Building vertical markets to towering heights from the ground up
Since the late 20th Century, CDW has grown from a modest technology reseller into a global IT powerhouse. Much of that growth comes from a vertical-focused go-to-market strategy in markets such as healthcare, finance, and nonprofit.
“StudioNorth brings our industry brand voice to life with engaging creative for maximum brand impact, and their support with planning is indispensable for helping align consistency across multiple channels. With their highly effective marketing and sales enablement solutions, they’ve helped forge much stronger relationships between our vertical sales teams and their customers, and that has proven to be invaluable.”
StudioNorth helped launch several of those verticals from the very beginning, with planning and creative for demand-gen and digital marketing channels, including management of dedicated social media channels for select markets.
Each vertical also required aligning sales to marketing. StudioNorth supported sales with advisory groups, educational sessions, and campaign launch events to ensure success from all angles throughout the vertical growth journey.
We play a strategic role in the orchestration of CDW’s marketing plans, collaborating with the company’s Insights teams to analyze audience data and trends, then helping the Planning teams translate the resulting recommendations in actionable activities.
Strategic thought leadership
We’ve all heard the statistic, “Today’s ITDMs (IT Decision-makers) consume up to 17 pieces of content before even reaching out to a technology vendor.” StudioNorth helps CDW deliver relevant educational content that informs those ITDMs of technology trends and solutions, helping move them along their purchase journey while keeping CDW top of mind.
To establish that level of thought leadership in the hyper-competitive IT environment, CDW has relied on the depth and breadth of StudioNorth’s vertical expertise. We’ve contributed to vertical content marketing through digital marketing channels such as email and social media, including gated assets such as case studies, e-books, infographics, video and even traditional direct mail for the following vertical markets:
“The team at StudioNorth approaches healthcare marketing in a very strategic way, so their work connects with patients and practitioners on a deep emotional level.”
New heights for trade show experiences
Trade shows are essential for building brands in vertical markets—huge opportunities to generate leads, engage with customers and spotlight thought leadership. We’ve helped CDW create some of the most impactful booth experiences ever at some of the world’s biggest shows:
For larger shows, our planning begins 6 months in advance as we build an integrated, strategic plan for pre-, during- and post-show.
Pre-Show
Pre-show social engagement can generate thousands of shared posts, landing page visits and scheduled meetings before the show even begins.
Social posts create buzz about the event and link to landing page for more info.
Event preview promotions include an inforgraphic highlighting interesting stats.
Direct mailer promotion helps build interest and drive booth traffic.
During-Show
During the event, we’ve created live interactive gaming and live social coverage to make the CDW booth a fun, floor-wide destination, and we even train booth staff to help pull customers through the booth, while converting that traffic into thousands of leads during a single event.
StudioNorth helped design the complete booth experience including the CDW Technoliner Bus.
Interactive games draw and educate booth visitors while also capturing leads.
Social Integration including a daily poll and social media dashboard inside the Booth.
SNAP + SHARE photo booth kiosks fuel social promotion by sharing MEMEs.
CDW’s device wall helps showcase products and provides visual impact.
Post-Show
After the show we follow-up with booth visitors through social and email, while providing sales with qualified leads and show intelligence to help them continue the conversation and drive conversions.
CDW Healthcare CommunIT Website, social posts, and email.
Agency of record (results)
StudioNorth is agency-of-record for CDW corporate organic social. We also manage social media targeting healthcare and finance audiences, and we’ve established best design practices for each social channel. We also manage an ever-evolving social guidelines document that is shared with CDW creatives across the organization.
We relaunched CDW Healthcare’s community website with an active social media campaign that delivered:
%
INCREASE IN SESSIONS
%
INCREASE IN USERS
%
INCREASE IN SESSION DURATION
%
INCREASE IN ORGANIC SEARCH TRAFFIC
%
INCREASE IN SOCIAL TRAFFIC
Enabling towering results
With hundreds of technology product and service partners—and thousands of products on offer at any given time— CDW always makes sure its sales representatives have the education and resources they need to package the right solutions for customers.
StudioNorth is CDW’s source for vertical sales enablement resources, from “battlecards” packed with detailed selling points to playbooks full of customer insights and personas. We also assist with social training resources, teaching sales reps how to use their own social media accounts to move sales forward.
We created an interactive tool—a “Conversation Destination” called ExploreIT—that allowed account managers or solution architects to lead discussions with prospective customers about customized, integrated solutions, without having physical examples of those systems on hand.
The ExploreIT tool has proven especially effective at trade shows, complementing the live gaming (also created by StudioNorth) with meaningful engagement that turns visitors into leads into sales.
