Client: Blue Coat Systems
Agency: Strategic Communications Group
Campaign Name: Federal Blueprint
One of the core issues with social media marketing to the government is that few marketers know how to quantify its value. The sales value of a retweet or blog reader remains unknown. Even so, Blue Coat‘s growth, and its expansion of social media, is impressive and could be easily emulated by other b-to-g-centric marketers.
Nine months ago, Blue Coat, a web security and Wide Area Network (WAN) company, launched its blog. Since then, its readers have grown from zero to 2,500 per month, says Telah Jackson, senior manager of federal marketing at the company. Although that number may seem small, she says, almost all 2,500 blog visitors are potential buyers. And that’s what makes them valuable.
“We started out with a targeted list of people that we were interested in getting our information in front of,” she says of Blue Coat’s social media marketing strategy. “We provided that list to the strategy team to map where these people were online.”
“Then we asked: How are we going to get their eyeballs on our site?” she says. “It’s integrated marketing with social media.”
B-to-g marketers leverage social media to build relationships with federal employees
B-to-g marketers use social media just like many other marketers do. It’s all a matter of targeting and fostering relationships — not solely sales.
The company set up its Twitter account in March, she says, and already had 465 followers in less than a month. Social media, Jackson says, is what helps her company tie all of its various marketing aspects together to promote in a unified front.
“I can see that it’s already starting to increase the visibility of our company online,” she says. “One of the things we’re working at is measuring its impact on sales.”
Blue Coat has 377 Facebook “likes” and 4,148 followers on LinkedIn. GovLoop is an important aspect of the company’s marketing strategy, too, Jackson says. It all feeds from its blog, she says.
“For right now, we’ haven’t seen significant sales opportunities come out of it, but we have seen significant visibility for us as a company,” she explains. “I wanted to position us as a thought leader in the marketplace.”
