Challenge:
Challenge: Establish a European software company in the US Market.
Solution:
As a European software startup in the emerging Windows to UNIX connectivity
market, the company needed to quickly establish itself in the US
marketplace. Target customers included design engineers or network
administrators that required access to a range of graphical, character-based
UNIX and X applications from a single PC desktop, regardless of
the computing platform.
A key sales and marketing strategy was to place copies of software
with qualified prospects for utilization and evaluation, under 90-day
trial agreements. To fill that evaluation pipeline with qualified
prospects, the company launched a major US public relations and
advertising campaign. The PR campaign had 3 major components: US
press tours, news releases, and product reviews conducted by the
editorial community and independent labs. The advertising campaign
included 2 primary components: advertorials and full page 4-color
advertisements. The advertorials were informational in nature and
targeted towards network and systems administrators.
Following the development of top tier publication list with heavy
UNIX and PC editorial content, advertisements were placed in Open
Systems Today, Datamation, Network Computing,
UNIX World, and many others. A sampling of the publications
that conducted product review included Digital News & Review,
PCWeek, Open Systems Today, and LANComputing.
Regular customer and product news was announced and multiple press
tours were conducted on both US coasts and at specific trade shows.
Meanwhile, the sales team was being expanded to include inside sales
and seasoned personnel in key centers such as Washington D.C. to
serve the US Federal Government and New York City to serve the financial
services arena. As the inquiries and sales leads continued coming
in, the company moved beyond evaluation software copies to paying
customers and, in many cases, multi-seat licenses. The customer
base expanded to include a wide range of industries such as electrical
and circuitry design, automotive design, federal government and
national security applications.
The national advertising campaign won 5 readership awards during
the first 90 days and the company was acquired within 18 months
of the launch of the campaigns, due in part, to the company's market
share position and the strong revenue stream that had been established.
