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SAY Communications is an award-winning UK based communications agency specialising in B2B technology PR and Marketing. In recent years, the B2B buyer journey has become more complex, as decision makers turn to social media, podcasts, newsletters and traditional media to inform their purchasing choices.
When it came time for us to work on a new campaign for network monitoring leader, Gigamon, this evolving buyer journey led us to pursue an integrated content marketing campaign. We set out to deliver valuable, timely insights that would help Gigamon’s target audience to benchmark their IT and security strategies, whilst informing them on the role that network monitoring can play in achieving a stronger security posture.
Defining leadership in a new category
As an industry-leading provider of network-level visibility, Gigamon pioneered the ‘deep observability’ market, but was keen to underscore the role of this relatively new market category in securing hybrid cloud environments. This required a two-fold objective for a campaign: to highlight the modern need for deep observability among industry security leaders, whilst solidifying Gigamon’s position as a market leader in the space.
To meet the first part of our objective, our campaign would need to target key decision-makers in the IT and security space, including CIOs, CISOs, CTOs, and others responsible for cloud or information security. To capture the attention of both these targets and the publications that these audiences often rely on to inform their work, we ideated a global research campaign with the aim of uncovering the perceived confidence in the security of hybrid cloud environments against the reality of data breaches and blind spots in IT infrastructure.
Hybrid cloud environments have become the hallmark of modern organisations. As digital transformation strategies pursue cloud adoption, often including hybrid and multi-cloud solutions, the infrastructure increases in complexity in which visibility gaps can emerge, and existing security tools may not be as effective as they once were.
The overarching theme of the survey was to understand the current perceptions of hybrid cloud security and paint a clearer picture of the security challenges, conducted across 6 regions in North America, EMEA, and APAC. Guided by social listening, we designed survey questions that delved into respondents’ understanding of “cloud visibility” and “zero trust”, with the goal of highlighting the discrepancy between security leaders’ perceptions of their hybrid cloud security and reality. A combination of surface-level and technical questions demonstrated the lack of awareness that IT and Security leaders have around hybrid cloud security and clarified the use cases for Gigamon’s deep observability offerings.
Spreading word far and wide
Once we had secured the research insights, we designed a multichannel campaign that could saturate the cloud security market with rich-media assets like thought leadership videos, infographics, and engaging carousels. Given the complex B2B landscape, we wanted to offer diverse ways to interact with the research findings.
Using influencer engagement, we kickstarted word-of-mouth online about Gigamon’s deep observability solution with a readily engaged audience. To maximise the impact of this campaign, the survey launched just before Europe’s largest infosec exhibition, spreading awareness ahead of one of Gigamon’s biggest lead generating events of the year.
The campaign proved to be extremely successful, exceeding expectations in every metric. We secured 58 pieces of media coverage, collectively reaching over 1 million unique readers, leading to PR results that were 65 percent above target. Thanks to this coverage, Gigamon quickly climbed to the 3rd most talked-about company for “cloud” and “observability” within 5 months.
On social media, a combination of highly visual infographics, thought leadership videos, and coverage posts allowed us to surpass our target for impressions by 20 percent, with strong engagement across all regions. Website traffic and leads also outperformed goals, with landing page views climbing to over 1,100. This generated over 150 leads – a 34 percent increase on our projected figures. Overall, the campaign successfully positioned Gigamon as a deep observability thought leader, generating tangible sales leads and setting the stage for continued growth in the hybrid cloud security market.
Entering this campaign for the “Best B2B Content Campaign of the Year” award isn’t just about recognition; it’s a statement of pride for the entire SAY Communications team. Gigamon’s brief mirrored the B2B challenges we navigate daily – building awareness and establishing market leadership in a complex and non-linear media landscape.
We’re proud to share the power of B2B PR campaigns with the wider industry, embrace innovative and diverse forms of media, and showcase the power of our work to not only inform, but to transform brands.
