An innovative campaign strategy and digital marketing funnel enabled us to reach Enterprise businesses, generate leads and establish Aruba Networks as a leading network solutions provider.

Problem

Aruba Networks, a Hewlett Packard Enterprises company, is a leading global provider of wireless network solutions.

They approached us with the insight that consumer attitudes and behaviours are changing. Their challenge was how to elevate Aruba’s brand above competitive noise and position the brand as a provider of next-generation network experiences.

The places where people work, learn, visit and go are becoming smart and digital. Proliferation of new technology is driving a change in workplace behaviour. Consumers now expect to have the same fast, reliable and scalable network experience anytime, anywhere, on any device. Moreover, in the consumer space, advanced behaviours are driving the need for more self-service and active working styles. People want creativity, collaboration, speed and freedom in their working day.

At the same time, mobile, IoT and cloud are offering new opportunities to create the complex, high-performance networks that are required to make this a reality.

Operating in a crowded, highly competitive environment, Aruba needed bbd to elevate them out of the tactical conversation about network provision and establish them as a leader in next-generation network experiences.

Lead generation campaign development

Planning & strategy

To establish relevance…we started by conducting discovery workshops with Aruba sales and marketing teams, and used analyst reports to dive into current industry trends. This initial research phase informed our understanding of our target audience, helping us to identify recurring pain points for key IT decision-makers, from C-suite to network admins.

We identified the audience truth as an expectation for high-quality, personalised services that meet people’s everyday expectations. In parallel to this, we identified the Aruba product truth as a platform to deliver next-generation workplace experiences. This enabled us to distil Aruba’s offer into a proposition for the campaign:

Finally, a network that works for you

Proposition and messaging

Working to this proposition, we started to explore how other vendors talked about networks and how Aruba was able to differentiate itself. What quickly became apparent was that competitors talked about networks as a passive service, providing Aruba with the opportunity to start a conversation around networks as an experience – as a network that is active, smart, living and integral.

In talking about the proliferation of technology and changing workplace behaviours, we formalised the notion of the ‘smart, digital workplace’. From this, we were able to establish Aruba as an enabler of smart digital experiences and translate this into a go-to-market campaign idea – The Future of Work.

Developing the conversation

The notion of the Aruba Smart Digital Workplace combined the right technology foundation with the best workspace design to enable creativity, collaboration, speed and freedom. This higher-level conversation enabled us to address key industry trends whilst highlighting Aruba’s capabilities in high-performance networking; easily transitioning into product-level conversation around mobile first, secure, open, autonomous networks.

People respond to real-life problems and challenges, not technical product specifications. We wanted to find a way to humanise our language and frame the Aruba proposition around human problems, not technical ones.

Relevant campaign creative

For an effective execution of the ‘Future of Work’ proposition, the visuals needed to be relevant, distinctive and uncluttered, with a collective resemblance that made them immediately recognisable. Headlines needed to empathise with our audience by identifying a known concern that they were facing. The lines had to be instantly understood, with simple language to carry the idea that Aruba networks were easy to deploy and manage. We needed a creative look and feel which would reflect our direct tone of voice and bring to life the energy, industriousness and verve of the Smart Digital Workplace.

Lead generation campaign deployment

To take this campaign to market, bbd devised a three-tier digital lead generation campaign, with each stage aligned to the customer purchase journey—Awareness, Consideration and Interest.

At each stage, consideration was given to the selection of channels, content types, messaging and targeting used to effectively engage an audience and achieve campaign objectives.

This campaign blueprint served to provide a framework for the deployment of campaign assets and a point of reference for regional and local field marketing teams to structure their own campaigns.

Touch 1 – Awareness

At the awareness level, Touch 1 ads were designed to be deployed across LinkedIn, the Google Display Network and Twitter to generate interest in Aruba Workplace of the Future. These ads comprised a series of thought-leadership messages around the Smart Digital Workplace concept. They were designed to be thought provoking to tell the high-level story of networks as active, smart, living and integral. This started to put Aruba in the consideration pool for network solutions.

Touch 2 – Retargeting ads

Touch 2 retargeting ads still worked at the awareness level, aiming to re-engage prospects who had interacted with a previous ad, landing page or content asset, but had failed to complete the desired CTA. These re-targeting ads led with more pain point or benefit-orientated messaging, addressed the issues more directly, and were deployed across the same platforms.

Touch 3 – Consideration

Touch 3 then transitioned into the consideration stage, enabling visitors arriving at a dedicated landing page to explore the components of a smart digital network in more detail. Here, strategic messaging addressed solutions to relevant pain points, and useful content was offered to encourage prospects to submit an enquiry.

Touch 4 – Interest

Assuming the prospect submitted a query for more information, touch 4 (interest) then comprised a dedicated Eloqua email nurture sequence, designed to score leads based on their engagement with campaign content. Warm leads were followed by up Aruba sales teams following the BANT (budget, authority, need and timeline) qualification process to identify genuine commercial opportunities.

Campaign Results

This campaign was deployed by Aruba EMEA field marketing teams to identify high value Enterprise-level commercial opportunities. The campaign creative and messaging was received extremely well by the Enterprise market and Aruba has since asked bbd to explore how this campaign can be adapted to meet the needs of small and medium businesses in the mid-market segment. Watch this space.