About Cisco Partner Marketing
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) enables people to make powerful connections–whether in business, education, philanthropy, or creativity. Cisco hardware, software, and service offerings are used to create the Internet solutions that make networks possible–providing easy access to information anywhere, at any time.
Cisco sells its products and services, both directly through its own sales force as well as through its value-added resellers. Learn more about Cisco Systems.
What was Cisco looking to achieve?
Cisco wanted to drive more engagement with its Partner Marketing Channel with a thru-marketing program. The Cisco Partner Marketing Demand Generation team was tasked with building scalable paid search, paid social, display, remarketing, email, and webinar campaigns to market on behalf of its Channel Partners. The end goal was to get Channel Partners signed on to run marketing campaigns with a combination of their marketing dollars as well as utilizing Cisco Partner Marketing Funds and DISTI Marketing Development Funds (when available).
Once these campaigns were launched the task was then to optimize the campaigns, show a demonstratable and measurable return, and use those results to get more Channel Partners engaged.
How We Exceeded Cisco’s Expectations
Another contractor had been tasked with building this program and the results were lackluster, to say the least. After spending about a year trying to build out the campaigns and program, they had managed about $100,000 in marketing spend (while another $100K was left in the marketing accounts and left unspent) and generated $0 in opportunities. Most of the ad spend was going into display marketing where the creatives and messaging were very Cisco-brand focused.
A completed rebuild was in order. After stopping all display campaigns, we rebuilt 5 different paid search campaigns focusing on Cisco products and categories. From there we developed new landing pages for all campaigns, packaging marketing assets rather than offering the traditional “one form for one asset” offer that B2B companies frequently use.
The initial launch of the first 5 paid search campaigns proved successful and that we were on the right track. In the first quarter of the new campaigns, we were able to generate a 4:1 ROAS.
Original ROAS: 0
Initial Launch ROAS: 4:1
After the initial success of the program we built 18 additional paid search campaigns, built new banner ads to use in remarketing, and developed a webinar program fueled by a new series of emails partners could use to drive enrollment. We also developed an organic social media program where we curated social media content, created social media posts, and published them to Cisco partner accounts.
This all took place over the following two quarters where we saw ROAS go from 4:1 to 20:1
Original ROAS: 0
Expanded Launch ROAS: 20:1
The final phase of the project saw the expansion of Cisco Partner Marketing participation and the available marketing budget. We also oversaw the implementation of a keyword bidding platform (increasing the paid search ROI from 20:1 to 42:1) and a more robust webinar platform which drove opportunity value from $6 million annually to $60 million annually.
Original ROAS: 0
Final Phase ROAS: 42:1
Financial Impact
The financial impact of our marketing optimization efforts was dramatic. The all-in program budget, including ad spend, marketing automation tools, contractor labor, and marketing platforms was $2 million annually. The initial ROAS was $0, and the total value of the program was less than $1 million (driven from email only).
The last four quarters of this program drove a total of $80 million in opportunities for the Cisco marketing partners involved, and the Partner ROAS on paid digital was 42:1.
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