Savvy Marketing Content Garners 140% Increase in Leads for Automation Software Company
Act-On Takes Action for New Leads
Act-On, a leading marketing automation company, provides a cloud-based integrated marketing automation platform to enable businesses to effectively acquire customers, build loyalty and expand their relationships with customers. However, in the competitive automation software market it’s one thing to have a phenomenal product, and quite another to supply a constant flow of leads needed to fill up the sales funnel and support an ever-growing sales team.
While Act-On was getting fantastic feedback from their current customers, they needed to scale by filling up their sales funnel with Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL). Wanting to scale their demand generation program by reaching out to a diverse audience of digital marketers, Act-On turned to Digital Sparx Marketing to execute a demand generation program to generate new MQLs through content.
The Problem
As is consistent with any company on a growth curve, the pressure for an effective demand generation program for sales leads is immense, which means using various tactics to create a positive customer experience and generate a consistent flow of new, qualified leads.
A few of the challenges the leadership of Act-On Software faced were:
- Generating a high volume of targeted leads every month
- Attracting qualified leads at a cost-efficient CPL model
- Ensuring a broad audience engagement with the brand
- Amplifying brand awareness
The Solution
Content Targets Stakeholders
One of the pillars of a successful demand generation program is to create educational content that aims to engage prospects and turn them into quality Marketing Qualified Leads. Digital Sparx Marketing decided to create a demand generation program with monthly webinars and ebooks.
Throughout the webinar series, Digital Sparx Marketing created an engaging user experience using the webinar. This ensures that leads at both the specialist and managerial level (researcher persona) and VP and C-Suite level (decision maker persona) are captured as various audiences prefer different content types. Since purchasing software often involves 4-5 stakeholders from various departments, covering all bases by targeting a broad range of personas is an effective strategy.
With a great amount of marketing knowledge to share, Digital Sparx Marketing tapped into internal thought leaders at Act-On to present at the webinar along with leading industry experts to co-present at the webinar. Having produced many ebooks and hundreds of webinars, Digital Sparx Marketing collaborated with Act-On to forecast and deliver thousands of qualified leads each month with the objective of filling up Act-On’s sales funnel.
Results
Lead Generation Exceeds Forecast by 140%
Providing educational content targeting two personas created an effective demand generation program for Act-On, generating valuable MQLs from two market segments. Overall, Digital Sparx Marketing exceeded Act-On’s expectations for the volume of leads generated by a massive 140%. This number was far beyond the guaranteed leads promised.
Brand Amplification through Social Media
Demand generation through Social Media engagement was part of the goal to create amplification and awareness of the brand message. This was successfully achieved by creating contests, giveaways, custom hashtags and other avenues to drive the buzz. On average, over 20% of total attendees live-tweeted, left comments and mentioned the webinar series on Social Media. The Social Media amplification created a ripple effect, raising the company’s brand awareness.
Social Media Tweets
Act-On’s demand generation program proved to be a resounding success. Active engagement from content marketing from the webinar series and the ebook as well as the residual effects of Social Media amplification generated MQLs for Act-On, filling up the sales funnel to help the sales team close more deals. By creating educational content to capture leads from two audiences, Digital Sparx Marketing helped the growing software company achieve their goals.
Stay in the Loop! Learn more.
Keep in touch and stay up to date with all things digital marketing! We frequently publish thought-provoking articles, webinars ebooks and more.