Avaya
#CollaborateToGrow
Avaya is among the world’s leading communications solution providers. It stands out of the market with its portfolio of unified communication solutions, and its customer experience and contact center offerings. It has the rare distinction of being a leader in Gartner’s magic quadrant for contact center infrastructure 17 times.
India is one of Avaya’s global growth drivers, and represents one of its top 10 markets.
At the time of the campaign (starting March 2017), Avaya India’s management team was keen on driving growth in India’s mid-market segment.
“We shifted our focus on re-energizing and entering newer segments and have built an excellent portfolio for mid-market reach,” said Vishal Agrawal, then-MD, India and SAARC, Avaya, to CXOtoday.com
This was the challenge put before GetIT: Educate and generate leads among relevant mid-market audiences in India.
Solution:
GetIT started by undertaking an internal analysis to determine demand and market readiness for three of Avaya’s product stacks (Team Collaboration, Unified Communication, and Contact Center).
A content-marketing strategy was identified as the best way to educate and generate leads. Central to this strategy was the need for a custom-built content hub.
Driven by the leadership of Atul Sharma, then-digital marketing and campaign lead – MEA and India, Avaya, GetIT also identified key decision-makers within the mid-market market, and the most appropriate messaging.
Broadly, the content-marketing strategy entailed generating top-of-the-funnel (TOF) leads with premium content (a personalized report or one of 3 e-books).
Leads were then be nurtured with a segmented, multi-touch, email drip campaign. Every engagement added to a prospect’s lead score until they reached a threshold score, at which point they were passed on to Avaya as marketing qualified leads (MQLs). Alternatively, prospects could also request to meet an Avaya representative. These leads were also passed to Avaya as AQLs.
GetIT Comm’s challenge broke down into two distinct areas: Successfully generating TOF leads from a fragmented mid-market segment, and effectively creating a lead nurturing strategy that would accelerate a prospect’s movement through the marketing pipeline.
In order to reach out, cost-efficiently, to a mid-market audience, GetIT deployed a multi-pronged and layered outreach strategy, leveraging a number of different mediums, each complementing the other.
These channels included social (LinkedIn and Facebook); SEM (Google Search and Google Adwords), and direct marketing (driven by the Confederation of Indian Industry, GetIT Comm’s Intellibase, and Avaya’s own marketing intelligence).
Each media channel was monitored closely for effectiveness, and some were discontinued during the course of the campaign.
In addition, in the latter phase of the campaign, Atul rounded out GetIT Comm’s digital efforts with a series of events held in tier-2 manufacturing hubs, under the same banner as the digital campaign. The digital campaign fed off the success of the event strategy and vice-versa, creating positive feedback loops.
Prospects acquired from different channels were funnelled to a custom-built microsite. This is a rich media, mobile-optimized site using HTML5, designed to Avaya’s specifications and aligned to its brand guidelines.
A microsite strategy allowed Avaya to own the content, and not be at the mercy of third-party platforms. On the backend, GetIT deployed advanced analytics and UX tools.
The campaign’s content strategy was based on finding a sweet spot between what Avaya wanted to say, what its customers want to hear, and clearly highlighting Avaya
Results:
The campaign resulted in hundreds of TOF leads, including those from offline events, adding significantly to Avaya India’s list of prospective customers. Over 400 marketing qualified leads were passed on to Avaya.
The campaign also raised Avaya’s profile among SMB buyers, with many of them interacting with the brand (both offline and online) for the first time.
The campaign was initially envisioned to be a one-quarter long, but was extended to two more quarters. Based its performance, the campaign was also extended to South Africa.