A Personal Case Study

The Challenge: 

When the organization wanted to build its reputation as a technology leader, as opposed to a manufacturing company, they needed to showcase their internal expertise as well as how their products were on the forefront of innovation. This required a multi-layered approach to messaging, content development, and collateral, from high-level thought leadership pieces to product-specific sales collateral. 

Goals and Objectives: 

1. Develop foundational messaging that reflected leadership and organizational philosophies that would engage industry experts and potential customers alike. 
2. Develop a range of content for all phases of the sales funnel, aligned with marketing KPIs and Sales goals. 
3. Develop and deliver materials on an as-needed basis across formats and product lines. 
4. Deploy measurable content with set KPIs designed to meet specific objectives.

Strategy:

A “pillar” approach was used, with messaging for four central themes and two to three talking points for each theme. The pillars were designed to be distributed in several forms: internally, in talking points to leadership, the public relations team, and sales and product managers, and externally, via a white paper and a video series. From there, the external pieces could be divided, iterated and used in a variety of formats, including articles, blogs, emails, social media, webinars, landing pages, and more. 

While the initial investment would sit with the global marketing team, future product launches would be budgeted within product marketing. At the time, the company was experimenting with a customer insight initiative that gave us unique independent research to cite, which was incorporated into both the white papers and several infographics. Three distinct products initially used the thought leadership platform as part of their product launches or product update campaigns. Each of these products, Metasys BAS (significant product update), Verasys (Product launch), and Smart Connected Chillers (product launch), leveraged the same technological talking points to speak to how their capabilities allowed customers to accomplish more. For each of those products, unique “pillar” content was created for their marketing campaigns, including white papers, videos, webinars, and more. These product-specific pieces were iterated and disseminated in the same manner as the higher level thought leadership campaign. 

With this approach, our teams would be able to represent one coherent story recommending the company’s brand and broad expertise and be able to tell personalized stories to customers that focused on products that would best suit their needs. 

Outputs:

• Video Series
  • Industry Insights playlist
• White Paper
  • Building Efficiency Advancement Create a Foundation for Smart Connected Services
• Insights Articles
  • Cloud-Based Technologies and Solutions Enhance Management of Buildings and Portfolios
  • The Internet of Things is the Land of Opportunity
  • Intelligent Goals for Intelligent Cities
• Product White paper
  • BAS Delivers a New Kind of Smart
• Product videos
  • Smart Connected Chillers and the Technician
  • Smart Connected Chillers
  • Metasys BAS
  • The Worlds Smartest BAS gets Smarter
• Product landing pages
  • Connected Chillers
  • Metasys BAS
• Social Media posts (archived)
• Podcast (produced by communications team, see product landing pages)
• Webinars (see product landing pages)
• Case Studies (produced by product marketing team, see product landing pages)
• Infographics (see product landing pages)

Outcomes:

The strategy was so successful, that the company still uses the approach in developing marketing materials to this day. The white paper had the highest number of downloads in the year it was published, and the social pieces drove a record number of visitors to the site, where most visitors driven from an email or social post visited more than one page, such as crosslinked product pages or articles. The videos were used for the original successful thought leadership campaign, but also used in five product launches across three brands. The landing page approach that includes a mix of educational and product specific materials proved engaging for customers, who often had a long buying process with multiple levels of approvals — providing both industry trend information and product specific evidence for successful outcomes helped these customer advocates make purchasing decisions and allowed our sales teams to build trust-based relationships with new contacts.

My Role:

• Developed key messaging and strategy for thought leadership campaign
• Developed website and crosslinking strategy for company and product campaigns
• Created or managed the agency creation of all thought leadership campaign materials
• Collaborated with product marketing team members to identify key messaging and necessary tactics for product campaigns
• Developed project briefs with all key phrasing and topics
• Lead development of white papers, webinars, social media campaigns (paid and organic), and web pages for product campaigns for product stakeholders
• Assisted with public relations team efforts for product announcements and topical speaking opportunities
• Managed web, social and email reporting for product campaigns, in collaboration with product marketing leaders