In its second year, B2B Marketing’s Digital Superstars asked you to vote for the brands that excel in digital marketing.
We didn’t just want to hear about companies that have thousands of Twitter followers, a flashy mobile-optimised website, or personalised email campaigns. Instead, we wanted to find out about the B2B brands that have gone that one step further – and are reaping the benefits from experimenting with digital marketing.
We received a tonne of nominations, and it was a difficult task for our editorial team to whittle it down to just eight. After numerous judging sessions (and a few disagreements) here they are.
Congratulations to those who made the list. We hope they will inspire you to make your future digital marketing efforts great.
Software giant Adobe has used its impressive digital presence to build a strong c-suite community that now exists on- and offline.
The business engaged with marketing leaders through a thought leadership initiative: CMO.com. The website was designed as a content hub to help professionals successfully navigate the challenges digital marketing presents. The site brings together marketing knowledge from across the web in handy RSS feeds, as well as its own exclusives. The content ranges from in-depth analysis to snappy videos on a range of marketing topics, including emerging media and strategy.
In 2015, web visits from senior decision makers throughout Europe reached 400,000. Meanwhile, this year the site is set to publish 50 interviews with senior marketing figures and over 200 articles and features from industry experts
However, this isn’t the reason why Adobe has been crowned a 2016 Digital Superstar. The company’s ability to bring its online success, offline and build valuable long-term relationships through the campaign is where its stardom lies. This ‘community approach’ to digital marketing has lead to sales conversations at three times the rate of any channel.
Simon Morris, director of demand marketing EMEA at Adobe, explains: “The link between the CMO.com website, its social properties and our offline activities is very important to us. Throughout the last couple of years we have used the thought leadership values of CMO.com to underwrite panels and interviews at major events across Europe.
“Indeed, the marketing innovations track at this year’s Adobe Summit will not only be managed by CMO.com, but the CMO.com audience will provide a large number of both the delegates and the speakers for that track. It’s an exciting opportunity to turn the engagement we have online into deeper relationships for Adobe.”
Data protection specialists Bitglass highlighted the power of its own technology through a unique dark web experiment.
In 2015 the marketing team was set huge lead goals to help the sales department meet aggressive revenue growth targets for the year. They knew they had to do something completely different to ensure prospects were aware of its offering. After several late night brainstorming sessions they had their answer: ‘Where’s your data?’ campaign.
The idea behind the digital campaign was simple – to leverage Bitglass data tracking technology to reveal what happens to stolen identity data once it hits the black market.
Rich Campagna, VP of products and marketing at Bitglass, explains how the experiment worked: “We generated a spreadsheet with fake credit card numbers, names, and addresses, embedded Bitglass’ watermarking trackers, and put it out on the ‘dark web’ – on the same sites where criminals traffic in stolen identities.
“The results showed us the who, where, and when of stolen personal data. Nigerian and Russian crime syndicates got hold of the data and passed it among themselves. Thousands attempted to download the data. They were fascinating results that both the press and social media couldn’t get enough of.”
Bitglass compiled the results in an eye-catching report as well as an easily digestible video, promoted through a well-coordinated press outreach programme.
Campagna adds: “The highlight, however, was that it was literally impossible to write a piece about this project without writing about the Bitglass data tracking feature and how it was used to pull off this experiment.”
This eye-opening research saw significant returns: 100 unique articles were published and thousands of social shares. Without the experiment this sustainable press coverage would have cost this 40 person start-up around $1 million.
Software service company SDL ditched traditional marketing techniques and adopted digital tools to engage with a new generation of buyers. Using technology – not campaigns – to promote its product (the SDL Language Cloud) allowed the brand to be more user-centric.
SDL highlighted its product offering to mid-market and SMEs by launching an ‘Instant Quote Tool’. The portal allows users to get an immediate quote for a translation project from anywhere in the world for free. Integrated across all platforms, the tool aims to gives prospects a quick and easy way to see the company’s service in action.
Robert Gorby, senior director of product marketing at SDL’s Language Cloud, explains why the brand adopted this strategy: “We are engaging with a new generation of marketers who are not defined by their demographics, but by their ‘user-chooser’ frame of mind. This ‘user-chooser’ mindset is winning in businesses of all sizes versus the traditional centralised procurement structure and engaging digitally with them is mission critical. Our digital strategy is built on the three key pillars of ‘be found, be seen, be engaging’. Achieve all three and you win with the user-choosers”.
The tool has doubled their monthly instant quotes (from 13,000 to 26,000), while user registrations have reached two every working hour.
Financial software company Misys leveraged the latest digital tech to connect with internal and external stakeholders.
One great example of this was seen through its rebrand. The marketing team believes internal digital engagement does not just mean sending a company-wide email. The marketing team wanted to ‘show’ not ‘tell’ staff about its new brand values.
To do this, Misys adopted iBeacon technology to create an immersive experience-led activation campaign. Put simply: the business created an app that allowed iOS device users entering its offices to be led on a journey linked to these new values.
