We worked closely with Seismic to develop a series of campaigns over the year that would leave all competitors in the dust. These campaigns involved a mix of PR and social media activities that would appeal to a wide range of audiences in the US – from sales and marketing decision-makers to C-suite leaders, end users and potential investors – and deliver on the following objectives:
1. Raise brand awareness of Seismic as the industry leader in sales enablement
- Build on PR momentum from the previous year and expand the pool of publications familiar with Seismic
- Expand Seismic’s footprint in top-tier business and tech press, as well as marketing trade press
- Drive traffic to the Seismic website
- Extend reach beyond traditional media to amplify messages on social media and increase engagement
2. Address competitor threats – especially Highspot
- Expand share of voice against competitors, including Highspot, Bigtincan and Showpad
- Own the term ‘sales enablement’ among competitors with it prominently featured in Seismic coverage
3. Position Seismic’s c-suite and other executives as sales enablement and marketing orchestration experts
- Build thought leadership authority through contributed content
- Show off Seismic’s deep bench of industry experts that hadn’t received media attention
Over the course of the year, we constantly adapted our strategy and tactics to meet the realities of the rapidly changing media landscape, which was also being impacted by the pandemic. Despite these challenges, we developed a multi-faceted campaign that included four core pillars.
We started by defining a robust thought leadership strategy and deepening the spokesperson bench to include a diverse mix of insights and perspectives outside the C-suite. Aligning spokespeople with specific topics they were most passionate and knowledgeable about was key to building their authority in the media. We also developed new story angles and themes for the C-suite that looked at the pandemic in a fresh and unique way that hadn’t been repeatedly covered, and focused on how they grew Seismic over the years.
Next, we worked with the Seismic team to formalise the corporate story and develop a narrative that would appeal to top-tier business and tech press. We spoke with co-founders about Seismic’s origins and connected that to the milestones the company had achieved in 2019 – and continued to achieve throughout 2020 – which provided a steady cadence of news to keep the corporate story fresh.
We supplemented this engagement with traditional business and tech press by expanding Seismic’s media footprint into non-traditional media channels. As a result, we uncovered a robust podcast community that opened up several new opportunities to promote Seismic’s thought leadership. We also used media monitoring and social listening tools to keep tabs on what competitors were saying and where they were being covered to ensure Seismic’s dominance in share of voice.
Finally, we took on the management and content creation for Seismic’s Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram channels in July 2020, and established processes to maintain a steady publishing rhythm that capitalised on trending themes, industry topics and popular culture. We worked with the Seismic team to increase the use of imagery and animated GIFs, and to develop a singular tone of voice across all channels. We also helped brainstorm creative campaign ideas to further increase engagement – such as the “It’s a Big Deal” sales presentation makeover contest to support a summer product launch.
