Background

As COVID-19 forced the nation into lockdown in March 2020, businesses of all sizes adjusted. The unprecedented and disruptive impact of the pandemic, with no clear end in sight, meant many key industries had almost come to a standstill. HERE Technologies was forced, like so many others, to make cuts to shore up essential operations and workforce. As is often the case, marketing budgets were first to be cut resulting in high-impact marketing events being deprioritized. During this economically depressed period, HERE still needed to generate value for our customers, and create new leads to drive our revenue. We believed trust in our brand was a key influencing factor for customers to keep doing business with us, and we further acknowledged the need to continue being relevant in times of crisis.

Describe the strategy

A key driving strategy to deliver customer value and generate new pipeline for HERE, was to collaborate with trusted partners and global analyst firms, in a joint effort to deliver an insight-driven virtual program to engage with our target audience. A global top-down analysis identified our target customers and industry solutions - Transport & Logistics, Retail, Automotive and Public Sector was prioritized as we believe we have the right location solution to help them transform their business. With these industries in mind, Project X was built in partnership with Frost & Sullivan and ABI Research. We leveraged our combined reach and credibility to drive customer value, influence brand trust and generate new leads for HERE. Together, we developed a multi-channel co-marketing campaign to address key industry concerns by supplying reliable, data-driven insights centered around the relevance of our location solutions to drive business efficiency.

Describe the execution

Project X ran from May till December last year, with a series of multi-channel engagements to influence trust and business interest in HERE. To expand the reach of the campaign, all content and virtual events were shared via HERE, Frost & Sullivan, and ABI Research’s owned media channels, as well as promoted through paid media channels. We co-hosted four webinars with the above-named analyst firms and regional industry stalwarts, focusing on key market challenges and opportunities. We created a series of eBooks and blog posts - by leveraging the webinar discussions on the role of location in fleet management, emergency response, connected driving and urban mobility, to serve as long-term industry reference. We, further, co-sponsored Frost & Sullivan’s Intelligent Mobility virtual summit which had 2,000 attendees coming from 15 countries. We had a virtual booth, hosted a breakout session (panel) and disseminated our eBooks via the summit’s resource center.

List the results

Project X drove over 2,000 new leads from 500 companies across 15 countries, generating double-digit, multi-million Euros in lifetime revenue (LTR). The Intelligent Mobility virtual summit alone reached over 300 new customers, our eBooks were downloaded over 350 times and the webinars resulted in high engagement with over 80% attendance and attendee satisfaction scores averaging 8/10. Further, it achieved a return on investment (ROI) of 85x – influencing 80% of HERE’s Asia Pacific sales pipeline targets, and sourcing 25% of our regional marketing-driven revenue targets for 2020. The campaign helped exceed our marketing-driven sales pipeline targets for the year. Find out more: https://here.com/projectX