GitLab Demand Generation, 6 Nov 2020

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From YouTube: 2020-11-06: Digital Marketing (Demand Gen) Update

Description

Latest update from Digital Marketing. In this video, we get into some of tests we are doing in FY22-Q4. High level overview:

- Budget pacing strategy on paid digital ads
- GitLab security capability awareness tests
- New Display platform going live, Digital Video 360
- LinkedIn in-platform lead gen forms
- Tests on different ad units on paid social (LinkedIn and Facebook)
- How we are aligning efforts on Display ads with ABM team with Demandbase
- Enterprise campaign update on paid
- Jenkins competitive campaign update on paid

A

Hey everyone I'm matt nguyen here and uh leslie stinson from the digital marketing team. I want to give an update on what's happening uh on the paid digital side and um things that are happening into uh in q4 that we're really excited about. So what I really wanted to talk through is some of the uh some of the tests and the things that we're going into with q4, which are really exciting.

A

One of those is um what we call is like a a budget test, so we're doing is um pushing budget into certain parts of the month that um kind of fit more towards the sales cycle, so we're doing in q4 is out of our total budget, um we're pushing 50 of the budget to be spent um on our demand efforts into november and then dialing back down in december for at about 20. A lot of that has to do with the the holidays um and accommodating for that.

A

Where there's not a lot of activity, that's happening and then we'll ramp back up um in january to um to 30 percent, and so the reason for that is that um talking to the sales team and understanding their sales cycle is that a lot of times the last month of the quarter, the last two weeks they're, not necessarily looking for um new or working new deals um that are coming through the pipeline at that time.

A

So it makes sense for us to try to push as much of um demand in the first part of the quarter versus the last part of the quarter.

A

So we're going to test that, for this quarter um in the later quarters, outside of the holidays, will probably front load the first six weeks of the quarter in general and then scale down um more evenly as we go through the quarter for q q, one two and three. um But we interesting how that shapes out. When we look at, uh we look at um the the budget um when we're plant media planning for uh the quarter.

A

The other interesting part in that is that we'll look at also being aligned with the needs of sales and seeing where the gaps are as far as pipeline regionally and then also by like um by segments, whether that's uh enterprise mean market in the small business, so be able to be fluid in understanding like okay, where the what the specific needs are um and sales on the sales team and then try to accommodate our uh digital marketing efforts with demand gen to help fill those gaps.

A

So looking forward to that, um we'll apply that into uh q4 and see how that shapes out. um The second thing I wanted to talk about is um a new display platform that we'll be running with. uh It's called dv360 stands for digital video 360, which is a google product, and the the thing that excites me about this platform is that it really allows us to get micro targeted towards um our personas and also our our segments, and so we actually can get into audiences that are tied to company size.

A

But then the other part is looking at specific um uh audiences um that apply to some niches, such as like public sector right. So those are there's some audience that we can build out in db360 um our previous platform or the ones that we'll continue to use is a google display network which actually doesn't allow us to do that type of targeting so with db360. That's going to be an interesting test, so we'll push that into q4 as well.

A

Another thing that we'll be doing is enhancing some of our um awareness around security capability. So one of the first things that we've done in q3 and we'll kind of continue to expand is um get into platforms and publishers where we can talk about um gitlab security capabilities, so we did a segment with security weekly on their podcast.

A

There are some things that we'll be able to do with our engagement with stack overflow or targeting security tags and their stack exchange website as well to build that awareness.

A

um The other thing that there's another publisher that we'll look at driving with is issa, which is a security organization where we can get into webinars and emails to build that awareness, so something that's pretty exciting. As we look at security and trying to build that awareness with our devsecops campaigns, one of the tests that we did run in um in q3 that we started is on linkedin, um which is called their lead.

A

Gen forms, um and what that allows us to do is capture leads directly onto on the linkedin platform versus linking off and um filling out. um The marquette forms that we have and the interesting part, and that is that um we only ran out for a few weeks in q3, but we're seeing some really promising results.

A

um We've seen a 50 51 improvement in click-through rate as far as like the ads itself as well, we've seen a decrease in 57 percent of um cost per inquiry, so our cost has come way down on um being run on linkedin in the past, linkedin has been one of their more expensive channels to run on where just looking at some data right now, where our cost per um inquiry on average for our prospecting, was around 500 um cost per inquiry and now we're down under 100, which is really exciting, um and the reason why that happens is that it auto um auto populates the form when somebody clicks on an ad on linkedin so grabbing their first name last name and then their work, email and then, where they're working.

