Crafting a rich, diverse marketing strategy takes a little bit of art, a little bit of science, and a whole lot of calculated trial and error. For a bit of a head start, it helps to have case study examples to copy!
Now more than ever, technology is being used to craft the B2B customer journey—yet humans still make the purchase decisions.
Keeping the sales pipeline simple, automated, and human-focused is the new frontier. The key is to find a way to make it a seamless experience that’s innovative and engaging to help increase traffic and quality leads.
Time and again, the most successful B2B companies find a way to implement core marketing strategy basics, integrate them seamlessly, and build long-lasting connections with customers while demonstrating value and expertise combined with a little interactive fun.
To get the lowdown on proven ideas and ways to add more creativity to a current marketing strategy, here are three case study examples to copy, right now.
1. A New Twist on an Established Favorite: The Blog
Blogs are already a proven way to reach potential customers, so it takes legit innovation to make sure things stay fresh and engaging for customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey.
When it comes to five-star blogging, one of the best case study examples to copy is CA Technologies.
Uniqueness Factor: The CA Technologies blog, Rewrite, is powered by custom content from Wired Magazine and Ars Technica. It pulls a mix of content crafted by CA Technologies and these key collaboration partners. A unique partnership with a knowledgeable, credible, trustworthy external source that’s also an industry leader in technology news offers a big “bump” of legitimacy for CA Technologies, and drives more online traffic from diverse sources. Content is also customized to fit exactly what their target audience is searching for, while helping build brand recognition through a third party.
Tech Win: It’s easy to navigate the site and filter information using four key categories: Create, Grow, Protect, Lead. The site uses big, rich imagery laid out like a digital magazine, offering an extra splash of credibility, pizazz, and easy readability.
Why They Get a Gold Star: The CA Technologies strategy has turned them into a content powerhouse that caters to diverse client needs in a refined way. The content on Rewrite is well researched and well written while being geared toward timely topics for potential leads. The blog also offers a variety of content styles—short form, in-depth, infographic, slideshow, and video, ensuring that they appeal to all types of buyer personas and content consumers.
2. Use Video Strategically to Grow Market Share and Build Connection
As video quickly becomes a more mainstream marketing tool for all brands, clear, strategic, and useful content that’s geared to customer education is even more essential. Not only do short, informative videos force marketing teams to keep messaging simple, but B2B organizations are able to break down big data into bite-size, memorable portions with a punch. This is exactly what Cisco focused on in their video marketing strategy.
Global data center traffic will grow from 3.4 zettabytes in 2014 to 10.4 zettabytes by 2019. Click on link in bio to learn more about other forecasted data center and cloud trends. #CiscoGCI
Uniqueness Factor: Cisco’s annual forecast (the Cisco Global Index) about the growth of IP traffic is a go-to reference resource for industry analysts, customers, and even competitors. They found a way to give the heavy report a lighter touch by using short, fun videos that they shared through social media channels like Instagram. This strategy played to their audience’s short attention span and upped the fun factor.
Tech Win: Cisco already has a well-managed, solid platform to manage key content in the day to day (another reason to organize, track, and expand marketing efforts strategically), so they were able to play with new channels and marketing strategies. Videos featured simple stats that were delivered through quick animations and catchy music. They were fast, fun, and shareable—and people loved them. In a way, the videos humanized the data.
Why They Get a Gold Star: By calling on creativity to repurpose data while making it simple to consume and share, Cisco kickstarted an increase in the impressions of the report, from 7.7 million to 8.4 million.
3. Get Interactive to Stay Top of Mind
Providing standalone interactive tools that offer long-term value without constant upkeep is the holy grail of marketing content: low maintenance for marketing teams and big, consistent value for clients. Interactive elements also provide a reason for clients to connect with the brand—no matter what point they’re at on the buyer’s journey—while building brand trust a little at a time. Allstate capitalized on this interactive marketing strategy and delivered on their tagline, making people feel like they were in good hands through useful content.
Uniqueness Factor: The marketing team provided daily content that covered a range of topics to easily connect with the human part of business ownership. By providing driving safety tips, money-saving strategies, and tons of how-to content about all aspects of life, they offered answers and provided real value, every day.
Tech Win: Leveraging two platforms to maximize content sharing and outreach, Allstate answered the top-of-mind questions for brands and created a very diverse marketing strategy driven by technology. The marketing team created video, quizzes, articles, slideshows, GIFs, and infographics to up engagement and make it easy for all types of buyer personas to find key information in a way that resonated.
Why They Get a Gold Star: Allstate answered questions, addressed challenges common for businesses, and created interactive content to help them educate themselves, while slowly building brand recognition through interactive value-add.
Reference one of these three case study examples to freshen up your marketing strategy for 2016.