GitLab 1HFY23 Global Marketing Campaigns Review, 3 Oct 2022

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From YouTube: FY23H1 Global Campaigns Review - GitHub Competitive (Light Campaign)

Description

FY23H1 Global Campaigns Review - GitHub Competitive (Light Campaign)

Epic: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-com/marketing/-/epics/3236

A

Okay, so welcome everyone to the final campaigns review call uh today, I will be presenting some steps around our GitHub compete initiatives for first half fiscal year, 23. uh friendly reminder to put your questions in the document which we will address at the end of the session. Also, as always, any help with note-taking will be greatly appreciated, so without further Ado. Let's jump on the analysis.

A

A

Right, everyone see my screen.

A

All right so some background information before I get started. um We never really built out a campaign bundle for GitHub competitors, but rather with some promotion around a webcast during GitHub universe, so do due to other priorities such as the automated software delivery campaign for the first half of fiscal year 23., we we're just focused on keeping the drum beat with fresh GitHub competitive content, but really looking forward to collaborate with product marketing and competitive intelligence is second Health to build out the complete compute campaign structure.

A

So a little bit on the two initiatives that we did for the first half of the school year. 23. the first one is a webcast um around a customer migration which is converse against migration story over from GitHub to gitlab. We targeted all audience level for this webcast um and all audience function, because we want to cancel wider maps and the objective for the webcast is to convince prospects to move over from GitHub by sharing conversical success story on improved developer experience on the migration.

A

The second uh initiative that we did was a tech demo on how to integrate GitHub repository with the Galaxy. It is something that the technical marketing did. Thank you it's like for putting this together, uh we targeted audience level. Practitioners, managers and directors of all function, um all technical functions, and then the objective is to get prospects with GitHub install base to start using our robot CI features, so they can slowly migrate over.

A

We used email primarily to promote this webcast and demo. However, we also did a little bit of ABM campaigns on LinkedIn and event days to promote the webcast.

A

The total costs that we spend for promoting these two to events are 39. 000 is 39 000 around 39 000., that's again, mostly from the ABM initiatives that was done on LinkedIn and the numbers. Oh sorry that was then on LinkedIn, not the numbers uh and then for the key. Takeaways I also wanted to share up additional background information. So um the initial GitHub competitive initiative, which was rolled out in 2019, was focused on our built MCI features, but we soon pivoted to focus on devops platform, highlighting our security highlighting security features.

A

After GitHub actions became more mature, which is around 2020..

A

uh Our GitHub competitive initiatives, as mentioned earlier, have generally been around a webinar with not not really like a concrete bit ads or nurture strategy um afterwards, so there's definitely areas for improvements there um and then for this first half facility 23. Our initiatives are mostly targeted towards the consideration and purchase stage and, as you will see later, they are highly efficient in terms of bottom funnel cost metrics uh the customer migration webcast, followed on by the tech demo for the first half of this project.

A

So if we perform better than the webcast, we did back in October 2021, which was a comparison webcast on um GitHub newly released features versus what the lab has um so we've seen ABM tactics today that have been effective in drumming up awareness, however, not so much form fills or conversion likely, due also to the fact that our offers are actually more late stage offers um and then finally path. Factory data shows High engagement on assets that are related to you'd have to get lab integration or migration teams.

A

I'll cover the recommendations. After we go through all the slides as usual,.

A

So here's just a quick snapshot of the campaign timeline again, not that much activity for first half of fiscal year 23. um we did a for the ABM campaign. uh We did um promote the on-demand webcast for um around around the comparison, uh the future comparison webcast that was done back in October on both demand base and Linkedin. So from March to April and then again, starting July June to July. We used LinkedIn to promote the conversible webcast, and so oh yeah.

A

The conversical webcast was rolled out to all segments in American emea in July, as well as the followed on by the tech demo, which has also rolled out to all segments in America anemia uh at the end of July.

B

Hey Agnes, this is Leslie I'll. Add this question: was there a reason that we didn't um cross promote in aipac.

A

The reason was just due to time zones really, uh so we that's the plan as a next step. To actually do this kind of like on a on.

C

A simple life: okay, yeah! Thank you. Okay,.

A

um Here are some of the campaigns creative um in terms of ads and offers on the left, they're all the ads. So it's the demand based ads, I'm, sorry, the LinkedIn apps and then the sixster ads are the two up top the middle. Is um the email invites from Marketo and then finally, the ABM team also did a little bit of uh fake forward on the on these um email invites to the AVM Focus list. I think it was actually to HSBC tier one and then to JP Morgan.

