What’s Your Online Marketing Priority?

By Sean McVey

Imagine you are the VP of Marketing Communications at a major supply chain management software company. Your job is to figure out how to get the most out of your firm’s marketing dollars. You know online marketing has a place, but you really don’t know where to focus. Do you hire a social media guru? Do you invest in video? SEO? A blog? The possibilities are really endless… but your budget isn’t. So how do you spend?

Kirsten Watson from Kinaxis was in this very situation. And after a long digital journey, she now finds herself leading one of the most successful online marketing teams in the technology industry. With an estimated 35-40% of the firm’s leads coming from the web, there’s no question Kinaxis has found a formula for success.

While chatting with Kirsten, I began to realize how important prioritization is to her strategy. Today, Kinaxis deploys a number of online marketing tactics, but the firm began by focusing on a just a few foundational techniques. After mastering those techniques, they gradually expanded their repertoire.

Make Friends with the Search Engines

SEO was a major focus at Kinaxis since the beginning of its online marketing efforts.

Kirsten explained, “We found religion in SEO. It’s a part of everything we do, every content piece, every campaign. The value is untapped in many companies.”

The Kinaxis team understands that there is no chance at online success if nobody is visiting the firm's website. So they spend significant time determining good keyword opportunities, implementing those keywords into their website, and continuing to increase search engine authority.

Create a Community by Creating Content

Content creation has also been a high priority for Kinaxis since the beginning. They realized early that a blog not only demonstrates thought leadership, but also attracts high quality inbound links and increases the number of web pages indexed in search engines.

“We blogged for about a year,” said Kirsten, “but nobody was listening at first. You have to have patience, and visibility will come. The more content you develop, the more opportunities you will have to show up in Google results. After a while the traffic became consistent and highly beneficial.”

Once You’re in the Groove, Start to Get Social

The team was a bit skeptical of social media at first. But their concerns were put to rest after they hired the research firm Forrester to evaluate the situation. From the research they learned how the Kinaxis audience used social platforms, how they commented and where they were hanging out.

This data served as the basis for a social media strategy that ultimately boosted the company’s online visibility. If SEO and blogging were their online marketing foundation, social media interaction and promotion elevated the firm into the public eye.

Time to Go Above and Beyond

Kinaxis spent years establishing their online foundation and creating a presence in social media. Now they are taking things to a new level. Their Supply Chain Expert Community is a collection of videos, forums, and documents related to supply chain management, and they somehow find a way to make these topics fun. The Late Late Supply Chain Show and Suitemates are a few examples of how they create buzz and pull in targeted relevant traffic.

“We are a company that recognizes that we need to take chances to get noticed,” said Kirsten. “We’re not afraid of sticking our neck out there a little so that we can have our voice heard.”

Bringing It All Together

Kirsten and here team has online marketing down to a science at this point. Integrating all of these initiatives is crucial to realizing optimal success. The monthly process goes something like this:

1. Choose a keyword phrase that will bring in good traffic
2. Write an article or white paper on that phrase
3. Break the white paper up into blog posts and repurpose the content
4. Video interview the author and post it on the website
5. Create a podcast on the topic
6. Host a webinar on the topic
7. Continually promote the content through social media and email communication

 
Kinaxis has a core of five people devoted to online marketing, including two full-time content creators, one full-time events manager, a social media manager, and Kristen. Eighteen other staff members also contribute content, including top executives.

Wow. That’s a lot of resources right? Well, when you consider that the company’s highest quality leads come from search engine traffic, the investment makes a lot of sense.

Want to check out all of the cool things Kinaxis is doing? Here’s how:

Kinaxis Website
Community
Twitter
YouTube
Blog