How Nine Stones Ran a Thought Leadership Campaign for Opticore

Opticore is a London-based cloud and IT infrastructure consultancy that helps clients optimise their networks through digital transformation. With many competitors chasing the same high-quality leads, it wanted a content marketing campaign that brought its expertise and value proposition to the fore, and its marketing team turned to Nine Stones.

The Challenge

Opticore had two objectives: raise awareness of its brand and win leads by promoting content. It wanted Nine Stones to focus on SEO and campaign optimisation. But this was Opticore's first real outreach campaign and its first time working with an agency, and it wanted a set of working processes it could follow on future campaigns.

The campaign had to reach CTOs and other senior decision-makers in technology companies, and serve as a blueprint for future campaigns.

The Approach

Research and planning. Nine Stones analysed Opticore's competitors, business model and services, and audited its website and earlier marketing material. With Opticore it researched buyer personas, brand guidelines, messaging and tone of voice, then ran a two-hour campaign workshop with the marketing team to set goals, identify barriers and agree a roadmap.

A campaign built on a survey. Opticore had recently surveyed more than 500 professionals across a range of industries on the challenges of digital transformation and upgrading IT infrastructure. Nine Stones made the survey the centrepiece and expanded its findings into thought leadership articles, a survey report, infographics, social media posts, landing pages, email copy and repurposed webinar videos.

A white-labelled webinar. Nine Stones wrote the webinar's outline and script and hosted it on its own Zoom account, white-labelled so that only Opticore was visible. Through its own network, it brought in Jenna Reese, CEO of Connect Centric, as a guest speaker.

The Outcome

The webinar drew a large number of registrations, and the steady flow of articles and other content brought significant increases in website traffic and impressions. In its peak month the site had more than 7,900 visitors, against an average of 1,000 at the same time the year before, and organic traffic almost doubled in a year. Nine Stones has continued to work with Opticore since.