Expertise
Brand / Data / ABM
Channels
Digital / Social
Data-Driven advertising that actually works
Drawing from Bombora’s intent data and audience insights to deliver an account based digital media campaign, Bang helps Veracode achieve a 20:1 ROI over 3 months.
The Challenge
Veracode is a leading application security company based out of Massachusetts, USA. Offering a unified platform and integrated solution that assists security teams and software developers with finding and fixing security-related defects throughout the software development lifecycle, Veracode empowers businesses to confidently build, buy or assemble web and mobile applications so they can continue to innovate while reducing risk.
Since forming a new partnership with investment firm Thoma Bravo and having made considerable investment in ANZ as one of their key regions, Veracode required some local assistance augmenting their existing sales pipeline with a comprehensive list of potential prospects to target using existing processes and creative content. As part of Bang’s consultation, we first needed to determine what exactly made a customer “ideal” for the client’s business. This would help guide which organisations to include in Veracode’s target accounts and then build a list of best-fit contacts based on their target IT / Information Security roles.
However, the real challenge was to effectively engage those key internal influencers and senior decision makers from these accounts, as well as similar audiences in order to drive a higher volume of qualified leads.
THE SOLUTION
With a selection of valuable marketing materials and thought leadership content like their highly respected State Of Software Security (SOSS) Report, it made sense that whatever program was implemented it should leverage these assets in both reaching - and resonating with - the intended audience. Considering this and the outcomes set by Veracode, Bang looked to deliver a highly targeted digital campaign via paid media on LinkedIn and Facebook, informed by intent data and website visitor insights to better engage organisations as they begin to show signs of research behaviour.
With their target accounts selected, Bang worked with Veracode to develop a list of 25 topics relevant to their market offerings and deploy Visitor Insights tags on the Veracode website. Veracode were then able to monitor and leverage changes in their target market’s online content consumption through an integrated dashboard view. This allowed Veracode to identify which organisations were either showing intent against certain topics, or had visited specific pages under their domain, or both.
As well as using intent data and website visitor insights to determine the best audiences for serving ads, Bang tested several targeting strategies to continually optimise campaign performance. Bang harnessed LinkedIn’s unmatched ability to target audiences based on firmographic attributes such as industry and company size, as well as specific users based on job titles and skill sets relevant to the assets being promoted. On Facebook, Bang used lookalike targeting to engage users with similar attributes to those that had already engaged with previous ads and/or the Veracode Facebook page and website. This resulted in outreach to an audience that were more likely to be interested in the gated content and more likely to register for it. The use of native Lead Gen Forms on both channels was also pivotal in making the process easier for users to provide their details in exchange for access to a free guide, whitepaper or webinar - without having to leave the platform.
By combining data-driven audience targeting with useful, relevant content, Bang was able to deliver a highly effective digital campaign that directly communicated to Veracode’s ideal customer, eliciting meaningful brand engagement and lead registrations.
Results
Like most investments geared towards business transformation, application security solutions typically have a long sales cycle, and starting a meaningful conversation can be a challenge, let alone having a marketing qualified lead continue to sales fruition. Through Bang’s campaign delivery and accurate account discovery, Veracode is happy to report that this program helped generate approximately $600,000 in revenue from pipeline sales: achieving an outstanding 20:1 ROI ratio and stimulating local interest in Veracode’s products and services. Based on the program’s overwhelming success, our client decided to extend for an additional 3 months in promoting their latest content including Veracode’s How-To video series.
Carlo Africa, Director of Channel, Alliances & Customers ANZ - VeracodeBang played an integral part in helping us establish Veracode’s digital presence and create significant brand awareness with customers in ANZ. From taking the time to understand our target market, to providing the right companies and contacts we needed to get in front of, we were able to generate over 170 asset registrations through this program. The ability to monitor target accounts in real-time through their dashboard also helped us to elevate our sales process to the next level. Overall, just a really great partnership!