Walker Sands
A new brand identity that underscores our approach to B2B marketing — always customized, never templated
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Project Overview
Yes Lifecycle Marketing (YLM), set a goal of becoming a trusted source for marketing thought leadership. Walker Sands set out to earn one media placement a day for a whole year with a three-tactic strategy consisting of reporter relationships, tailored outreach and newsjacking. Walker Sands exceeded its goal, earning hundreds of high-quality media placements — all in one year.
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The Challenge
Yes Lifecycle Marketing (YLM) is solving the problem that every multichannel marketer faces today: how to use the available tools, tactics and data to connect with customers. As a company that takes an innovative, integrated approach to align email and digital marketing services, YLM recognized in 2012 that it needed help evangelizing its new brand, announcing product launches and promoting high-value thought leadership content across digital media. These initiatives required B2B PR expertise, so YLM turned to Walker Sands.
For the first three years of the program, Walker Sands’ YLM team succeeded in generating high-volume coverage in support of YLM’s data reports and other content assets. The media came to value YLM as a brand capable of providing original marketing insights that could be spun into valuable content for their respective audiences.
After helping YLM achieve defined goals (rebranding, product launches and content promotion), Walker Sands worked with YLM on a new goal of establishing YLM as a trusted source for thought leadership in the marketing industry. To achieve this goal, the Walker Sands YLM team issued itself a challenge: In 2015, Walker Sands would earn one placement for YLM every day of the year.
The Solution
To meet the ambitious goal of a placement per day, the Walker Sands team pursued a three-tactic strategy that would ensure high-quality coverage, the targeted reach of audiences and a high volume of awareness throughout the year.
- Advancing reporter relationships
For three years, the Walker Sands YLM team had established trusting relationships with reporters at influential publications. New reporters were quickly brought up to speed on YLM’s reputation for delivering valuable content and authoritative insights to marketing stories, while the team continued to pitch all reporters who trusted Walker Sands and YLM. These reporters saw Walker Sands as a content partner that understood their audiences and could introduce YLM’s expert opinions into stories at a moment’s notice. - Tailoring outreach
Throughout 2015, the Walker Sands YLM team remained committed to ensuring that every pitch was customized to each reporter’s beat. After every email exchange with a reporter, the team shared their notes about upcoming story opportunities, staffing changes and areas of interest for each writer and publication. Internal communication was key – reporters do not like to be pitched the same idea twice or feel like their feedback is being ignored, and professionalism was crucial to the success of the engagement. - Staying relevant
Walker Sands continuously provided publications with marketing tips and best practices on behalf of YLM. But the team also needed to offer YLM’s perspective on the latest news and trends in the industry. Taking advantage of timely topics helped YLM gain more awareness through placements, while also establishing itself as a brand that has its finger on the pulse of the marketing industry.
The Results
The Walker Sands YLM team exceeded its internal goal of a placement a day, earning 404 placements in 2015 on behalf of Yes Lifecycle Marketing. These placements were in high-quality publications: 169 (42 percent) of these placements were top-tier.
At the following quarterly review, YLM’s VP of Marketing shared that the executive team was thrilled with the volume of coverage. YLM’s goal of establishing itself as a trusted, relevant source in the marketing industry had been achieved.
Goals are at the core of the Walker Sands approach. We set them, we meet them, and when we exceed them, we set even more ambitious goals. In many cases, we need to set internal goals to help our clients meet their goals. With YLM, our process resulted in wins for their business, our agency and our trusted media partners.
