The Problem
SoftwareOne had a perception problem. It was predominantly seen by its customers and prospects as merely a reseller of legacy software-licenses. This couldn’t have been further from the truth with the company boasting a wide range of solutions and services designed to optimise businesses cloud costs and usage.
As a result, SoftwareOne’s sales team were suffering. They were struggling to sell these financially lucrative solutions and missing their targets. Champion was tasked with creating a campaign that would enhance customers and prospect’s perceptions of SoftwareOne and help to increase demand in its services as a result
Objectives
- Educate existing and potential customers about Software One’s solutions
- Enhance demand levels to make it easier for the business development team to close more deals
Strategy
Champion recommended a strategy that would:
- Increase SoftwareOne’s editorial share of voice above its key competitors in relevant third party earned media environments, allowing SoftwareOne to elevate its story beyond its software licensing roots.
- Engage SoftwareOne’s decision makers on a global scale with messaging that would support SoftwareOne’s new commercial objectives.
- Generate brand authority by creating a bank of content that SoftwareOne could cascade through earned, owned, and shared for months to come.
- Provide SoftwareOne’s business development teams around the world with impactful assets that they could leverage to open conversations, nurture prospects and close deals for all SoftwareOne solutions.
Method
Throughout 2022, a looming recession was the central theme dominating the UK’s editorial agenda, particularly the cost-of-living crisis, survival of businesses, and mass companywide layoffs. These are all themes that directly impacted SoftwareOne’s clients and prospects, and therefore we could capitalise on them by providing journalists with provocative and immediate content from SoftwareOne.
Given the continued decline of the global economy into 2023, we decided to deploy a data driven campaign that focused the impact of the economic crash on IT investment and budgets and how CIOs are adapting.
From analysing the data, we uncovered:
- Despite the economic crisis, 93% of CIOs expecting IT budgets to increase in 2023.
- However, 83% say they are under pressure to make their budgets stretch further than ever before.
- 72% of CIOs admit they are behind in their digital transformation because of this technical debt.
- 80% plan to increase their investment in FinOps to improved transparency and control of cloud costs.
Using these data points, we were able to create our ‘2023 CIO Pulse Check’ news narrative, which highlighted the problem of cloud financial management, where CIOs within organisations are at risk of adding to their mountain of IT debt and not meeting boardroom expectations despite the increased IT investment. We used this narrative as a trojan horse to carry SoftwareOne’s messaging around its FinOps and ITAM platform to its desired target audience.
In order to deliver our narrative and messaging, we created a media relations campaign that was sold into the tier-1 media outlets we know SoftwareOne’s desired target audience would be reading, and a report that was gated for lead capture on SoftwareOne’s website.
Outcome
- 54 pieces of coverage and counting achieved in tier-1 publications, reaching an audience of over 10 million.
- Interviews across tier 1 IT outlets, such as Tech Target and Computer Weekly.
- Champion’s coverage was directly linked to the sales team getting MQLs with 72 new prospects in the first month of the campaign going live.
- LinkedIn engagement was increased 45% thanks to our CIO Pulse Check survey.
Testimonial
As a result of Champion’s activity, we have achieved significant coverage as well as a number of downloads of the report. More importantly, this has translated into bottom line impact with 72 MQL’s in the first month of the campaign hitting. The sales team has reported increased sales velocity and the new business opportunities cover the breadth of our portfolio.
More case studies
Aptum
It’s not always sunny in the cloud – The Aptum Cloud Impact Study
The Aptum Technologies brand was created in 2019 after its acquisition by investment firm Digital Colony. Whilst the company had a strong 20-year heritage managing data centre and hosting solutions, there was a pressing need to drive awareness of the firm’s new brand position as a hybrid cloud managed service provider (MSP).
See case study
Go Instore
Rescuing retail
Go Instore recreates personalised in-store shopping experiences for consumers shopping online, through range of live-video solutions. Demand for Go Instore’s services were accelerated by the pandemic in March 2020, as the world went into lockdown and shops were forced to close their doors.
See case study
MobileIron
Trouble at the top
MobileIron (acquired by Ivanti), is a global enterprise security and mobility company based in the US. In February 2020, MobileIron came to Champion with a problem. It was struggling to stand out amongst its desired target audience of Enterprise C-Suite decision makers.
See case study
Infinity
Increasing leads and conversion rates for data analytics SaaS provider
Infinity came to Champion with a problem. It was struggling to sustain growth following international expansion and acquisitions: ‘We need more leads, and we want more of them to convert.’
See case study
GreyOrange
Increasing lead conversions for AI & Robotics Solutions Provider
GreyOrange had a conversion problem. Its prospects were scared to take the plunge and invest in its autonomous fulfilment robots.
See case study
Logicalis
Increasing lead conversion
Logicalis had a trust problem. It was spending excessive amounts of time and money on lead and demand generation activity that was resonating with IT and Line of Business (LOB) decision-makers.
See case study
