Situation // Context:
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a fast-growing global market expected to reach $520 billion by 2021. Companies across industries are using IoT to transform business models, optimize operations, and increase revenue. However, success in IoT also requires partnerships across the IoT ecosystem if organizations are to successfully innovate, build, and sell solutions.
Challenge:
Microsoft is one of the major players in the IoT landscape. In addition to their IoT technology innovations, Microsoft is also dedicated to building and adding value across the IoT ecosystem to empower their partners and the IoT market to achieve more. Thus, the IoT in Action event series was born. The focus of this program was bringing together partners and customers through in-person events and online webinars to share the latest knowledge and insights on IoT innovations and help nurture partnerships. Event success not only relied on strong attendance but also on engaging a broad audience across various digital channels – so Microsoft turned to Delightful Communications.
Solution:
To ensure the IoT in Action events stood out in a busy technology market, Delightful created a holistic demand generation and event amplification strategy. We focused on telling great stories – about Microsoft and partner IoT technology, the people who build it, and the businesses who use it to create business impact – to drive attendance to the IoT in Action events while creating excitement about the IoT solutions built by Microsoft and their partners.
For us, strategy and tactical execution is a mix of science and art. We used a data-driven approach to plan for media spend, channel selection, and demand projection to maximize ROI for our client. In parallel, we created authentic, useful, relevant, and actionable (AURA) content for before, during, and after the event that appealed to Microsoft partners and customers. This included blog posts, graphics, videos, and testimonials – all with the focus of encouraging event registrations and helping amplify event content among and beyond attendees themselves
All content was widely distributed across Microsoft social channels, as well as its partners’ and event speakers’ channels, to generate and reinforce interest in the events, Microsoft IoT technology, and its partner ecosystem offerings over time.
Results:
Through these efforts, we exceeded our goals and delivered hugely successful events.
Our work continues with Microsoft, but between the kick-off event in March 2017 and the end of Dec 2019, we’ve achieved the following:
- 48 events in 38 cities worldwide and 30+ webinars
- 24,475 attendees
- 2 million social media impressions on Twitter with the #IoTinActionMS hashtag
- 473 pieces of digital content produced
Our work on this program also earned Delightful Communications a 2018 Content Marketing Institute Award.