Unity Deploys LinkedIn ABM Strategy to Take Real-Time 3D Beyond Gaming

Software development company Unity, which is based in San Francisco provides a platform for creating and operating real-time 3D (RT3D) content. Creators, ranging from game developers to artists, architects, automotive designers, filmmakers, and others, use Unity to make their imaginations come to life.

Challenge

While the company has expanded to industries beyond gaming for years, there is a brand perception of Unity as solely a video game company, which presents an awareness challenge when engaging customers outside of gaming. So, the Unity team made a plan to aggressively target new sectors.

“One of the reasons we decided to create the demand generation account-based marketing (ABM) engine was to support the sales team as we tapped into new industries and expanded Unity’s presence in the games space,” said Jonas Oliveira, lead of performance marketing management at Unity.

Solution

Unity’s team deployed its ABM strategy on LinkedIn. “LinkedIn was the best platform to support the ABM efforts,” Oliveira said. The campaign began with regular Sponsored Content ads, while the team continued to target and refine audiences across different verticals. “We went from mixing and matching different attributes to engaging more often and better with users within our target account list,” he added.

Unity targeted industrial stakeholders with the capacity to understand Unity’s real-time 3D development platform and provided education relevant to revenue-generating use-case scenarios to drive interest. “It was important to be able to solidify Unity for non-gaming verticals and to show results over the long-term,” Oliveira said.

The company produced various types of educational collateral, marketing to different proficiencies, and at different levels of the sales funnel. Continual refinement of messaging drove enhanced value propositions and more effective targeting within the ABM approach.

Results

Unity saw a 45% conversion rate increase in specific campaigns by implementing Lead Gen Ads as part of its ABM strategy.

“We were able to hit on a great amount of success, and it’s definitely not over. The team is constantly revisiting the work done and adjusting the program based on the data collected,” Oliveira said.

More than 80% of Unity’s qualified leads in 2020 are from LinkedIn. The company combination-tested 100 audiences in 2020 for industrial campaigns on the platform.

“LinkedIn was the platform with the features and functionality for Unity to engage with target accounts,” Oliveira said. “Also, it provided the attribution needed for reporting and justifying the investment.”

Pitch the Right Person

Unity’s first challenge was overcoming a lack of brand awareness. Its second was getting other industries to understand how and why its real-time 3D platform is pertinent to them. The team turned to LinkedIn targeted ads as a one-two punch to attract the interest of relevant stakeholders and shed light on value-driven use cases.

“We spent a lot of time on strategy development with a focus on defining the ideal customer profiles, audiences creation, and target account list refinement.” Oliveira said. With the sophisticated personas developed as part of its ABM strategy, Unity used LinkedIn’s powerful targeting tools to point refined messaging at the right stakeholders, in the right industry verticals.

Educate to Intrigue

To drive home the value and potential ROI of Unity’s platform at an industry-specific level, the company turned its ABM strategy into an education-based sales funnel, starting on LinkedIn. It started with broad, accessible content to raise awareness and refined its messaging deeper into the sales funnel with industry- specific messaging.

“The program was launched with a heavy focus on webinars,” Oliveira said. “This was handy because it allowed the team to kick-off the program quickly and to start creating awareness and user engagement.” Eventually, Unity developed more refined educational collateral, including case studies, whitepapers, e-books, and demos, using LinkedIn to funnel.

Finding Success in Partnership

To leverage the full capabilities of LinkedIn’s targeting and to build its ABM program out with the right type of content, Unity worked in partnership with LinkedIn, via a custom workshop. LinkedIn collaborated with Unity’s content marketing managers and product marketing managers to address challenges in producing strategic content for its sales funnel.

“We had recurring meetings to educate sales, product marketing, and the creative team about B2B content marketing and ABM. It allowed the team to look into benchmarks," Oliveira said. "It was also an opportunity for the Performance Marketing team to report on what was working or not, to answer questions, and to build our own best practices together.” 

LinkedIn is the platform with more expensive but better-qualified leads and, over time, we see those leads becoming opportunities. That translates into revenue and sales more often than other platforms. – Jonas Oliveira Lead, Performance Marketing Management, Unity

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