| Putting Clickability on the Map |
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In 2007, Clickability — a cashflow-positive SaaS provider — was missing in action in industry articles, analyst reports, and social networks. Sterling Communications was hired to build brand awareness and cultivate third-party validation that ultimately increased sales opportunities.  The ChallengeClickability, a SaaS-based web content management (WCM) provider targeting the media and enterprise market (and largest single SaaS deployment in the world), was a virtual unknown in late 2007 when Sterling was tapped to help the company build the kind of brand awareness that would generate interest and drive sales in 2008. A meager seven pieces of Clickability coverage — and none of it feature coverage — appeared in 2007. Additionally, the company was not included in several key 2007 analyst reports, and it had zero presence in the social media realm. To put Clickability "on the map" in 2008, Sterling designed and executed a proactive and highly customized influencer outreach program, utilizing a host of social media tools as well as conventional media relations techniques. The agency also optimized Clickability's news to drive more traffic to the company's website and worked to build out Clickability's customer reference program. The Approach Sterling created an "Adopt an Influencer" campaign for Clickability that created dozens of one-to-one opportunities for client executives and influential members of the press and analyst community to have meaningful conversations about industry trends, market dynamics and long-term corporate vision. Rather than simply contacting influencers when there was Clickability news to share, Sterling facilitated regular high-level conversations about industry happenings so that Clickability's top-tier influencers would come to view company executives as the thought leaders they are. Sterling also undertook a "Find me/Follow me" campaign to make it easier for potential customers and partners to find Clickability by SEO-enabling Clickability's press releases and setting up various social media accounts (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Delicious, Flickr and Slideshare) for Clickability's use. Sterling then populated Clickability's Wikipedia and Facebook pages and posted relevant Clickability material to YouTube, Delicious, Flickr and SlideShare. The third campaign of the 2008 was code-named "Project Evangelist." Its purpose was to create a stable of referenceable customers who would be "at the ready" to speak to the media and analyst community on behalf of Clickability. Sterling identified and cultivated roughly a dozen evangelists over the course of the year, a stable that included Amcor, Cantor Fitzgerald, NBC, Lifetime, Star Tribune, The Advocate, Tribeca and Gray Television. The Results Perhaps the best way to illustrate the momentum Sterling generated for Clickability in 2008 is to compare the 2008 results to the 2007 baseline.
Additionally, as a direct result of the regular stream of SEO-enabled news we crafted and issued, Clickability's site traffic increased over 600% between 2007 and 2008 and its daily unique visitors increased fivefold in the same time period. |
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