Boosting digital engagement through white papers
Global surveillance business Synectics tasked us with developing a content-rich campaign to reflect its specialist knowledge in four key sectors and boost digital engagement. The brief resulted in an online white paper series that fuelled ministerial speeches, became a reference for industry analysts and led to Synectics' most successful direct mail ever.
Challenge
To engineer and implement a digitally-led content campaign showcasing Synectics’ deep sector expertise in four key sectors: gaming, transport & infrastructure, oil and gas, and high security/public space.
As well as boosting website and social engagement levels, reaching new end user and media audiences was a priority. Maximising investment in content creation by making it work in different ways/across multiple channels was also essential.
Activity
From research and planning it was clear that traditional thought leadership alone would not make Synectics stand out. Visual appeal was necessary to attract the attention of a time-pressed audience and content needed a level of depth that demonstrated technical gravitas. We therefore created a series of downloadable digital white papers to reflect Synectics’ expertise.
In addition to a straight download/data capture mechanism, the papers were used to: populate Synectics e-news bulletin to existing/target audiences; create a social media content stream (Twitter and LinkedIn) with bespoke visuals for each paper; and to fuel media relations activity. We prioritised topic development to mirror trade shows Synectics was attending, and white papers were also used for digital investor relations packs.
Results
New visitors accounted for 70% of visits to Synectics’ website, which Synectics’tracks back to content activity driven by the white papers.
Social media engagement also improved dramatically, with Twitter followers increasing by 33.3% and LinkedIn followers by 21.4%. An e-bulletin issued to give gaming customers a white paper sneak preview achieved the highest click-to-open rate of any direct email ever issued by the company.
The content campaign also opened the door to new media outlet relationships –many titles began monitoring Synectics’ site for white papers to use as part of their sector proposition.
Analysis also demonstrated papers were downloaded by high value end-users, and have been used as reference materials by government officials, market analysts and research companies for key sectors including Frost & Sullivan.
The white paper series met all our objectives, became the backbone of our broader content plan for a whole year, and provided us with a resource we are still finding new ways to use – from sales collateral to investor relations. It's been a great value campaign that has opened up even greater potential.
Fiona Berry, Synectics Marketing Manager