January 9, 2023
Thought Leadership Case Study: White Paper Series Based On Original Research
Background:
The AdTech unit of a global Telecommunications leader recently launched an innovative suite of ad solutions that solve a significant challenge facing the advertising industry, namely the systemic loss of consumer identifiers that had been the primary means of ad targeting, optimization, and measurement for a generation. Now, the company wished to increase market urgency for the loss of identifiers, and the visibility of its unique approach to solve for it.
Strategy & Solution
Jake Moskowitz, founder of Persuasion Art, ideated, wrote, executed and analyzed a B2B survey representative of buyers in the AdTech industry at a scale the company had never attempted previously. He gathered input from Sales, Product, and Marketing to document the ultimate PR headlines, slide titles, and soundbites that would best achieve the company’s goals, and then wrote a survey that was precisely designed to generate them. Jake oversaw the fielding of a successful survey in Q1 2022. The survey tapped in an unprecedented way into how B2B buyers in the AdTech space are personally experiencing this key industry shift, what they’re doing about it, and what their beliefs are about how best to adjust.
Once the survey completed, Jake oversaw all analytics of the resulting data, and developed the key storylines and soundbites with the most potential for PR and content. Jake worked with the PR agency to craft the PR briefs to shop the survey findings around, wrote the detailed outlines that became white papers, and armed the in-house marketing team with soundbites for use in marketing materials and lead generation and nurturing. Jake then worked closely with all writers, product marketers, and the PR agency to ensure nothing was lost in translation and the strength of the story remained in all finished products.
Results
The initial white paper was so successful, that Jake and the company ended up creating a branded series entitled “Voice of the Marketer”, or VOM. Together, they released three separate white paper reports during the course of 2022 from just the single B2B survey, each about a different and complementary subject area tied to this industry shift of lost IDs.
During months in which one of these “VOM” papers was released, content downloads more than doubled overall on the company’s website, increasing by an average of 161% MoM.
The series of VOM reports became a central pillar of the company’s paid marketing efforts in 2022. Overall for the calendar year, VOM-focused paid advertising on LinkedIn drove a 90% better CTR and a 60% lower CPL (cost per lead), plus a lower CPC as compared to other campaigns.
From a PR perspective, the research study earned a dedicated headline article from a top-tier trade publication, plus several follow-on pickups from other publications.
On the back of this success, the company decided to hire Persuasion Art to expand the Voice program in 2023 to include a new series of reports covering the company’s partner universe (VOP, or “Voice of the Publisher”).