Fortinet – an integrated marketing campaign

Why is it a good idea to combine inbound and outbound marketing?

The advantages of combining inbound and outbound marketing are many. Discover how an integrated marketing campaign on IT-security enabled us to work both broadly and in-depth towards one and the same goal.

Challenge

With E-mail being the most common way into the network for ransomware, zero-day vulnerabilities can be exploited by both viruses and hackers. The threats are constantly changing and as different types of data breach easily can damage the credibility of a company, it has come to place high demands on buyers of IT solutions. Yet another challenge facing IT-manager is the fact that recent years have brought huge changes as to how we work. A growing number of people work remote, which requires easy access to network services. We want a safe system with seamless access, regardless of where we choose to work. 

Fortinet offers one of the markets most innovative network security solution and with a superior performance they are also aiming to make IT simpler for their customers. Security Fabric is a unique solution when it comes to access and management of the entire security of the network via an interface.

Objective

With a wish to strengthen their marketing efforts and to raise awareness around the services, Fortinet hired Brightvision to create a marketing campaign on IT-security, together with distributor Exclusive Networks. The ultimate goal with the campaign was to generate new qualified leads to fill the pipeline. Brightvision's objective was to create an integrated marketing campaign focusing on IT security and ways to prevent computer hacking. The campaign was set out to target CIOs, CTOs and other decision-makers at major enterprises in Sweden. 

Solution

Our idea of integrated marketing involves executing inbound and outbound sales strategies simultaneously to draw in even more leads than either could do on their own. By choosing this integrated method, we were able to both work on a wide front with a digital campaign and to narrowly focus on the specific goals, which was to follow up leads by telemarketing. 

The campaign consisted of:

• A detailed campaign strategy

• One landing page with gated content – a report on how to prevent computer hacking

• One landing page with ungated content – for instance videos on firewall solutions and a form for booking a free presentation 

• Paid Social ads on LinkedIn and Facebook

• A blog post published on Exclusive Networks 

• Telemarketing – both ABM and inbound lead follow up

• Marketing Automation System evaluation and setup

•  Analysis, reporting and project management throughout the campaign

Our work

The campaign’s main goal was to generate new leads for Fortinet. To create a successful campaign, we worked according to Brightvision’s carefully structured processes for both inbound and outbound marketing. 

Campaign strategy

The first step for Brightvision was to get started on the inbound campaign.  By two initially workshops, we asked all questions needed to create a well-planned campaign strategy. We mapped out the buyer personas and created a full campaign strategy, including target definition, time plan, etc. As the campaign would focus on existing content (a report and videos) produced by Fortinet, Brightvision put effort on finding out how to best attract the persona, generate content downloads and nurture leads closer to a purchase decision.

Alongside, the work with the outbound campaign was carried out. A well-defined sales process and a winning sales pitch is the recipe behind a successful campaign that will fill the pipeline with qualified leads. In this campaign, we followed a straightforward five-step process:

1. Target audience development
2. Prospect identification - List building
3. Prospect outreach - Cold calling
4. Prospect qualification - Mapping prospect needs
5. Pass on prospects to Fortinet’s in-house team

Evaluation