Gartner is the world’s leading research and advisory company. Our brief was to support their global events business by driving high value C-suite targeted leads and ticket sales for 70 global events across the year in key regions such as North America, EMEA, LATAM and APAC.
Here's how we did it
Reaching our customer
In order to reach relevant C-Level audiences, we ran advertising campaigns across paid search and paid social channels, primarily Google & Bing PPC, as well as LinkedIn and Facebook PPC too.
For LinkedIn we implemented a rigid test & learn approach, trialling various different levels of targeting including job titles, member groups, job function & years of experience, to ensure we reached the right C-level audiences. Targeting member groups on LinkedIn allowed us to tap into live discussions on key themes (or ‘tracks’) to help Gartner better understand the content to serve up at specific events.
For paid search campaigns, we built a structure that was easy to scale based around core keyword themes each with their own budget which could be managed in isolation, allowing for greater ROI. Audience & demographic adjustments were also implemented to maximise the chances of reaching only the highest value customers.
Content and creatives
Our experience suggested that a combined approach to paid social including a mix of upper funnel alongside acquisition-led activity would achieve the best results. LinkedIn’s own data tells the same story: they had seen a 6x increase in conversion rates with brand & lead generation messaging used in tandem.
We ran a range of creative executions across LinkedIn specifically, i.e. InMail, Sponsored Content & Lead Generation Forms. Content focused ads ran throughout event campaign lifecycles in order to generate awareness as well as build the remarketing pool for lower funnel adverts.
Lead generation and the bottom of the funnel
In order to maximise lead volumes, we felt that Gartner should optimise the number of digital touchpoints they were engaging customers with. Curated used a mix of top & middle of the funnel activity to build large remarketing pools in order to promote content with a conversion focus.
Through Display remarketing & lead generation forms on LinkedIn, Curated were able to drive increased levels of engagement, and an 88% increase in overall lead volumes.
Using an ongoing test and learn approach, we were able to scale paid search and paid social channels to drive higher lead volumes for Gartner’s events. All the while, ensuring we did this efficiently – decreasing overall cost per lead, and demonstrating a continuous conversion rate improvement. This resulted in:
— 88% increase in overall lead volumes
— 133% increase in lead conversion rate
— 15% overall drop in cost per lead
— 80% increase in social ad engagement rate