A

What not the full uh APM focuses so and then on the right. Those are the landing pages for the tech demo and the webcast.

A

uh Here's the quick snapshot of the path Factory experience for for GitHub compete, so we built it out in a recommended track where they will. um Pathfactor will actually suggest the next asset based on um what what we browse. But it's basically there's a 17 Assets in the track itself that are filterable but they're all relevant to um the GitHub kind of complete messaging, and then they can be filtered further by the following topics: continuous integration, devops uh and then GitHub. So let's say it's um out of the 17.

A

Five has continuous integration tag and if you click on the continuous integration tag, then it shortens the list to just five five of those that have both the GitHub and continuous integration type.

A

And then on to campaign summary, so um we spent thirty nine thousand dollars again, mostly on LinkedIn and demand base. 600 we've got 600 inquiries uh for the initiative and then 139 mqls and about 25.4 linear saos.

A

So, as mentioned earlier, most of the initiatives are focused on the consideration and purchase stages and seems to be most effective at the purchase stage, as you can see from the mql to ethical conversion rate, which is actually higher than the SAS average and actually higher than our use case. Campaigns.

A

um The cost metrics also looks to be very efficient on the back end at 282 cost per mql and 1543 cost per SEO, which is again well below Target.

A

Here's a quick snapshot of the campaign performance by Channel um again, the demand base on LinkedIn are mostly for awareness, so we didn't really generate any inquiries uh whatsoever um from that, but the email Channel, which is the primary channel for um the GitHub driving form fields for the GitHub initiatives uh it has.

A

As you can see, it has below average and greater mql conversion rate, but very high mql to SEO conversion rate likely, because again, the offers are also more aligned to kind of like the purchase stage of the funnel for these First Health dispelier 23.

A

uh Here's a snapshot of the campaign performance by offer um something that I notice here is just it's apparent that the webcast topic aligning that to the stage of the funnel that we're trying to influence is quite critical. So, for example, if you look at the conversica and the tech demo, I think that's more aligned to the purchase stage and then the feature comparison webcast, which is the which is back in October, that's more aligned to the consideration stage.

A

So you can see how it influenced the conversion rate for inquiry, m2l and then m2l to as well. For for this webcasts.

A

And then channels, deep knife, I'm, not sure if Megan or doubt is in this call if she is I'm wondering if she wants to present this slide um because she's closer to the channel, but otherwise I can take this on as well.

B

C

B

Guess I'm on, but what are we looking.

A

At hold on this is the demand based performance um for ABM, that.

B

Okay, um here yeah I'm happy to chime in like if you want to run with it, I'm I'm happy to answer any questions but I'm not sure exactly what is needed.

A

Let me try to um I'll I'll leave and then, if you know you want to add anything additional feel free to so again, this this campaign is for uh increasing gitlab awareness and engagement on ABM key accounts showing intent for our competitive. In uh for our competitive keywords, it was ran back in February uh through uh April and the target audience for this, uh for this initiative uh is top funnel um marketing. Qualified ABM K account showing competitive intent, so we spent about thirty thousand dollars um and then got 2.7 million impressions.

A

100 of the accounts was reached and then we got 2 000 and 100 clicks. um 0.07 click through and 14.12 cost per click. For these again the goal is awareness, so we didn't really get any form fills here. Megan. Can you comment yeah on, like um the engagement I mean the awareness performance on this I.

D

I want to determine here too, but Megan. If you have a specific sorry comment here so in in q1, a key thing we did was introduce new channels. uh Previously, in fy22, 100 of the spend for ABM was focused on demand base. It didn't differentiate into LinkedIn, neither promoted posts, emails which are really more conversion oriented, but we wanted to just do a final litmus test on in q1 was: can we drive conversion from our demand base ads? What we found is that we may have Impressions.

D

We may have clicks like it's, not a high converting um channel for us, it's more like great for brand awareness, because we'll have our banner ads showing across the web, so where we were pushing this like pushing demand base ads to like a an event or a webcast such as this.

D

We found that we actually should transition some of the conversion oriented offers to LinkedIn and use demand base to push to our website, let them kind of like self-educate and make that more of an awareness stage play but I think the the February or end of February. That was what we assessed and well. We took an account for moving forward.

A

Thank you Jackie, so I do have the follow-on one, which is the LinkedIn performance um as well, so I will I will kind of share that out as well. So here's the ABM campaign again I think a lot of it also because is because we're targeting uh very specific key accounts. So we haven't really seen a lot of conversions from these.

