Developing targeted campaigns based on in-depth research

When Salesforce wanted to break into the German Mittelstand market, we saw a “wunderbare” opportunity to work together.

Germany’s Mittelstand is unique. It refers to a group of small and mid-sized companies that are world-class in their field, often based in small regional towns and villages. These businesses are known as “the heart of Germany’s economy” because of their outsized impact on the country’s economic output. Our job was to help Salesforce identify and connect with key buyers in this area using targeted, relevant account-based marketing.

To start, we conducted virtual workshops with key Salesforce departments and identified the four key buyer personas to target: CEO, CMO, CSO, and CIO. Then, to help us understand the needs of this unique audience, we ran more workshops with senior sales teams with lots of experience in Mittelstand.

We overlaid this with data from our own Insights Bank and conducted new research on these key buyers’ needs, habits, and preferences, so we could ensure we were creating campaign messaging that would really resonate with them.

Our first campaign targeted the CSO persona. Based on our insights, we created a suite of assets based on the idea that German sales leaders need to move away from the old-school way of selling in favour of a connected, data-led approach.

To do this, we developed digital ads leading to a bespoke landing page with an ebook, relevant videos, and numerous toolkits and assets for sales teams. For example, the “door opener” emails and intro decks were all designed to help them convert prospects into leads. Then we plugged these assets into an end-to-end customer journey that would target sales leaders across multiple channels.

After rolling out the CSO campaign, we developed campaigns targeting four other key buyers (CEO, CMO, CSO, CIO) in Mittelstand in quick succession.