Implementing a Best in Class Brand and Demand Strategy

  • Global software leader ServiceNow offers solutions that enable enterprise organizations to digitize their businesses and deliver next-generation experiences with the Now Platform.
  • ServiceNow identified positive outcomes from the overlap between brand and demand audiences, with brand campaigns driving increased engagement in demand campaigns. 
  • The cross-functional Brand and Digital Activation teams at ServiceNow developed a shared strategy aimed at a more refined and consistent audience alignment that required a high level of collaboration, much of it manual and repetitive. 
  • To implement this strategy, ServiceNow needed a solution that enabled them to develop, implement, and measure this collaborative campaign approach and reduce the level of effort required.
  • Christopher Stemborowski, Global Strategy Director at ServiceNow, explains the additional challenge of measuring an untested strategy. “We really wanted to hone in on a diagnostic metric, but a metric that we know has an impact on our business: measuring the cross-exposure between our brand campaigns and our demand campaigns.”
  • ServiceNow added their Ad accounts to Business Manager. Across brand and demand accounts, they shared targeting parameters and retargeting audiences to ensure they targeted the same audiences, while further building their funnel.
  • Integrating their LinkedIn Ad accounts with Business Manager provided the connections, data sharing, and reporting ServiceNow needed to succeed with this new marketing strategy.
  • Leveraging LinkedIn’s Business Manager tool helped ServiceNow teams execute a functional activity which previously they did not have a simple scaled solution for.
  • ServiceNow successfully implemented the strategy across six campaigns initially, tracking against both brand and demand.
  • With demand campaigns now warmed by brand campaigns, ServiceNow has seen an estimated 69% improvement in conversion rates.
  • The results have been outstanding. The opportunity for ServiceNow moving forward is to maximize what percentage of overlap they drive across the brand and demand campaigns because they have proven the value of it.
  • ServiceNow has expanded the volume of campaigns and markets where they use this strategy and continuing to explore new ways to leverage Business Manager.
  • The list of audiences ServiceNow reaches is extensive. With solutions utilized by roughly 80% of Fortune 500 companies, ServiceNow’s audiences span multiple categories and multiple parts of large enterprises including C-Suite decision makers.
  • With the depth and breadth of this audience, being able to activate the new strategy across more markets helps ensure the right people are met with the right messaging at the right time, and nurtured through the funnel.
  • Since implementing this change in their targeting strategy, ServiceNow has seen a 50% lift in Engagement Rate for members exposed to both Brand and Demand messaging, as well as a 50% increase in audiences exposed to both Brand and Demand messaging.
  • ServiceNow wants to ensure that they’re building relationships and delivering value to the teams implementing their tools and solutions. Having end users who engage with their products and their brand on a regular basis, and who have a positive association with the brand, fosters those long-term successful partnerships.
  • ServiceNow uses the full suite of LinkedIn Ads tools in their deployment of this marketing strategy.
  • The ROI across all ad formats increased as more members were nurtured by both brand and demand campaigns, with a 27% decrease in cost-per-click.
  • “I don’t think that there was only one placement or campaign that really stood out,” recalls Stemborowski. “The magic of this work is that we used a tool and technology to unlock value that was always there for campaigns across our brand and demand efforts.”