by Rebecca Peterson | Jun 16, 2022 | Uncategorized
Overview
Legend Power Systems is a publicly-traded company with a technology solution that uniquely solves a 100 billion dollar problem in annual waste and risk for commercial buildings. Their intelligent technology sits at the center of the modern commercial building.
The Legend Power team began looking for a way to help their partners market, sell, and provide service to their clients most effectively. A new web portal would provide a unique opportunity in their market for partners to capitalize on the success of Legend’s technology solutions.
Challenges
Legend Power leadership began defining new processes and resources to best support their partners. The portal they envisioned would provide new and existing partners access to the latest training, marketing, and product resources. The portal would also need to facilitate an efficient and engaging experience.
Partner management software may have satisfied some aspects they desired, but it would lack customizable features and a fully-branded experience.
As with many new initiatives, technology was just one piece of the puzzle. The Legend Power team wanted to ensure their strategy and implementation processes would best facilitate success for their partners. They engaged SmarkLabs for guidance on defining goals, finding the best solution, and developing an ongoing strategy.
Solutions
SmarkLabs collaborated with Legend Power and assisted in the development of their partner program goals, strategy, and completion of their custom portal build over a three-month period.
First release highlights:
- User login and profile functionality with permission-based access to relevant resources.
- Organized content management system to populate and update resources
- Deal registration automation with connectivity to HubSpot
- Fully branded for Legend Power
- Custom lead generation app to grade power quality
Results
The adoption of this program by Legend Power’s channel partners was above 90% shortly after its launch.
The overall build was a successful collaboration that required Legend Power and Smarklabs teams to work closely through the organization of content, as many processes continued to be defined alongside the build.
This portal now serves as a key differentiator for prospective partners evaluating new products to resell, as it is a first of its kind in the industry.
Thanks to this collaborative partnership, Legend Power continues to invest in the development of additional portal features that enable the success of its partners.
by SmarkLabs | Aug 16, 2019 | Uncategorized
Customer Background
IngeniousIO is an innovative solutions leader in the AECO (Architecture Engineering Construction and Owner-Operated) space. Their data-driven platform enhances a company’s entire project lifecycle through the use of a cloud-based application. IngeniousIO’s platform elevates efficiency and reduces tech spend by effectively managing operations including business development, project execution, and more! Their goal is to eliminate internal and external fragmentation within the ten-trillion dollar AECO industry.
Challanges
1. Raising awareness of their platform.
They’ve invested thousands of dollars and many years to create a platform that brings value to their end customer. These resources would be wasted without raising considerable awareness of their solution.
2. Promote their offering in an accessible and interesting way.
Their end customer is not likely to read lengthy whitepapers or market research reports, so IngeniousIO must find an alternative way to present their solution. If done effectively, the true decision-makers should be aware that a solution exists in the market that solves persistent issues.
Journey
After doing considerable research on their end customer, IngeniousIO decided that the best medium to communicate their message would be through video. They considered different formats, including demo and customer-centric case studies. Ultimately, through conversations with SmarkLabs, they decided to produce a video that highlighted key product features in a humorous, approachable way.
Solution
SmarkLabs took the lead in writing a script that communicated IngeniousIO’s message, consistent with the goals stated above. Once finalized, SmarkLabs went to IngeniousIO’s office for an all-day shoot. Knowing that the video would be promoted across social media platforms, we collectively made sure that the run time would be less than 60 seconds. We shot multiple takes of each scene to ensure that we had the flexibility to choose the best option during the post-production process.
Implementation/Onboarding
IngeniousIO proved to be a valuable creative partner throughout the course of the project by providing the onscreen talent and offering helpful suggestions over the duration of the shoot. By limiting the shoot to a single day, we were able to respect the client’s time while also making sure we had their undivided attention, ensuring the end product shone brightly. Once completed, IngeniousIO charted a path for their video to be promoted primarily on YouTube through the use of paid advertising.
Results
IngeniousIO allocated roughly $200 a day for promotion on YouTube. Through July 15th, after four weeks of promotion, IngeniousIO has generated tremendous activity from their targeted demographic; they’ve garnered over 475,000 impressions and over 260,000 total views. But that’s not all! The total view rate of the video, meaning those who have watched the entire ad beginning to end, is an astonishing 54%. Since its launch, 41,000 construction professionals viewed the video in its entirety!
While views of the video are nice, ultimately IngeniousIO was hoping to raise their number of inbound leads generated. This month alone, they’ve garnered over 550 click-throughs which leads the viewer to a sign-up form on their website. At this rate, assuming industry standards apply, IngeniousIO has generated 90 new sales qualified leads this month!
Due to the success of this partnership, SmarkLabs and IngeniousIO plan on partnering together on digital and creative endeavors for the foreseeable future. Click here to learn more about IngeniousIO’s unique, value-driven offering.
by SmarkLabs | Mar 21, 2018 | Uncategorized
Through an integrated market research campaign, CodeScience connected with targeted prospects, delivered value and improved its positioning as a thought leader in leveraging the AppExchange.
The Challenge
CodeScience had marketing resources and budget to allocate for an initiative that would help the company to connect with key prospects while emphasizing and further establishing its positioning as a leading developer of Salesforce AppExchange products. SmarkLabs pitched a number of ideas for integrated, full-funnel campaigns. After review and a collaborative call, CodeScience and SmarkLabs decided to leverage a market research strategy to accomplish these goals.
The Process
By laying the right groundwork, this campaign fueled content and drove strategy for months to come. Here’s the framework for the campaign, piece by piece:
- Identify your persona and research targets. CodeScience uses an account-based marketing approach, emphasizing ideal-fit companies to work with, so we looked to target this demographic in the research: loosely, mid-size to large technology companies with at least one product on the AppExchange.
