Contributed by BTW Content Team
Tag: All
Contributed by BTW Content Team
Turning Unknown Developers Into Excited Advocates For Computer Vision
Overview
alwaysAI is an ambitious software startup located in Solana Beach, CA. They’ve been developing a proprietary, deep-learning computer vision system that they market to other software developers looking to add computer vision functionality into their products.
The product developed by the tech startup was rock solid. The difficulty was they didn’t have a system for marketing their new technology.
They knew they had to get the product into developers’ hands to start collecting feedback and building interest, but they didn’t know where to begin.
They were running up against a wall.
alwaysAI was certain developers would be excited to put the product through its paces once they got a hold of it, but they were too busy developing the product to manage large-scale outreach.
They needed help. They needed results quickly.
Challenge
When you have your nose to the grindstone, churning out code day in and day out you don’t get the chance to do much else. That was the position alwaysAI found themselves in.
Because they didn’t have the time to engage with their target markets, they were operating mostly on guesswork. They thought they understood who their customers were, but they had no way to verify their assumptions.
As part of our initial research, we interviewed developers and executives from around the industry to develop accurate personas. We quickly learned that many of alwaysAI’s assumptions about their target market were not fully correct.
The company also had very little in the way of basic marketing information. Further compounding their problems, they had no real measures for judging the success or failure of a marketing campaign, besides vanity metrics like website sessions. That wasn’t granular enough to tell them if they were really making headway with the developers they needed to reach. In a very real sense, they were flying blind.
Solution
We realized early on that our strategy would have to work around the fact that assets didn’t exist. We could create those as we went, but the immediate push had to be to introduce the brand and build general awareness. And we needed to get people excited about the product.
We decided on a longer-term strategy that focused on the assets we did have — the company’s vision for their future and for the platform itself. We would build a campaign with short term tactics serving as kindling to support the longer-term strategy of building organic interest through deep content development.
Our blueprint process persona research told us that our target developers preferred to vet products for themselves. They didn’t trust marketing messages on their own. They needed to see the product in action. They needed to understand how it worked, how it would integrate with their software, and what its capabilities were.
We decided that the best way to reach a target that required such a deep exploration of the product was to create content. A lot of content. And specifically, video content. Video allowed us to present in-depth product information in a visual format that made it easier for developers to appreciate the product’s benefits.
We made product demos, real-world use cases, tutorials, technical descriptions, and more. We translated the tutorials into illustrated, step-by-step product guides. We wrote about the product extensively.
We knew that lead generation with these leery developers would only work if we could build a significant amount of trust in alwaysAI and their platform. So we made certain developers had no shortage of informative collateral to whet their appetites.
In publishing this content, we eschewed standard social media sites because our research dictated the target market didn’t put much stock in those platforms. Instead, we focused on specialized platforms that cater to developers like Stack Overflow and GitHub, and viable developer communities like those found on Medium.
As we rolled out our content strategy we were simultaneously building all of the other assets we needed to properly convert developers when the time came, including a knowledge base, a thorough pricing page, and backend automation.
It was an all-out, high-quality content blitz intended to cultivate fertile ground for the upcoming beta. And it worked.
2,021%
2,021% Increase in Traffic in 10 Months
20k
20k Average Website Sessions per Month
3,532
3,532 Beta Users Signed Up
Results
Through our efforts, we helped alwaysAI zero in on the developers most likely to be early adopters for the software. We listened to what they wanted and created a massive content campaign to get them informed and excited about the product.
In the end, it all came down to their beta release. They needed a reservoir of primed developers that knew what the software could do for them and were ready to start experimenting with it.
The day came and alwaysAI reported initial installs far in excess of their targets. As the beta went on, it became abundantly clear that the marketing campaign had been a success. People were downloading the software and using it in their prototypes. They were talking about it on developer sites. And most importantly, they were loving the product.
AlwaysAI was thrilled with the results. Their product is starting to enjoy widespread acceptance among developers interested in deep learning computer vision technologies and they credit our campaign with laying the groundwork for their success.
We managed to discern the right market, target them with the content they wanted, and transform them into an avid user base. Just as alwaysAI brings vision to objects that were previously blind, our campaign opened the eyes of developers around the world to the company’s potential.
This is a classic example of having the right product at the right time. We simply made certain the right people knew what it could do for them.
Contributed by BTW Content Team
Fostering Growth for San Diego’s Leading Private School
“[They] had great ideas for different content pieces to target each group, and I think more than anything, it permitted us to just target a group instead of trying to be everything to everybody. It focused us and was a change from the blanket approach we had taken in the past.” – Dawn Saunders, Dir. of Marketing at Santa Fe Christian School
Overview
Santa Fe Christian Schools (SFC), a private Christian school in San Diego, CA, thrives on its mission to prepare global leaders while making a difference in the world for Christ.
Believing that teaching is their calling, each faculty member is committed to guiding individual students to discover new interests, develop and utilize their talents, and deepen their faith in the process.
A small school with significant opportunities allows for countless choices–as an Upper School student is digging into a college-level math class, they may also be performing in the school musical while playing a varsity sport.
SFC stands apart as a pillar in the Christian community in San Diego through their commitment to providing every opportunity for students to grow their Christian faith through Bible study, chapel, small groups, spiritual retreats, community service, and mission trips.
