Introduction
We interviewed Annette Fernandes, Executive Director at BBN, to hear how Foleon enabled them to increase brand awareness and generate demand within their target audience.
“Foleon helps us in making our content more accessible and measurable, it broadens our brand awareness and contributes significantly to the traffic to our website.”
Annette Fernandes
Executive Director at BBN
Tell us about BBN and your role
The demand to demonstrate successful B2B marketing and sales outcomes has never been so intense. With over 1,000 practitioners around the world, BBN meets all marketing needs to deliver on sales goals in a flexible and agile manner.
In my role as Executive Director, I’m responsible for the overall management and development of BBN. This includes contributing to the future direction of the organization and articulating this direction to the shareholders/owners.
The challenge
What content challenges were you facing prior to using Foleon?
Other than on our blog and website, none of our content was really online, therefore it wasn’t very accessible to our audience of senior B2B Marketing Managers and CMOs, and therefore it wasn’t measurable. Keeping track of different versions and updates was also difficult and time-consuming.
How was this affecting your business?
BBN has generally lacked awareness in the market for many years, to the detriment of its partners. The resources are limited to promote BBN, and therefore a more efficient and accessible solution was required.
What potential solutions did you investigate, and what drove you to choose Foleon?
We used another digital publication platform before using Foleon. We decided to move to Foleon, as they offer a far more flexible and cost-effective solution for us and our partners. It meant we could start converting some of our PDF-based material and start publishing online which made it more accessible, measurable, and easier to manage.
The solution
What type of content do you create in Foleon?
We produce a monthly internal bulletin for our partners, and we are also starting to create more external content. We’ve produced eBooks, guides and white papers. Next year, I also plan to convert our brochures and annual report to web-based content with Foleon.
How did Foleon help you with the production of your publications?
Firstly, templates! These were a great way for us to get started quickly, and within a week, we had published our first piece of web-based content. In addition, when we began using Foleon for our whitepapers and eBooks, it made the production time around 4 times shorter and easier. I didn’t have to rely on precious time from our internal design teams. Instead, I was able to produce good looking layouts with little design expertise.
What is your favorite feature?
I would probably have to say the templates, as they’ve been the most helpful to me personally. But I also love the ability to embed interactive content like video. The overall flexibility of the platform is great, and I just wish I had more time to explore and use more of the great design features.
Did you create measurable goals for your publications?
As we had not published any web-based content before, we found it difficult to set goals, having nothing to benchmark against. But of course, we hoped it would contribute to building up our awareness and perhaps even generate a few leads. Going forward, we’ll be using our existing analytics to define more specific goals next year.
The results
What measurable benefits have you seen so far?
Until now, we’ve generated around 70 new leads through our gated content, and it has contributed to a significant rise in website visitors. It’s hard to put a number on this, but it has been a critical driver among other channels like social media. With more stringent analytics and measurement tools, we should be able to measure this more accurately next year.
How have your stakeholders reacted to your publications?
Our internal audience loves the bulletin, and it’s a great way for them to stay up-to-date with what’s going on around BBN globally. Consumption from external audiences has been increasing through the year, and compared to about 12 months ago, our average publication readership has tripled in numbers.
In what way has Foleon enabled you to offer content experiences?
Foleon has helped us create a more consistent experience with some of our content, and there’s a focused effort around ensuring the experience is a productive one. Next year when we convert more of our current PDF content to web-based content, our overall content experience will be enhanced further. We will also continue to use Foleon for demand generation purposes, like guides and eBooks accessed via gated landing pages.
How does Foleon contribute to the overall objectives of BBN?
Foleon helps us in making our content more accessible and measurable, it broadens our brand awareness and contributes significantly to the traffic to our website. All our eBooks & guides are gated, and we have started using lead gen forms on a landing page that sends content links to the recipient via email.
What tips would you like to share with other Foleon users?
Don’t be afraid to use the templates. They are fully customizable, so you can easily make them your own. Invest some time in the early stages to really explore the great design features and try to attend webinars that Foleon delivers, I found them very inspiring and they encouraged me to try and improve the overall look of our content. I wish I had more time to do this!
See it for yourself
- Organization: BBN
- Featured content: White paper 'The ultimate guide to content marketing'
