Equal Experts
Connecting with customers in a new market.
How do you find the right customers, build awareness of your brand, and influence a complicated buying process to win new business?
Equal Experts is a global network of senior technology practitioners and consultants, specialising in digital delivery. Well established around the world, they have over 2,000 people based in 8 countries and 5 continents. When they decided to expand to Australia and the Asia-Pacific region, the team needed to connect with new customers and rapidly establish a compelling market presence.
Through a considered blend of analysis, research, strategy, collaboration and creativity—the same formula Equal Experts apply in delivering their consultancy services—the team set about connecting with customers in every sense: from initial research, to a targeted digital campaign for new business acquisition.
The problem
Equal Experts have a proud reputation in comparatively more mature technology markets like Europe and the United States. But in Australia—where they’re looking to expand—they’re relatively unknown. Additionally, coming from the UK means limited context of nuanced local markets. The team needed to better understand how Australian customers research and select technology partners, and capitalise on opportunities to positively influence the buying process.
The approach
There’s a simple, direct way to learn the objectives, challenges and motivations of your customers: talk to them. To deliver an effective campaign for awareness and acquisition, we conducted research with a selection of prospects, recent customers, and industry representatives. This included executive-level staff decision makers from a range of organisations in retail, technology, finance and government. Armed with these insights, we developed a digital campaign to closely align with customer needs and position Equal Experts as a supplier of choice.
The end-game
Our goals were multifaceted: by establishing a detailed portrait of an Australian customer base, Equal Experts would be better placed for impactful marketing moving forward. By building awareness, we could leverage the team’s impressive global reputation, meaning business development activities could focus less on ‘who we are’ and more on ‘the innovative value we can provide’—leading to more meaningful conversations overall. Lastly, by building warm prospects through marketing-qualified leads, we could help to generate a client base and support Equal Experts’ expansion to the APAC region.
There’s always value in connecting with your audience before you try to connect through a campaign.
EARLY RESEARCH, IMPACTFUL INSIGHTS
First up, we connected with key decision makers to understand their most pressing objectives, challenges and motivations.
The procurement process for enterprise-level software consultancy is sophisticated and nuanced. To understand the opportunities and pain points in granular detail, the team conducted a series of in-depth interviews and discovery activities in collaboration with technology leaders. The foundational insights from these early activities ensured we created content in the right formats, for the right channels, in the right tone, to meaningfully connect with people of influence.
Valuable stakeholder insights
Armed with tangible insights from the research and discovery activity, the team designed a campaign plan to connect with and influence key decision makers.
Some of the critical aspects of the activity included:
FOCUS ON POLYFORMAT CONTENT
Everyone consumes content differently.
Some people like a detailed deep dive, others will only skim-read. Producing material in a wide range of formats and tones—long form case studies, short form blog articles, conceptual animations, LinkedIn snippets, interactive prototypes, Google display advertisements, technical content, business-focused content—increases the likelihood we’ll resonate with a broader canvas of people. Additionally, it ensures we can publish to a diverse blend of campaign channels that complement each other.
GET TO THE POINT, FOCUS ON BUSINESS VALUE
Research revealed that most influencers are concerned with business problems, not cutting-edge technologies.
For many senior business figures, the tech is simply a means to achieving a key business driver. It’s crucial that you adopt an ‘outside-in’ approach to content: talk about your services in the way your audience understands, thinks and cares about them, rather than projecting your own perspective onto them. Although Equal Experts is passionate about technology, our content had to connect with the need of the content consumer.
CREATE CONTENT HUBS
We built comprehensive home-bases for all content orbiting around a specific service.
These content hubs act as a useful destination for campaign traffic, while offering a compelling showcase for all of Equal Experts capability in relation to a specific technology. Additionally, it’s a crucial tactic for building visibility in organic search or making sure we’re easy discover via search engines.
With campaign principles and content built on real customer insight, it was time to publish, promote, and pivot based on real-world results.
The team developed a comprehensive campaign plan to map content, tactics, and the broader ecosystem of our activity.
BUILDING A PROFILE THROUGH ORGANIC VISIBILITY
Organic visibility—and building owned traffic—is always preferable to an ongoing reliance on paid search.
By establishing a local presence (through the configuration of an Australian domain), we’ve built promising organic visibility over a short time period. We’ve also improved the quality of Equal Experts’ tracking and reporting, with live access to real-time dashboards tracking against key business drivers.
FLEXIBLE AESTHETICS, APPLIED CONSISTENTLY
A strong brand is robust, cohesive and polished at every touchpoint; from display ads to internal slide decks and beyond.
Effective marketing—and a compelling presence—is crafted through much more than just your market-facing assets. Beyond conceptualising and implementing campaigns, creating content, and connecting with prospective clients, we proudly support Equal Experts APAC in all types of collateral associated with business acquisition. This ensures a consistent, high quality experience for everyone, whether you’re a lead or a long-term client partner.
“August are an excellent partner in every capacity. They’re transparent, knowledgeable, committed and highly effective as a multidisciplinary team. I cannot recommend them highly enough.”
Bethan Timmins, Managing Director Equal Experts APAC
KEY RESULTS
- 450k+targeted impressions of campaign content
we’re building awareness and raising the profile of Equal Experts in Australia.
- 11,00011,000 organic search impressions:
for keywords directly related to Equal Experts’ niche service offerings.
- MQLsmarketing-qualified leads
have come through with potential projects, along with other tangible impacts on business development activity.