Client Success Spotlight
More than “Just” Marketing, Building Your Company’s Identity We helped one of the country’s fastest-growing startups, MAXDigital, develop an Integrated Marketing & Sales program to help get them to the next level and achieve historic revenue growth.
Market Strategy Group (MSG) was asked to support a fast-growing Chicago-based SaaS company with strong Sales and Business Development processes that was looking to grow its brand recognition, foster organic growth, improve customer targeting and integrate internal business processes to support go-to-market efforts. We checked-in with our executive stakeholders on the project to see how they are doing since the conclusion of the project in 2016 Q3 and to better understand the value generated by the MSG-MAXDigital collaboration. Transformation of a Sales-Driven Organization MAXDigital found strong, early success in its Sales and Business Development team and leadership. Over time, however, MAXDigital realized that there would be a need to raise awareness on the brand and more carefully construct the company’s identity to take the fastgrowing company to the “next level” of maturation and gain greater market share from its larger competitors. As such, MAXDigital leadership reached out to MSG to support the development of an Integrated Marketing Strategy and to provide onthe-ground interim leadership. From start to finish, the MSG team spent eight months working hand-in-hand with MAXDigital’s young Marketing team. How We Helped To help establish MAXDigital’s brand and identity, Market Strategy Group’s first step was to design a thought leadership platform as part of the broader Integrated Marketing Strategy. This thought leadership platform served as the foundation for the company’s new perspective. It allowed the MAXDigital team to rally around a centralized value prop so the team could clearly and singularly explain what the company does, how it understands the market, the value it provides to its customers and how it is differentiated from its competitive set.
© Market Strategy Group, 2017
“Market Strategy Group was able to come in, take a holistic view and provide direction for us to build a foundation on . . . We had been confusing ourselves by trying to do many different things and, ultimately, confusing our clients on who we are and what we stood for as a brand.”
-Brad Kruse, SVP, Sales MSG Client Success – April 2017 www. mkt-strat.com
Finding Your Identity and Point of View How were we able to help MAXDigital with a centralized value proposition? We leveraged a Hierarchy of Benefits Framework to identify the big “so what” as well as the supporting features of their core brand and products. Once identified, this spectrum of benefits was designed into sales and marketing materials and was integrated across channels, partners and content. Using such a tool allows everything from your Sales and Marketing team to synergize on the same foundational macro-benefits and then enable supporting benefits and featured to be marketed throughout campaigns, business development and even services and support interactions with customers. Measuring Marketing’s Impact We were interested in learning more about the measurable impact MSG’s collaboration as well as MAXDIgital’s Marketing team’s ongoing contribution to lead generation, pipeline conversion and, ultimately, sales. As we all know, demonstrating ROI on Marketing spend is never straightforward. It’s about having the right tools, the right data and clear business processes. We asked MAXDigital’s VP of Marketing, Rebecca Oistad, this very question. She indicated that it’s about showing incremental gains on leads, opportunities and wins. Sales matter. The biggest question to answer is “How is the company doing from an overall revenue perspective?” And, MAXDigital is performing extremely well.
MACRO BENEFITS
MICRO BENEFITS
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PROOF POINTS
“The foundational identity that was set has given our company confidence and we are more comfortable talking about ourselves internally and externally. And it shows in our sales – 2016 was the most successful year our company has had in its history. We are on track for 40% growth in 2017.” -Brad Kruse, SVP, Sales
About MAXDigital MAXDigital is a Chicago-based SaaS company that has been a leader in the auto retail digital space for 15+ years. MAXDigital is dedicated to closing the gap between today’s digitally-enabled consumers and car dealerships. The company provides cloud-based software and mobile applications for the automotive industry, helping car dealers across the US acquire, price, merchandise and sell their new and used car inventory to satisfy the digital consumer, prove value in a vehicle and improve gross profits in each unit sold. MAXDigital is evolving the way that dealers operate so they can better win today’s digital consumers. About Market Strategy Group Market Strategy Group sees business differently. To us, winning isn't about going from Point A to Point B. It's about aligning three distinct dimensions — business direction, people & process, and markets & customers — to drive growth. Getting this right is critical to your bottom line. And it’s not a siloed challenge – it requires multiple departments to work cohesively. We have helped organizations get to an answer custom to your unique situation. We should chat if this is an issue. Alex Kruzel (alex.kruzel@mkt-strat.com).
© Market Strategy Group 2017
http://mkt-strat.com/
MSG Client Success – April 2017 www. mkt-strat.com