Best Practices: How to Boost Sales With Integrated Content

Juniper Networks, a networking equipment and software company that competes with larger companies such as Cisco Systems, had a goal of generating $3 million in sales over 12 months with its first globally integrated campaign, "Time to Strike," which launched last October. Instead, it generated $4.5 million in the first three months, and now has over $12 million in the sales pipeline. "The results of the campaign obliterated our target within one quarter. So we have actually raised our expectations," said Carter Kersh, senior director-Americas field and partner marketing at Juniper Networks. The campaign, created by Stein IAS, was an integrated effort designed to attract prospects and target them with relevant content based on their stage of the buying cycle. The campaign was aimed at chief information officers and network managers at medium-to-large global enterprises. It included online ads, social media, website content, ebooks, webinars and emails. To develop the campaign, Juniper used Eloqua's marketing-automation software to target content to users when they came to a digital hub that was at the center of the campaign. "This is the first time where brand and demand came together, from top-of-funnel to mid-funnel to end-of-funnel," said Craig Duxbury, client services director at Stein IAS Europe, Middle East and Africa. "We wanted to take the focus off 'speeds and feeds,' routers and switches, and take Juniper more into the business need," Mr. Duxbury said. "We created content around the emotional side as well as the business side." Juniper used online display ads, social media, ebooks and other content at the top of the funnel to focus on business issues such as security and virtualization, then drove users to a digital hub, where they could drill down deeper into Juniper's solutions and products. "The digital hub recognizes and displays different content, which then drops you into a nurture stream at the backend," Mr. Duxbury said. After users took action on the Juniper website, such as downloading a request for an ebook, they were sent "nurture" emails to follow up and deliver relevant content. All leads were assigned a score, based on the number of interactions a user had, and when a certain score was reached, the prospect was contacted by a Juniper sales rep. To date, the campaign has generated more than 19,000 submission forms, over 2,000 marketing-qualified leads, over 500 sales-qualified opportunities, and $12.25 million in the sales pipeline. Here are three best practices that made the campaign successful: 1. Integrate brand with demand generation. "This was by far the most comprehensive, integrated and cross-functional campaign in Juniper's history, and it was the first time that we had plumbed all the way through to align demand generation with a corporate push," Mr. Kersch said. "That is why we delivered results that moved the needle." 2. Target content to the buyer journey. "With this campaign, we wanted to take the buyer journey in mind, addressing buyer issues at the top of the funnel and lead more into solutions and products at the bottom of the funnel. It was very heavy on content marketing," Mr. Duxbury said. 3. Align marketing and sales. Juniper's marketing team worked closely with its sales team on efforts such as lead scoring and passing off qualified leads. "Getting buy-in across the organization is key," Mr. Duxbury said. "It was very collaborative, with marketing working with sales."

Best Practices: How to Boost Sales With Integrated Content

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