A

We did it again in LinkedIn one more time so once uh so, between February to April, uh targeting ABM key accounts showing competitive intent and then again on the right um between June, that's from oh, the one on the left is promoting the feature, comparison webcast and then the one on the right is um between June to July, promoting the customer uh migration webcast.

A

As you can see the one on the right that generate one form fill, but it's still um I guess not very high converting in terms of Channel and there's definitely um areas that we can optimize uh or work with. Maybe at the ABM team on.

B

I think it's important to note for the one on the right as well, that um we didn't even have a full month of run time there, which is typically what we like to make sure. We have number one and then number two um I, don't think we had Legion form set up yet and we've seen a major increase in form fills when we switched over to Legion forms for ABM. So we definitely are making those optimizations um and we'll keep plugging along.

A

Thank you, Megan.

A

And then finally, I wanted to share the path Factory track performance for uh GitHub compete, so our fast Factor track engagement and bench rate improved from the second half of his failure 22, but it's still low compared to the industry, benchmarks and other use case campaigns.

A

um Underperformance is seen in the ABM campaign track again like if we implement the lead gem forms they might. This might change. um The general campaign track is actually uh doing okay and then the top three assets with the longest average view. Time are the ones that are on GitHub to get live, integration or migration themes, as mentioned earlier.

A

So on to recommendations, um so the biggest recommendation here is really to just tag team with product marketing and competitive intelligence to really build out the GitHub compute campaign structure, something that we haven't done um so really looking at our assets, also and understanding like content gaps, um so that we can actually have an actual um digital strategy and understand like how how these assets fit in the overall paid digital strategy strategy, which is the second worldwide as well for recommendations and then there's also an action item for me to work with the lifecycle team to start activating.

A

uh This GitHub competitive webinars in the intelligent nurture, which we have not done uh and then finally work with uh product marketing and content to explore how to repurpose the high performing customer migration. Webcast I, know, um Samia I think had an idea on turning these into bite, size um kind of like Snippets, previously and I.

A

We ran into roadblock because the on-demand version needed like approval from the customer to to be redistributed, but we've got we've since got an approval, so that is the roadblock for the um the intelligent nurture initially and also repurposing it, which we can now do all right. So that's all it's a short one for uh Hub, because we didn't really have too many um initiatives yet, but let's jump into questions uh Jackie. Do you want to verbalize your? Is that a.

D

Comment, no I'm, just I'm, just writing down the notes from what we just discussed mid conversations, so you can jump to Dave.

A

If you want to verbalize your question or.

A

Oh Dave I think you're, muted.

A

Or I can take on the um Let me. Let me read Dave's question out uh so have we explored trying competitive ad spend targeting companies? We are targeting who tell us that we are competing against GitHub. This may be the same as targeting you do for competitive intent, but is there any interlock between us and sales on prospects in discussion with us.

A

Is this basically trying to tie.

A

um Expand to information from Salesforce I'm trying to understand not sure, I'm understanding, questions actually.

D

I'm going to make some assumptions on what he means. I don't know, does your? Is your mic not working Dave, okay, yeah?

D

um So just some background, Megan's been a one-person show on the AVM front, Marcy joined end of August and is already making a huge impact to our ability to do more testing and leverage intent in regards to compete. We've we have the ability to use GitHub intent signals. So if someone's searching for GitHub, we can using demand base tell that they're they're searching for it and then serve them ads. That would help like kind of share where gitlab fits against GitHub.

D

So we have the data, but we need to expand how we build out the campaigns to better leverage, intent signals for compete, but these were some MVC initial. Like tests, let's use the GitHub intent modeling to see. Do we get conversions out of demand base when we launched LinkedIn? Do we do we start to get conversions out of that? We now have LinkedIn Legion forms, so I think there's a prime opportunity to test it.

D

If we have a compete, offer, that's strong for us to to validate against, but I, don't know if that answers your questions in relation to. Is this an interlock between us and sales on prospects and discussion with us, um like if they're in a sales cycle and they're already saying they're using GitHub? Is that what you mean? So no? This is more at the front end and it's all for shorter Focus but I think that's something we can consider there. There's some data in Salesforce around their install base and comes from Zoom info, but yeah.

D

That's that's something we can investigate we're kind of at the starting point for more introducing the compete campaigns. We've had more of the high level Global campaigns layered into our ABM efforts, because we do need the off like the strong offers for compete, um but yeah we're just at the start of like restructuring. Also how we want to approach the digital campaigns for the key accounts.

