Omniture has grown its business from around 40 customers to over 1000 in Europe alone.
Our initial brief was to focus on the business benefits of web analytics in order to support Omniture's sales environment.
However, as with any successful, expanding company, Omniture’s positioning and key messages evolved over time, meaning our communications strategy needed to change in order to reflect the shift in its business focus.
It was necessary to progress the traditional web analytics debate, steering it towards the need for online business optimisation: integrating all elements of online marketing and sales initiatives so organisations can make the most informed business decisions and increase profitability.
We drew upon Omniture’s vast experience and expertise in driving profitability via online channels. The company has more than 2,700 customers worldwide that operate in a variety of vertical sectors, which means that it is able to identify emerging online trends and any shift in consumers’ behaviour across multiple industries. By being the first to identify these trends, Omniture was able to position itself in the media as the leader and expert commentator in this space, raising the company’s profile and brand awareness among its target audience.
One of our campaigns focused specifically on advising organisations, especially those with an online e-commerce function, on how they can generate additional revenue from largely untapped sources, such as Web 2.0 technologies.
Social networks, for example, currently hold the gaze of the marketing and new media press, so we concentrated on flagging how businesses can use web analytics to monetise these networks and measure their impact as referral sites. In doing so, Omniture was able to demonstrate that, despite social networks being in their infancy from a marketing perspective, it was possible to use web analytics and metrics to tap in and sell to this reservoir of consumers without upsetting their traditionally anti-marketing sensibilities.
In 2007 alone, our campaigns yielded some impressive coverage for Omniture. We organised 28 media interviews, generated 58 stand-alone articles about Omniture, and ensured that the company was featured in 22 feature articles in its key press, including: Marketing; Marketing Week; New Media Age; Revolution; Precision Marketing; MAD; Computer Business Review and Information Age.
Our PR campaigns had clearly generated a swell of momentum throughout 2007 and by early 2008 Omniture was enjoying an even more prominent media presence. The total number of press cuttings generated in the first quarter of 2007 was 23, one year later it more than quadrupled to 99, including coverage in New Media Age, Revolution, Marketing Direct, Marketing, B2B Marketing, and IT Week. Similarly, in the first three months of 2007 Omniture’s products were referenced in the press 21 times; one year on, that figure had nearly trebled to 56. We also had the media clamouring to speak to Omniture – we set up 17 interviews in the first three months of 2008 alone.
Our shift in focus away from web analytics towards Omniture’s key message of online business optimisation was also evident in the press coverage. In the first quarter of 2007, ‘online business optimisation’ was identified in four pieces of coverage; during the first three months of 2008, this figure had soared to 38.
But the most important statistic is the one that proves Carrot’s PR campaigns met Omniture’s business objectives: since working with us, Omniture has witnessed its sales increase by 100 per cent, and cites a return on investment of 5:1. Subsequently, Omniture has grown its business from around 40 customers to over 1000 in Europe alone.