GOLD

Microsoft, "365," Vertic (Global)

With the upcoming launch of the new Microsoft Office 365 across 12 markets globally, Microsoft was tasked with creating a solution that would engage prospective customers with personalized pricing options and dynamically relevant messaging to generate awareness, an understanding of the product, and, subsequently, generate leads. Microsoft needed to change the perception of Office 365 to expand the decision maker group past solely the IT department. To grasp the attention of both BDM (Business Decision Makers) and ITDM (IT Decision Makers) audiences by positioning the product according the stakeholder’s specific needs. There needed to be a higher relevancy of the products value proposition for various stakeholder roles. To that end Microsoft redefined personalization from an end to end experience of awareness, in banner advertising messages and through the landing page of the solution. Microsoft believed LinkedIn to be the most efficient and effective platform to achieve this. Leveraging the LinkedIn provided users with a dynamically applicable and targeted experience throughout their journey with a single click. Through LinkedIn Microsoft employed a logical matchmaking tactic between user and tailored content, to produce a scalable global solution that personalized the entire user experience without any extra steps on the user’s end. The solution begins with targeted banner advertising on LinkedIn that was relevant to the user's job function and industry, and in the user's local language. This highly specific targeting, enabled Microsoft to reach BDMs and ITDMs while maximizing performance and overall ROI. Upon click through, the user lands on a site where benefits, case studies, whitepapers and videos, as well as language are customized on their LinkedIn profile: Furthermore, the user could login with LinkedIn in order for the site to read the number of employees within the user's company, and recommend a personalized Office 365 plan that was most appropriate along with an estimated cost per person per year. Finally, users were routed to partners that were relevant to their location per their LinkedIn profile. Instead of building individual market campaigns, Microsoft created a unique global campaign solution leveraging the LinkedIn platform to generate awareness and shift brand perception with small and medium sized businesses and segment customized value propositions towards various target audiences for Office 365. And with any social campaign, it’s important to properly direct clicks to highly relevant and optimized pages. Microsoft continuously tested and modified the landing pages to fit the user’s needs, producing qualified trials of Office 365 which lead to more qualified conversions. This campaign produced high banner CTRs that were 25.49% above LinkedIn industry averages.