Lead & Demand Generation

Overview

AlchemyAPI, an IBM Company, helps to enable developers and businesses to build smarter applications through a SaaS-based platform of cognitive APIs.

Available as part of the collection of services on IBM Watson Developer Cloud, AlchemyAPI transforms vast amounts of content, images, and unstructured data into information that can digitally disrupt industries and help drive business decisions. AlchemyAPI leads innovation with natural language understanding and visual recognition, changing the way developers around the world process vast quantities of web-based documents and images.

Challenge

AlchemyAPI needed to accelerate lead and demand generation efforts within an already successful inbound marketing framework. The company had worked to build a community of developers and advocates through content marketing, free API offers, and events including webinars and hack-a-thons. The goal was not to change the model, but to scale, add velocity to inbound marketing, and improve upon the process. The list of challenges and to-dos included:

1. Acceleration of inbound marketing deliverables.
2. Improve the lead-to-sales process using HubSpot marketing automation and SugarCRM.
3. Better segmentation through prospect data to promote re-engagement and personalized content delivery.
4. Reduce time to create and publish blog posts.
5. Improve online visibility and increase conversion rates.

Approach

Inbound Marketing

SmartAcre® provided inbound marketing services that consisted of ongoing agency support and proactive, process-driven tactics that contributed to goals specific to the top, middle, and bottom of the marketing funnel.

• SEO
• SEM
• Social media
• Content marketing
• Email marketing
• Marketing automation campaigns
• List segmentation
• Workflow and CRM support
• Analytics

Lead & Demand Generation Campaigns

SmartAcre provided strategic direction for lead and demand generation campaigns. This included user-experience, creative and technology services for website upgrades, creation of enhanced content and videos, and website maintenance.

• Developed strategy, playbook, and workflows for scalable rollout to sales.
• Identified premium content for developers, the C-level, and the sales team.
• Created consistency across assets.
• Formalized personas, content strategy, and overall communication plan.
• Added new forms and CTAs across web presence to improve lead capture.

Hubspot + SugarCRM Round Robin Integration

• Fully migrated existing Drupal blog to HubSpot in two weeks.
• Implemented web-hook integration to sync HubSpot and Sugar CRM leads and contacts.
• First agency in the country to successfully develop a custom application to manage a round-robin lead assignment with HubSpot and SugarCRM (HubSpot and SugarCRM can’t do round-robin lead assignment out of the box).
• Ability to assign incoming leads in Sugar CRM to a list of sales reps in rotation.
• Custom-built lead management with HubSpot and SugarCRM with the ability to pause an assignment to specific reps (vacation, etc), change the order of sales rep rotation, and ability to notify reps once a lead has been assigned to them.
• Ability to automatically assign leads to reps once the leads meet the MQL criteria.
• Programmed, tested, and launched in 3 weeks.

Media and Advertising

SmartAcre identified and presented AlchemyAPI with opportunities for monthly paid media placement, webinar production and promotion, and PPC advertising:

• Webinars
• Pay-for-play content placements
• PPC advertising (Google, Bing, Social Media)
• Ads on industry-related websites

Outcomes