A

And then next um competitive campaigns are tricky, since they are really an articulation of our core differentiated value, proposition targeting companies that might be considered and that we don't want to go head-to-head against GitHub from a branding perspective. Are there any best practices that you see from other companies doing competitive campaign? Who is doing it? Well.

C

A

Anyway, you want to chime in exactly I'll.

D

Chime in I I think that this is something we could probably I'm, not sure. This is something that maybe Tracy can help us with and like looking at the industry. Do we see complete commands or there's someone else, who's specifically focused on compete? Do they know the types of campaigns that are being run?

D

um I can only speak to what was successful for us in going head-to-head against Jenkins. That was something that we saw success with in the for in 20, 2019 2020, and so when we had dedicated resources that were able to say answer, questions that oftentimes are being brought up to sales. Could we answer them earlier on and start the conversation um just talking about the core competencies that we, where we win was successful?

D

I know Agnes, you specifically ran the Jenkins compete, um but since we saw success there, that's why we were being asked asked from sales at like kind of noodling on it on our on our side too. Do we need to expand to other competitors and do a similar structure, because it was working I.

A

Think part of it also did you learn something from that campaign was having a very um good set of assets, really I think that was the one thing that we missed or like.

A

We don't have right now with GitHub, um because with Jenkins we were very like we have a really good set of assets, that and being very strategic in terms of like Levering leveraging that, like so the three things that really, for example, like the content journey and everything's really well laid out and I, think that's something that we have not really done for GitHub.

A

um That's also the feedback that we got from the from Matt previously from the paper Epstein. That was, you know you need to be very intentional about about the set of assets that you leverage to really communicate with what you're trying to do like or compete.

D

And to add on to that, and just for some again historical perspective in 20, 2019, no 2020, we said okay, we're gonna, take on GitHub, because Jenkins is doing so well in discussions. We ended up kind of watering it down to basically being a replica or just a CI like campaign. It was exactly what we were putting in the CI campaign.

D

So I know that Dave we've talked about like should we use the intent but focus on like the assets that we have that are more geared towards overarching value or like solution, perhaps, but that did not perform nearly as well as when we went head to head and because that is what GitHub the GitHub compete, light ended up being in 2020 and then last year was the first time that we did have a webcast where we said.

D

Okay, we're gonna, have a different framing we're going to talk about gitlab versus or kind of like talk about what GitHub had released at their at universe and just give it here's what we're hearing from them. Here's some of the competencies of git lab in relation to the things that they're bringing forward, so it wasn't necessarily being we're the best they're, the worst. It was just giving a kind of a clear comparison that could spark more of a conversation with sales.

D

You want to dive a little bit deeper. Let's, let's have you get in touch so I think there is a potentially a way to go head down without being aggressive without being too ambitious, but still like using that framing to draw attention and drive more engagement.

D

Sorry I'm, like just like so much so much work on these in the past, um but I think your point Agnes about the assets we had really strong assets for Jenkins and I. Don't think we ever got there with GitHub. So even looking at these results, I think had we had stronger assets. Maybe we would be able to put better engagement results against it.

A

Also- and this is maybe something that the product marketing team can comment on like we've always been under the impression and I guess, you can see from our metrics that compete campaigns are more for Middle to kind of like late or like bottom funnel, because we we don't really want to pick fights on the street. So it's like you know, people who don't even know about us.

A

um You all agree that it that should be the approach or you know, can we create? Do you think there will be any additional like more top funnel um assets that we could leverage like prior to the consideration stage? Are we going to create, for example, to start the campaign earlier.

C

Hey Agnes, this is Melinda um I, think if we work with G2 or trust radius like reputation sites and explore sponsorship options on those pages, there's a potential for us to include more messaging and assets on those sites that directly, um you know linked to our competitive messaging against some of these. Some of these other vendors.

C

And that could, and that would yeah and that would Target top of funnel awareness, more exploration stage or consideration stage, um and that would also Branch out into other um competitors to Beyond GitHub.

A

Thank you. That makes a lot of sense. I know we have one minute left, so uh carry okay, you want to verbalize. Maybe we can you know whoever can stay I'm happy to stay for one more question um if we need to or we can tackle it, this thing as well.

A

Okay, I guess, if everyone I think we'll just try to tackle a sink and then, if it's not um tackled, then feel free to come to our AMA session on Monday October 3rd uh at 8am Pacific. So thanks everyone for joining the call again and see all the name recall whoever's attending.

C