aligned and executed a well thought out, innovative marketing campaign, where ultimately the results delivered speak volumes. Sarah Lloyd Parry, marketing manager UK&I, SuccessFactors
