How to increase leads by 25% with a little help from a vegetable... - Laila Lotfi, Head of Product...

From good to great With a little help from a talking vegetable

Laila LotfiHead of Product MarketingLaila.Lotfi@red-gate.com

Product and market

ANTS Memory Profiler(memory optimisation software)

.NET Software Developers(B2B. Highly technical.)

Marketing problem

misconceptions

Developers don’t understand .NET memory management

Developers think they don’t need tooling

Marketing problem

Unaware of the problem/opportunity

Aware of the problem/opportunity

Discovery of product

Validation

Retention

Solution

Educate the market Content marketing

But…

.NET memory management is boring… Hi, I’m Ricky Leeks!

Marketing objectives: how will success be measured?

5,000 unique visitors per month

2,000 trials of product per month(baseline = 1350)

$15,000/month budget constraint (prepared to pay $3 per visit)

Campaign preparation

• Create GENUINELY valuable content:wall-charts, video guide, webinar, eBook, articles

• Online ads • Twitter account• Landing pages• Schedule

Campaign launch

phase 1

phase 2

How is the campaign performing so far?

• Number of unique visitors• Trials of product• Absolute number of clicks on hyperlinks and

calls-to-actions• Click-through rate (CTR) on the landing pages• Visitors flow

Oops! Instrumentation fail

• We had forgotten to instrument some of the calls to action and hyperlinks on the landing pages to see how visitors were behaving on the site

• We didn’t have all the data we needed to

see how the landing page were performing

Something was wrong

2 months & 3 weeks in: Performance Check 2

• Results showed that visitors were not going down the path we expected them to take

• Only 1.5% CTR on calls to action related to the product

It’s never too early to measure campaign performance.

Lesson:

Now what?

We’re almost 3 months in and the results are not good

There are 3 choices

• Kill the campaign• Carry on and hope for the best• Optimise

Optimisation

Optimizeusing data

• Remove unused content• Remove distracting links• Rebalance content/product focus

Then measure again

3 weeks later – 2.5% CTR

Then optimise and measure again

5% CTR

http://goo.gl/u004QW

http://goo.gl/t3Z26M

After you measure, OPTIMISE because you won’t get

it right first time round

Lesson:

Oops #2! Head in the sand syndrome

We were so engrossed in optimising the content on the landing pages that we didn’t properly measure and optimise the rest of the campaign!

End of the campaign…or not

Results by Nov 11: • 4,000 unique visitors per month• 1,600 trials of AMP per month

Based on our experience from the past few months, I knew that we still had room for improvement to turn a reasonably OK campaign into an exceptional one

Pivot

Launched phase 5 & 6

Re-set objectives:• 10,000 unique visitors per month• 1,800 trials of AMP per month

Decided to extend the campaign

The new strategy

1. Monthly media performance check + optimise (cut down on media that is not delivering, geo-targeting, etc)

2. Better use of social media and partner channels

3. Exploit the Ricky Leeks character to the full (podcast interview)

Oops #3! Lead nurturing fail

We got thousands of developers to download the eBooks, and sign up to receive more information on .NET memory management…

…but we didn’t think the lead nurturing through properly.

Results in May 12

Reached close to 90,000 developersin 11 months

Results in May 12

Trial of the software went up by 25% (from 1,350 to 1,800/month)

Jan-11

Feb-11

Mar-1

1

Apr-11

May-1

1Jun-11

Jul-11

Aug-11

Sep-11

Oct-11

Nov-11

Dec-11Jan-12

Feb-12

Mar-1

2

Apr-12

May-1

20

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

1800

2000

AMP downloads

My 3 TOP TIPS for your next campaign

1. Data-driven marketing(creativity alone is not enough)

• No campaign performs optimally at the first round• Design campaigns with regular (and early!) checkpoints• Think about what metrics & behaviours you can influence to drive KPIs

2. Try agile marketing • Learn from incoming data: measure…then optimise

• Use feedback to trigger rapid iterations to improve on what you’ve got• Design campaigns that last – it gives you a chance to optimise

3. Set up a proper lead nurturing program• Move your leads progressively down the funnel• You will NOT get it right first time

Any questions?

Laila.Lotfi@red-gate.com

Recommended reading: Lean Startup (Eric Ries)