- Define your offer. We wanted to create content that would be valuable to both companies who have developed on the AppExchange before and those who have not, but might benefit from doing so. The sweet spot: A report on strategies for driving adoption and revenue through the AppExchange, with research on what works best.
- Determine your questions. What do you want to ask, why is that information valuable and how? We brought together key stakeholders to break findings into sections and reach consensus on the most valuable learnings, drafted a series of questions, and brought in a data expert to make changes geared toward extrapolating insights from collected data.
- Build your survey. There are several tools to do this; we used SurveyMonkey for ease of creation. The survey had an immediate question to disqualify any respondent not yet on the AppExchange, and required a work email to confirm respondents fit.
- Build your outreach and strategy. We compiled a targeted list based on account priorities, data on whether a company has an AppExchange presence. We also drafted a series of emails to go to this list until they completed the survey, scheduling six touches over the course of three weeks. An escalating incentive to solicit responses, which doubled if there was no response after the first touches, was also budgeted for and implemented.
- Collect and process the data. In the weeks the survey was live, we collected about 140 qualified responses from targeted respondents. Due to the highly defined nature of the group, responses were solicited through targeted, private emails only. The data expert helped shape responses into clear insights and takeaways.
- Create the report. We grouped and wrote through our key findings, publishing a PDF report within a month of completing response gathering and closing the survey. The report’s original iteration was downloadable behind a form on an optimized landing page.
- Tell the world. Our promotion strategy ran deep. The launch of the report coincided with Dreamforce ‘17, Salesforce’s (and the AppExchange’s) signature event. Leveraging a mix of direct sales outreach, sales development, and promotional marketing emails, we used the report as a foot in the door to generate meetings — with the angle that we just published research about how to succeed in the ecosystem, and would love to share the findings with them first. Other pieces included social-media and email-signature promotion, press release, a five-piece blog series breaking down the insights, a semi-custom direct mail play and social targeting to priority accounts, and a digitally optimized, interactive version of the report.
The Results
The market research campaign significantly impacted CodeScience’s marketing and sales outcomes, as well as the company itself. Here are some measures of success — some based on KPIs, others less numerical but still significant.
Quantitative
- 140 qualified responses (and Amazon gift cards sent in appreciation)
- 100+ form submissions to download the report
- 5 additional meetings booked at DF ‘17 to discuss the report
- 1000+ digital views of content (blog series, landing page, PDF and interactive report)
Qualitative
- Improved market positioning and boosted awareness
- Provided topic for DF ‘17 hosted panel and a reason for sales to helpfully reach out to prospects
- Launched a related podcast on the strength of findings and connections
by SmarkLabs | Mar 14, 2018 | Uncategorized
The Challenge
Advent Health Partners (Advent), a technology and services provider helping hospital organizations centralize and collect data for more efficiency, had a solution for an industry problem but needed more leads faster to capitalize on market conditions. In a crowded content marketing world, it was essential for the company to provide something truly of value to break through the noise.
The Solution
SmarkLabs evaluated Advent’s positioning, market and resources to recommend next steps that will help them achieve their goals. To do this, Advent had a valuable internal resource: its client services team. The team’s experience in helping clients solve problems could also be applied to prospects as a way to add value and establish its expertise and credibility.
Leveraging this expertise without disrupting client services called for a plan that was consistent and repeatable, to distill knowledge efficiently. To maximize internal investment, it also needed to be scalable. Hospitals face substantial resource and revenue challenges through the claims process, including combatting or receiving denials, responding with additional reviews and appeals. For Advent prospects, that pain is top of mind. Here’s how Advent and SmarkLabs set out to help hospitals solve that pain through a coordinated marketing and sales strategy.
- Blog content educated prospects of the problem with tips on solving it
- A free download offering examples of good and bad appeal letters, and a template for crafting your own captured leads and created interest
- A webinar series helping hospitals solve challenges increased awareness, captured leads and demonstrated expertise
- A free review of hospitals’ own appeal examples and a consultation with personal advice started the sales conversation
- Automated emails from sales reps revisited a consultation with interested leads who did not book meetings originally
Each piece of content had clear next steps and built toward a sales situation, nurturing prospects and creating new, well-informed opportunities. Pieces were added after initial successes to keep building a clear path and meet evolving lead-generation goals.
The Results
- Blogs focused on combating denials generated thousands of views and represent the top two most-visited posts.
- The marketing offers generated hundreds of submissions from current prospects and previously unknown leads.
- The consultation offer alone increased quarterly pipeline by 22%.
- The success of the webinar and campaign led to a monthly recurring webinar series educating providers on how to better manage common problems throughout the claims process. The series regularly generated 100+ registrants seeking assistance and expertise.
by SmarkLabs | Mar 11, 2018 | Uncategorized
New business for LTA was primarily referral driven by previous customers or their technology partners. In order to scale new business revenue, they needed an approach to identify new prospect opportunities directly. Without a brand name like Accenture, the direct outreaches were not effective despite increasing activity.
SmarkLabs worked with the LTA team on a new approach that leveraged their industry expertise to build trust with potential prospects. The approach required a monthly webcast series featuring a 30-minute Q&A session with LTA’s CEO that focused on industry-related topics. The webcast series was an opportunity to gain trust and credibility among new prospects and identify new projects with existing clients.
SmarkLabs designed a promotion strategy around the webcast series that involved three core channels; Email marketing, outbound sales emails, and social media.
200% increase in sales qualified leads
16% increase in total pipeline
Liberty Technology Advisors is a leading ERP and management consultant advisory firm. Expertise includes change management, process engineering, software implementation, vendor selection, and project management. LTA works closely with clients to ensure critical IT applications provide maximum business impact and alignment with organizational objectives.
