The Problem
A recently-acquired B2B enterprise software company was facing a turnaround situation. After little-to-no marketing efforts, the organization was ready to build awareness for their product and needed marketing activities that would drive long-term impact.
The Approach
We supported our client in developing a thought leadership research report that we knew would help them build PR, organic search performance, and their longer-term content marketing activities. The process included:
Building A Survey Guide: We first worked with our client to brainstorm key learnings they wanted from the study. By ideating on the types of findings they hoped for, or interesting trends they believed were happening in the market, we developed a survey guide to measure if, in fact, this was happening.
Sourcing Niche Respondents: We needed respondents that worked in our client’s extremely niche IT space. By leveraging our client’s robust contact database as well as using targeted social media outreach to industry groups, we were able to source individuals that met extremely unique respondent criteria.
Analyzing Data For Striking Findings: Knowing that our client’s end goal was to drive press, we reviewed the data for interesting or unexpected findings. Because journalists are more likely to cover a story that sheds new light on a category, it was key to slice and dice the data in ways that would let us extract novel ideas.
The Results
Once complete, our client experienced the following short- and long-term results:
- PR Hits: Within 1 week of publishing the report, our client received several industry-specific articles about the report as well as invitations to contribute articles.
- Inbound Linked Volume: Their inbound link volume grew by 40% within 3 months of publishing the report.
- Incremental Reports: Our client produced additional pitch-worthy reports by splitting the larger data sample and homing in on findings by key industry segments.
- Content Calendar: The original report served as a rich data source for subsequent eBooks, blog posts, and other content marketing materials.