ESET, a global internet security firm, provides endpoint and mobile security along with encryption and two-factor authentication for customers across industry. Tens of thousands of businesses use ESET’s security solutions to detect and prevent viruses and other malware on any device quickly, effectively and without taking up system resources.
Prior to using TechValidate, ESET North America understood their key marketing messaging, but reported that all too often, the voice of their company came across as highly crafted, a little bit impersonal, and extremely technical.
“We work hard to produce a variety of engaging real-world content to help us move from a very agnostic and technical monologue with our market, to a more customer-aligned and immediately relevant dialog. TechValidate delivered a new way of thinking that has made a real difference in how we speak with our market. Today, we use TechValidate to provide relevant content and contextual support for our channel partners, our public relations and media outreach team, and our social platforms. It’s good value, effective and on point.”
-Darren Stordahl, VP of Marketing
Before working with TechValidate, ESET’s process for creating case studies was time-consuming and expensive. Each case study required approximately 35 working hours of solicitation, research, writing, editing, approvals and formatting. Working to produce an estimated 40 case studies per year required 1,400 hours of work from a senior copywriter. According to current market information, a contract copywriter would charge approximately $70 per hour, and the only way to scale performance is to add people. ESET purchased TechValidate to create content faster and to increase the volume of market-aligned, relevant content available for their channel partners and sales teams.
Over the last two years, ESET has run 10 TechValidate outreach projects and collected nearly 4,000 responses from their customers, providing them an arsenal of over 300 content assets to use in a multitude of ways. They have used customer evidence on their vertical specific product pages, as sales collateral, integrated into email marketing campaigns, leveraged across social media channels, and included as part of their trade show displays.
“One of the really useful things about incorporating TechValidate data into our ongoing content refresh efforts is our ability to share our customers’ ROI from an ESET implementation. For example, according to our finance customers, 82% of them showed ROI within six months.”
-Robin Dishon, Marketing Copywriter
In addition to publishing ROI metrics, Kristie Allison, ESET’s Content Marketing Manager, has published a wide array of other content, including customer testimonials, case studies, and competitive differentiation. For example, proof of competitive displacement rationale—understanding why customers switch to ESET—has been critical for supporting their sales efforts in a highly competitive market.
Source: http://www.eset.com/us/symantec/
“TechValidate has helped illustrate our advantage through competitive analysis. On many of the surveys, we’ve included questions related to our competitors and why our customers switched to ESET from those competitor products. It helps our channel partners have informed and highly targeted conversations.”
-Kristie Allison, Content Marketing Manager
Using TechValidate to gather customer testimonials, case studies, and proof of ROI has paid off for ESET. Stordahl considers TechValidate an important partner and an integral part of his team’s marketing strategy and plans to continue to use the software as part of an ongoing customer engagement program.
