Yext, the world's leading digital presence management company, wanted to help their customers fully capitalize on the opportunity that the rise of mobile has provided for marketers, so they built a new product called Pages, which allows marketers to easily create web and mobile pages for each of their store locations, pulled from local data and content already stored in Yext's software.
Yext wanted to make a huge promotional splash for their product launch, so they teamed up with creative agency Vault49 to help them develop a sophisticated and clever advertising campaign worthy of the level of work created by the marketers they collaborate with every day. Since Pages is integrated with Yext's pre-existing Listings product (their flagship product), they chose the theme of "Better Together" for the campaign. The bulk of the campaign involved two complementary cover features on AdAge and Adweek, furthering "Better Together's" theme of duality. Vault49 produced a behind-the-scenes video of the photo shoot for the magazine covers and Yext created a whitepaper to educate marketers on the product's impact, both of which Yext promoted through the company's social media accounts with the hashtag #bettertogether.
Yext and Vault49 took what should be a generic and strictly B2B campaign and twisted it to have a consumer-focus, elevating both the creativity and vision of the Pages campaign. Their promotion garnered 99 downloads and 1,699 digital impressions - very strong numbers considering there are 2500 enterprise businesses in the US that might purchase this product.
Yext deserves to win this award because they took a truly revolutionary approach to promoting the Pages product launch; typical Business-to-Business campaigns are generic and dulled-down since they're aimed at engaging other corporations, but Yext used a completely different tact by focusing their campaign on the needs of the consumer in order to catch the attention of marketers. Yext and Vault49, their graphic design agency, took what would normally be a strictly B2B campaign and instead created a campaign with a consumer-focus, with the consumers here being the marketers within businesses who are going to make the decision to work with Yext. Yext works with some of the best CMOs in the business every day, so they wanted to elevate their work to the level of work being created by these talented marketers to show they understand where marketers are coming from and can help them achieve their lofty goals.
Yext's Pages product works in tandem with their pre-existing Listings product; as marketers create web and mobile store pages based on the listing location data stored in Yext's Listings software, they're building SEO and improving searchability, both for the owned and operated pages as well as the existing listings on sites like Yahoo, Yelp, Bing, Facebook, and many more. The mutually beneficial relationship between these products is what birthed the idea for the "Better Together" theme. Yext wanted to make it easy for marketers to understand how their product strengthens brands' digital presence, ultimately benefiting customers by making their store locations, hours, special offers and products much easier to find .
The main splash of Yext's Pages campaign was the production of two complementary covers for AdWeek and AdAge magazines, which both hit stands the day of the product launch. This innovative campaign strategy, which highlighted the duality of the "Better Together" theme, was completely unprecedented for a software company and very effective in creating buzz around the product. Both covers featured the same massive cloud sculpture that Vault49 created to represent Pages, and that is now featured prominently in the company's office headquarters in New York City.
Vault49 also produced a behind-the-scenes video of the photo shoot for the magazine covers, which featured Yext's CEO and the Director of Marketing explaining the thought process behind the campaign strategy and the beneficial impact Pages provides for brand marketers. Yext chose to create a real-life cloud sculpture instead of CGI for the same reason they chose to make a video about the creation of the magazine covers - because software can often seem intangible and therefore hard to sell, Yext wanted to send a message to marketers that they are focused on creating great software that provides real and tangible results for businesses and, indirectly and most importantly, consumers.
Yext wrote a whitepaper to develop the thought-leadership aspect of the campaign. The company enlisted the help of copywriters to write a thorough and detailed whitepaper explaining the state of the local search industry, why it's so important to create unique web and mobile landing pages for every store location, and how Pages' technology can achieve a bottom-line impact for businesses.
Yext launched a full-scale promotional campaign through digital channels to attract attention for their new product. They campaign was aimed at both existing and prospective clients, in addition to professionals and experts in the local marketing industry. The company promoted the magazine covers and behind-the-scenes video across their social media accounts with the hashtag #bettertogether, as well as through email promotion, paid ads, and through their website blog. Yext also sent out a mailer to current and prospective clients to alert them of the product launch and educate them on its capabilities and benefit. The custom envelope sported a "Better Together" design and contained both the AdAge and AdWeek magazines along with an informational one-sheet.
The campaign received a great response, with over 99 downloads of the whitepaper and 1,699 impressions on digital channels, 67% of which was through social media promotion. This engagement brought in numerous top-tier leads for the company, while also solidifying their status as an industry leader and innovator, always anticipating their client's needs and developing new and better ways to strengthen their digital presence.
