Content Marketing Customer Stories
Whether you’re running an email campaign, posting to social media, or updating a blog, marketing initiatives need content to succeed—and when you don’t have the right content, it becomes exceptionally hard to deliver on your marketing plans.
Packet Design found this out first hand when the marketing team set out to scale their content marketing efforts and ramp up their case study collection. As a provider of network management solutions and route analytics for large network service providers like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T, Packet Design needed to provide compelling proof to an audience of highly intelligent, technically-minded prospects, but ran into roadblocks with limited time and resources. And because of the highly competitive environment in this industry, customers were typically reluctant to share what technologies they use to get a leg up—making it even more challenging to create the volume of customer reference materials that Packet Design needed to establish credibility.
Improving the prospect’s journey with customer stories
As SVP of Marketing at Packet Design, Steve Harriman was tasked with building greater awareness of the solution in the market, educating a technical audience on the solution’s benefits, and generating a consistent flow of leads for the sales team. Steve knew that having customer stories at the team’s disposal would help them tackle these goals more effectively across the prospect lifecycle.
So, Steve and his team at Packet Design deployed TechValidate in an effort to create content at scale that provides valuable data points on industry trends and validates specific benefits that their solution offers. The content would then enable Packet Design to enhance their reputation in the market, generate new leads, and improve the prospect’s conversion rate during each stage of the funnel.
Using TechValidate, what was previously a difficult and time-consuming effort to create case studies and other customer content has now become “automatic,” allowing employees to create large volumes of content on their own. From a single survey, Steve’s team has been able to generate 11 case studies, with dozens more available to publish.
Content that inspires new marketing initiatives and sales processes
With customer-sourced content at their fingertips, Packet Design’s marketing activities have significantly improved. At the top of the funnel, Steve’s team have been able to engage in new thought leadership activities. For example, they recently hosted a webinar on Network Operations, using the research with TechValidate to showcase key initiatives and priorities that Network Providers are focusing on in the coming year.
Steve has also found value in including TechValidate research on different web pages. “I get daily reports on who’s on the website and I see a lot of visitors on the specific webpages with TechValidate content,” says Steve.
By using customer sourced content during the early stages of the prospect lifecycle, Packet Design has been able to generate new leads and more clearly define how their solution delivers value for businesses.
TechValidate content has also played an integral role in their sales enablement efforts. With an abundant supply of in-depth client stories, sales reps can differentiate Packet Design and more effectively engage in conversations that resonate with prospects.
“Our sales team continually uses the TechFacts (statistics and quotes) and charts in our sales decks. The content helps tell specific stories of how our customers have been able to solve challenges with Packet Design, which can directly relate to the challenges that any given prospect is experiencing.”
Steve Harriman, SVP of Marketing, Packet Design
Maximizing responses for greater insight
Packet Design has been able to gather responses from four times as many individuals with TechValidate than from previous surveys. Steve largely attributes this improvement to the collaborative effort he’s had with TechValidate’s Customer Success team, where the “structure of the survey, length of the survey and the way it’s presented is optimized to maximize the response rate and elicit valuable responses.” With access to a larger pool of response data, Steve’s team has unprecedented access to internal feedback and content that’s available to publish.
As Steve looks forward, he’s excited about Packet Design’s engagement with TechValidate. His sales team has recently received access to the TechValidate research in Salesforce through an integration, making the content more accessible than ever. They are also turning their focus towards an Account Based Marketing approach, where the TechValidate content will play an integral role in generating demand across the key prospect segments they’ll be targeting.
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