So, your campaign has smashed targets and been delightedly received by customers and internal colleagues alike. How do you keep momentum and deliver on your campaign’s promises?

You continue delivering content that supports and develops the campaign message over the long term. This is where an authoritative whitepaper can play an important strategic role.

Let’s take a deep dive into how we used thought leadership to boost an already successful campaign for ABB Food and Beverage.

A SPRINKLE OF BACKGROUND

ABB is probably the biggest company you’ve never heard of: a global technology leader, working in the utility, industry, transportation and infrastructure sectors. And their challenges are unique too: they operate in the complex and crowded Food and Beverage (F&B) space but their capabilities were going unrecognised by decision-makers.

That’s where we came in.

Agency Inc was tasked with transforming the Food and Beverage industry’s perception of ABB. And the results were outstanding: our award-wining Talk to us campaign successfully repositioned ABB from a supplier to a trusted consultative partner.

But B2B sales cycles can be long, so it was important to support the Talk to us campaign with carefully curated content that would develop the message – helping to support decision-makers along their sales journey.

THE PROOF’S IN THE PUDDING

We researched, developed and released ‘A taste of the future: understanding what’s driving Food & Beverage in 2020 and beyond’; a whitepaper directly addressing the challenges facing F&B today.

We targeted end-user manufacturers and senior decision-makers – the very people most engaged with improving operations and pragmatic business benefits.

Our in-depth research broke down more than 350 trends in the F&B space to reveal four key industry drivers that could create opportunity and growth for our audience. The report’s deep industry insight was designed to substantiate ABB’s positioning as a trusted consultant, providing its readers with real advice and inspiration.

In line with our audience’s needs, we made sure that alongside the blue-sky thinking and analysis, the focus was firmly on real-world solutions.

With the content complete, we launched the whitepaper in two steps:

Step one –– empowering ABB’s people to share the paper with their individual networks
Why? Because human-to-human connection is much more powerful than human-to-brand.

 82% of decision-makers say that thought-leadership being shared by someone they know and respect is critical in getting them to engage (LinkedIn, 2018).

When you consider LinkedIn employee pages have up to 10 times more reach than a brand page, it makes sense to use the best asset you have: the credibility of industry people who think the work matters.

This is why empowering ABB’s people was crucial. To get everyone excited and on the same page, we co-ordinated internal communication about the launch, laying out the paper’s benefits and its relevance to customers. This encouraged the team to share the paper with their networks in order to enrich their existing relationships.

Step two–– breaking down content into snackable, bite-sized chunks
Why? Because 57% of decision makers prefer content that can be digested within a few minutes.

Brevity is key to building credibility. The ability to condense complex ideas into simple posts reflects a deep mastery of the topic. This approach extended across full suite of social assets: LinkedIn posts, animated infographics as well as a campaign film and themed articles. Time-pressed decision-makers were attracted to ABB’s bite sized posts, intrigued by the insights and then followed the breadcrumbs to download the paper on the dedicated webpage.

SWEET RESULTS

The response so far to the whitepaper has been extremely positive. Although it’s too soon to measure its full impact, the paper has already been shared far and wide by ABB’s F&B people. In fact, it’s been deemed so relevant to international customers that multiple translations have been requested.

We’re really proud of the insights contained within ‘A taste of the future’ and how they support ABB’s consultative approach and confirm them as a real expert in the space. It’s a testament to what you can achieve when you keep the complicated simple.