Solving complex IT problems often begins at a search engine, and we knew that exploring search patterns would help lead us to some relevant insights. But we didn’t rely on old research methods. Instead, we developed Caffeine visualize the behavioral patterns of our target audience.

Caffeine maps search paths people take around any given topic. While most search tools analyze search volume and make assumptions around consumer behaviors, Caffeine uses Natural Language Processing and Semantic Clustering to focus on User search pathways.

Once we understood how people were searching for their IT infrastructure, we knew we still needed to learn more about what our target was like. What really made them tic? In the pervasive Sea of Sameness in the technology marketplace, we understood that it would be vital to find the most compelling insights possible to help HPE Flex Capacity stand out in the market.

So, we didn’t stop with only Caffeine. We developed, Pyxis, our very own personalized, Data Connection Mapping Tool. Pyxis enabled us to begin identifying key influencers. From there, we mapped the network of people and interests they followed, which gave us a holistic view what made these CIOs wake up in the morning.

Gathering data on search behavior revealed that nobody outside of HPE knew what Flexible Capacity was, or what the service even did. Repeated searches around Books for Dummies, example PDFs, and basic tutorials led us to this understanding. And this realization forced us to shift our strategic thinking from a wholly demand gen campaign, to incorporating a general awareness campaign - into the demand gen offering.

We used Pyxis to map the Top-100 CIO Twitter influencers for HPE, and their combined network of 174,000 accounts they followed.

With proprietary calculations, we cross-referenced these influencers’ networks, placed them into clusters of shared interests in everything from trade magazines and blogs to music, travel and more. From the map of these clusters, we were able to match our creative and strategy to the right CIOs who were not only in the market for HPEs products, but also had extraordinary influence in the marketplace at large.

With everything said, our list of campaign results should speak volumes for how effective it was.

Our click-through rates were very successful. Display ads performed at a 0.29% CTR compared to a .20% industry average for similar campaigns. Click-through effective increased 6x compared to before the campaign.

We also focused on social media, and we wanted to improve performance on Twitter. Fortunately, our campaign followed through, earning 25% more efficiency when looking at cost per landing page visit, and 42% more efficiency when looking at the cost per click on an ad.