case study
PMG
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INDUSTRY

Business process automation and enterprise software

EXPERTISE

Survey development

Thought leadership

Media relations

BECOMING A THOUGHT LEADER

Finding IT’s Head in the Cloud: Arketi Uses Industry Survey to Position PMG as a Thought Leader on “Cloud Sprawl”

PMG, a provider of business process automation software, was on the hunt for a new strategy to capture more industry mind-share. Specifically, it wanted to lead the discussion on one of IT’s hottest topics: managing the migration to the cloud, and all the operational challenges extending from that transition. But it also wanted to approach the conversation from a creative angle.

Arketi and PMG worked together to brainstorm multiple approaches, but ultimately we settled on an idea that could give reporters info they couldn’t get anywhere else: a thought-leadership survey campaign that would gather data directly from IT professionals.

HOW WE DID IT

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK

Arketi started with the development of a research premise. The document laid out the fundamentals of the program including the mission, key questions the project looked to address, target audience, research approach, theme and possible questions.

Using our survey campaign methodology, Arketi performed a literature review to see what research had already been conducted on the survey topic: how cloud applications and services are making their way into the enterprise with and without IT approval. We carefully evaluated the tone and frequency of “cloud” discussions in the IT community and identified “cloud sprawl” as a growing trend that could be leveraged.

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK

With this knowledge, a 36-question survey instrument was constructed and fielded to thousands of corporate IT professionals.

Within a few days, a statistically significant number of responses were received, and analysis of the results could begin. As the findings emerged, the Arketi team identified target media and pre-pitched the survey results, successfully garnering early interest in the survey results from major publications such as Baseline, Forbes and InfoWorld. We developed a survey findings news release, along with a FastFacts report that visualized the key results in a colorful and easy-to-digest format.

Once the news was released, aggressive media outreach and follow-up continued over the next eight weeks. In addition to a healthy dose of tenacity on the media relations front, PMG’s put its marketing automation savvy into action to support the campaign.

The survey positioned PMG as the authority to discuss the importance of controlling cloud sprawl within the enterprise, and provided an opportunity to explain how its service catalog technology can be extended beyond the IT department to tackle business issues.

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MILLION MEDIA IMPRESSIONS

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POSITIVE MEDIA STORIES

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SURVEY DOWNLOADS

IMPACT
The Big Idea of a Survey Campaign as executed by Arketi was backed up by a solid methodology that left no stone unturned and gave us a solid strategy that extends far beyond just the media relations value. This PMG-owned content is opening up doors for us with influencers and prospects, because it has truly positioned us as a thought leader for enterprise IT professionals.

MELINDA CHAMPAGNE

Director of Marketing

PMG

The campaign generated tremendous media coverage, positioning PMG as an expert on a topic that is top-of-mind with many enterprise IT professionals today.

The research secured 1,380,966 media impressions and eight positive key media stories across a “who’s who” of the tech media including Baseline, CIO, FierceCIO, Finance Tech News, Forbes, InfoWorld, IT Business Edge, Network World and TechRepublic. The media relations delivered a cost-per-contact of $.0003. The release also earned coverage on more than 70 blogs and websites.

Email marketing campaigns and social media efforts drove nearly 300 downloads (as of July 25, 2013) of the survey report. Its results are also used as content for webinars and speaking engagements. Additionally, PMG distributes a printed version of the report at tradeshows and during the early stages of the buying process.

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