The quick version 🏃
- Solverboard is an innovation management platform that helps enterprise organisations to find their best ideas and make them happen faster
- The company’s goal was to onboard ten new accounts. But as a pre-launch SaaS platform, it first needed to build an audience
- We co-created a report with industry thought leaders and distributed it using blogs, social media, ads, newsletters and email outreach
- In just six months, we generated 362 leads, doubled their website traffic and got responses from 37 of their 100 target accounts. The campaign is still running and has delivered 1,052 total since launch—and counting!
The long version 🤓
Anyone who’s launched a content strategy from scratch knows how hard it is. When you have next to no traffic, subscribers or followers, it’s really hard to build momentum.
That’s where Solverboard was when we started talking to them. They were a pre-launch SaaS platform that wanted to start building their audience.
Our KPI for this project was to generate just 10 leads. We ended up generating 362 new leads over six months from one piece of content. Since then, that piece of content has gone on to generate 1,052 leads (and counting!).
And when we say ‘leads’ we don’t mean any old email addresses. We’re talking genuine decision-makers. Senior innovation professionals at some of the world’s largest companies.
Put another way, we overshot our target by 3,520%. We also helped our client start conversations with buyers at 37 out of the 100 companies on their target accounts list.
So yeah, we’re pretty proud of this case study. 🥳
Keep reading to find out how to generate high-quality leads at scale no matter how new your business is. And how a small number of high-quality pieces of content can deliver big results. 💪
Literally every objective that it was possible to set you was surpassed.
The strategy
Solverboard wanted 10 new accounts on-boarded as part of their beta launch by Christmas 2019.
We started working with them at the start of October, giving us just three months to find those 10 beta users.
Organic SEO and social would take too long. Ads would be too expensive.
We decided that an inbound approach combined with targeted LinkedIn and email outreach was the way to go. No other approach would deliver the results they wanted with the time and budget available.
Luckily, Charlie and Aaron at Solverboard already had a list of 100 dream clients for us to target. Our next step was to learn more about the people on that target accounts list.
- Who were they?
- What were they interested in?
- How could we help them?
We conducted our own research using tools like SEMRush and BuzzSumo and cross-referenced what we found with Solverboard’s user-testing feedback.
This gave us multiple quant and qual perspectives on their buyers.
We knew that whatever we did needed to be original and distinctive. This was Solverboard’s first big content marketing campaign, so it needed to be memorable.
We were also aware that as a total newcomer in this field, Solverboard wasn’t yet a ‘thought leader’. So we needed to find a way of establishing some credibility.
After all, why would an experienced enterprise innovator take advice from a platform they’ve never heard of?
As briefs go, this was pretty tricky…
The big idea
As is often the case, the idea was staring us in the face the whole time.
It was right there in Solverboard’s user-testing feedback. It was right there in the conversations Solverboard had with customers while they were researching the product.
Enterprise innovators in different organisations were struggling with the same problems. These problems were already at the heart of Solverboard’s product strategy. So why not put them at the heart of its content strategy?
And rather than just dish out our own advice, why not co-create the report with well-respected innovation thought leaders, at the same time as showing how the platform could help?
We called it…
Innovation Blockers.
Alongside the report and landing page, we produced a bunch of supporting blogs, social posts, social ads, as well as the outreach copy for the InMail and email campaign.
We've got industry specialists sharing and discussing our work. Prospects are coming to us saying how impressed they are with the report.
The results
As of May 2020, six months after the Innovation Blockers report was published, that one report had generated:
- 362 leads
- Responses from 37 out of the 100 target account we engaged through our targeted ABM outreach
- 100% increase in traffic to the site
- New website leads per month up 109% in 6 months
The campaign is still running. Since launch, it’s generated a total of 1,052 leads for Solverboard.
The number of leads would be enough, but it’s the quality and seniority as well. I had the Innovation Director at a FTSE 100 company explaining how they can use the platform before they’ve even seen it! I’ve never known anything like it.
Onwards and upwards
Unsurprisingly, we’re still working with Solverboard.
In fact, we recently published Innovation Blockers #2, which generated the most new leads Solverboard has ever got a single month. 🤩
Every agency project is a collaboration and we can’t claim all the glory.
Solverboard have made an exceptional product. The founders, their team and the freelancers they work with are all committed to doing awesome work. They trusted us to deliver the results they needed. That’s the best kind of working relationship there is.
We learned a lot while working with Solverboard and we’re already applying those learnings to our other clients.
If you’d like to find out how we can do the same for you, drop us a line using the contact form below.