Challenge
SFC knew they needed to invest in content to attract prospective families to the advantages of private Christian education, nurture them with the school’s mission and values, and evangelize their current families.
With tuition ranging from close to $14,000 to over $21,000 annually, families need to be sure their children will have the absolute best access to a quality faith-based education experience possible.
SFC has a small team of dedicated marketing professionals who, like most businesses, wear many hats in their day-to-day. Said Dawn Saunders, SFC Director of Marketing Communications, “I tried to do inbound myself and realized that I was so short-handed. There’s no way that I could do what my brain wanted to do with the resources we had. No matter what I did, even if I hired another inbound professional, we weren’t going to be able to keep up with the content that I wanted to produce.”
Goals and Objectives
We focused on the school’s two most lucrative personas, kindergarten and middle school families. Santa Fe Christian Schools wanted to achieve the following through inbound content marketing efforts:
- Increase in tours booked for kindergarten parents
- Increase in tours booked for families of children entering middle school
- A mechanism to engage and retain current parents
Solution
Our strategy team set out to conduct extensive persona research through interviews with current and prospective SFC families to learn about their challenges before SFC, goals for their children’s education, preferred media consumption methods, and research habits.
We created a comprehensive, ungated pillar page to convince curious parents that there is an alternative to public schooling that, through smaller class sizes, increased personalized learning opportunities, etc., would set their children apart.
For families to learn more about the school and vice versa, we constructed a “Kickoff Questionnaire” that further educates a lead on what specifically SFC can offer, and allows SFC to gain valuable insights into the leads that they can later use to grow the relationship with a family.
With the key content, lead generation and automation processes in place, the only goal left to address was family retention.
We developed a weekly podcast to keep current SFC parents engaged. These 20-30 minute episodes dive into what makes SFC a special place, reaffirming their investment with each episode download.
40%
40% average MoM increase in traffic
98%
Acquired 98% of the original MQL goal
77%
Converted 77% of MQLs to SQLs
Results
Initial Goals
Our team surveyed past website data to project campaign performance over a 3-6 month time span as follows:
- Goal #1 – Website Visits – Increase average month-over-month website traffic by 30%.
- Goal #2 – Marketing-Qualified Leads – Convert 2.5% of visitors into marketing-qualified leads (MQLs), equaling a total of 156 MQLs.
- Goal #3 – Sales-Qualified Leads Conversion Rate – Nurture 30% of marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) into sales-qualified leads (SQLs).
- Goal #4 – Sales-Qualified Leads – Connect approximately 47 sales-qualified parents (SQLs) with an admissions officer for an appointment.
118
118 meetings booked with sales
140%
140% increase over original SQL goal
Contributed by BTW Content Team
SellerChamp allows you to list, manage and automate your ecommerce listing on some of the worlds largest selling channels.
“Behind the Work’s deep understanding and specialization in PPC ads enable them to ask the right questions and do this for us. Their help goes beyond PPC as they provided really helpful advice—tips on what we should be doing to grow our customer base. I couldn’t be happier with the outcome.” – Nizar Noorani, Founder and CEO, SellerChamp
The Opportunity
SellerChamp is a multi-channel listing and inventory management SaaS platform. Industry outsiders had trouble grasping the subtleties of the company’s key differentiators, and five different ad agencies had failed to fully understand the product and resolve the problem. Read our SaaS case study below to find out more.
SellerChamp needed a solution that would build, optimize, and scale their pay-per-click (PPC) ads so it could increase its spend by 10x over the following six to eight months. They turned to Behind the Work to get the job done.
Our Approach
A complicated product like SellerChamp requires a certain amount of insight and industry knowledge to produce tangible results. Understanding the small things that make a big difference (e.g., the call-to-action, keywords) would make or break the response to this challenge.
Our founder consulted with SellerChamp’s CEO and followed up with a detailed action plan. Behind the Work then:
- Conducted a basic audit and immediately saw that the company’s analytics were set up in a way that led to inaccurate data—something all the previous agencies missed. We corrected the problem so the client got real, actionable data.
- Cleaned out the existing campaign and created new ads, ad groups, and campaigns.
- Segmented their Google ads by service group to give them more control over bidding.
50.53%
50.53% Growth in Sign Ups
-17.67%
-17.67% Cost for Sign-Ups
Results
In just a few weeks, SellerChamp saw unprecedented results, lowering their cost per click (CPC) and customer acquisition cost (CAC). Behind the Work’s industry knowledge and deep understanding of PPC ads contributed to the remarkable success of this campaign.
Six months later, the numbers spoke for themselves: the client reaped a 50.53% increase in sign-ups, with a cost decrease of 17.67% over the previous year. Behind the Work hosted bi-weekly videoconferences with SellerChamp and responded promptly to any emerging issues.
We understand that each business operates within its own unique parameters for success. We succeed when other agencies fail companies like SellerChamp because we ask the right questions and get the full scope of the client’s needs.
SellerChamp subsequently expanded its scope of work with Behind the Work to include earned media management and customer success interviews, where we call customers who drop out of trials without subscribing to the software to learn about their experiences and try to win them over.