A

It's all that information, that's provided in the profile and then it gets passed to us that we can upload into our system. So we'll continue to um test that into q1, but some really promising things there aligned with linkedin. I think there's a lot of opportunity that we have as well that I'll pass on to uh to leslie stinson to talk about and some other things that we'll be testing into q4 here.

B

Cool thanks matt, um so let me see so yeah, so the first um that we're going to be testing is linkedin and mail uh in mills or message ads, they're, essentially emails that are native in the linkedin platform, uh so I'm putting together an issue just to gather those testing materials. uh So we can launch the test soon and start to get those baseline metrics in that we can kind of test against in the future.

B

uh So right now um we're determining um which audience to move forward with with the test which assets and what ctas to use- and I think we're starting to get a fuller picture of you know like uh what that campaign is going to be looking like um the other ad unit that we're testing um this quarter is going to be carousel ads and those are just uh those are actually in linkedin and facebook.

B

uh So carousel ads are multiple cards in one ad unit, so we have the potential to present multiple ctas and assets, etc in one ad unit and really start to understand, what's the most relevant to our audience.

B

So I'm in the process of putting that issue together for digital uh similar to the email issue. um However, we actually may have our first test run for periscope ads outside of demand gen um and that's with a field campaign.

B

The campaign is for a series of uh workshops in november for the doc region, so since that's promoting a series of workshops that are all featured on the same landing page, it's kind of a perfect fit for the carousel ads. um So we're going to be running this only on the linkedin space since field marketing is strictly accounts and trip, um so yeah really excited about gathering um the base play metrics for the carousel ads as well um for another.

B

The other thing that we're testing bb360, um so I wanted to give uh shed some light on just uh uh the dp360 versus demand based issue that we've kind of been talking through um this past month, and we finally came to conclusion about so just to give you some background.

B

Demand base is our abm tool that abn our abm team uses, uh but it's also a display platform um that they're currently using to warm up the gl, 4300 and mm4k accounts, um and then we have the dd360 platform coming in for demand gen, and it has account targeting capabilities.

B

But, besides that, it has more targeting features, uh primarily demographic criteria compared to gdm, which is the display platform uh platform we've been using um so with these two uh dsps uh potentially having overlap and audiences and messaging uh we've been having discussions with emily from abn about how we should move forward um so that the two dsps can compliment each other rather than compete with each other um with that um matt and I uh met with emily and evan earlier this week and came to the agreement that demand based will continue to treat the um gl, 4300 and mm-4000 accounts and db360 will tackle uh the total addressable market, excluding those account lists by utilizing those demographic targeting features.

B

So that's how q4 is going to look like um we're going to track. What's working and what's not within both dsps and there's a chance that once we have a better picture of how they can complement each other, we can slowly start to integrate the strategies in q1 um moving beyond testing, um so the large segment, I'm working with um agnes irene and jenny on the large segment campaign, planning and they're. Putting together offers right now for awareness, consideration, uh purchase stages for all regions.

B

So america, apac and pubsec we're going to be incorporating more consideration and purchase assets uh than usual, so uh creating a more full funnel campaign strategy and we're also going to be including a mix of field partner and corporate events into our middle and final stage offers just to increase that pipe and velocity um for now and then in the meantime, we're just going to continue running those ci and bcc ads to land, while those digital journeys are being analyzed and then the jenkins campaign, um the I think, it's 3.0, uh it's gonna, be going live mid to late november, uh depending on um when those assets can get revised and uh plus the dd360 onboarding timeline.

B

But the official requests are now on png's radar. So um now it's just a matter of building out our full funnel strategy, um but yeah, I think that's it. We wrapped up a couple of field campaigns. uh There are a couple of uh connect uh events in emea. We did really well for doc and then connect france, just wrapped up a couple days ago, so excited to see those results.

B

But I think that's about about it. For me,.

A

Sounds good and then one of the things that I'll be coming up next week uh we're having our qbrs with pmg to talk about some of our um performance from q3 so really exciting.

A

There um you've seen the information through um summer marketing dashboards around our sales dashboards around performance, um and so we saw some great things happening towards the end of the quarter and q3 uh to help with that, and so um once that becomes available, we finish out the qbr and I'll be posting the recorded links for you all through you, uh which I think will be beneficial for our parties. So you have any questions on the demand, gen slack channel and we're happy to discuss.

B

A