This is how it worked:
The activity aimed to create an army of Misys ambassadors by stimulating interest and capturing the hearts and minds of employees. This would make it easier for the workforce to articulate the new proposition to customers.
The results were fantastic: 1500 employees watched the brand story video, while 70 per cent said they felt confident about explaining the new brand.
Nowadays it’s pretty tough for brands to stand out on social media. Everyone is using it, it’s apparently free and a new platform is launching every month. It’s fine to accumulate likes or followers, but creating a community is a struggle. However, FedEx shows us all how it should be done.
The courier’s vast social presence focuses on inspiring customers and telling its brand story through visual content. The FedEx Instagram account is especially worth a follow. Overflowing with everything from dramatic photos of FedEx planes flying across idyllic skylines, to branded packages with puppies – you could waste hours scrolling through the feed. Yet, what’s impressive is that the company crowd source all these images, asking its audience to use the hashtag #YesToFedEx to contribute.
However, it’s not all subtle Instagram filters and quirky Pinterest boards, FedEx also uses its social media presence as a customer service tool. Forget call centres – they’re a thing of the past – if you want to get in touch with a business it’s much easier to tweet. But, for brands this means more complaints in the public eye. Many businesses still attempt to ignore negative customer feedback online, but FedEx addresses it head on. The organisation navigates this minefield perfectly, with a dedicated @FedExHelp page operating throughout business hours to help resolve any issues.
Consequently, the true success of the company’s social marketing is not underlined by its 230,000 Twitter followers or over a million Facebook likes, but the customers and employees that want to get actively involved.
Crowned a Digital Superstar for a second year running, we just couldn’t leave this B2B tech giant off this list because of its continued devotion to innovative digital marketing.
IBM uses digital marketing to target specific audience segments across its wide product portfolio. An outstanding example of this is its ‘IBM Bluemix’ campaign. The activity aimed to increase trial registrations to IBM’s hybrid cloud development platform, where developers can build and manage apps.
Reaching enterprise developers was no easy task, as the group is known to ignore traditional advertising and run ad blockers. As a result, the dedicated marketing team – dubbed the ‘Mixologists’ – created the first UK and Ireland ad campaign based on agile methodology. This meant the marketing activity focused on rapid iteration, testing and learnt from the successes and failures in real-time.
In order to remain nimble, the campaign was built around key events that were relevant to developers and influencers. One such event was the anticipated release of Star Wars in December 2015.
During the initial brain storming sessions, two unique and relevant themes to Star Wars emerged: robots and The Force. As a result, the team worked with lead developers to create a BB8 droid (made by Sphero) users could control with their mind – bringing the force to reality. Here’s how it worked:
Standard Life understands full well that the world of pensions is very dull for the majority of people. So, to get B2B customers ready for changes in the law surrounding employer pensions it chose to launch an online tool allowing businesses to purchase workplace pensions online (a first for the market).
To ensure the new product was a success Standard Life ditched its old school product centric marketing messages in order to create more human connections through its ‘Good to go’ campaign.
The activity saw the saving and investments company revamp its digital presence, with a particular focus on four areas:
1. Tone of voice
Historically, Standard Life discussed its products using technical language and financial jargon. The new website adopted a more conversational style, familiar to the language B2B clients use in their day-to-day lives.
2. Look and feel
The company moved away from its traditional monotonic corporate blue to a more visual and lively look. This was done by introducing a warmer colour palette and using photos of employers in the working environment, rather than abstract illustrations.
3. Spotlight on employees
Product-centric PDFs were exchanged for blogs written by employees that speak directly to the target audience.
4. Customer personas
B2B personas were developed to understand and engage with the needs of decision makers right through to administrators.
The new digital-first strategy broke all campaign targets. Standard Life secured 82,000 new SME customers (50,000 target) and 427 pensions schemes were secured directly online (100 target).
The famous consumer network provider has harnessed the power of digital marketing to change brand perceptions and allow it to enter the complex world of enterprise IT solutions.
Launching an enterprise division back in 2011, the brand put digital at the heart of its marketing strategy. The team overhauled the enterprise website to make it more user-friendly and responsive. Integrating Eloqua, the company was able to deliver more accurate targeting to its audience as well as a seamless customer experience and effective delivery. Over the last 12 months the division has supplied 282 qualified leads.
Paul Stevenson, head of enterprise marketing services at O2, says: “Our digital journey has been a huge challenge – the demands in terms of skills, technology and cultural change in particular. A couple of years ago we didn’t even know who was visiting our website – now, digital is the core of our marketing strategy. Everything comes from it and drives to it. And we’re seeing some fantastic returns as a result.”
However, it’s O2’s use of social media marketing to connect with B2B buyers that makes it a true Digital Superstar. The business doesn’t just share product messages, but focuses on creating interesting business and tech content. The content comprises of everything from interesting YouTube clips on the use of fingerprint technology, to blog posts about how your business can go paperless.
The team’s great work has lead to an 87 per cent increase in pipeline contributions from social media. On average social now generates 3600 clicks every month, while there has been a 77 per cent increase in blog views.
