Growth Engine for Enterprise Software

As the Global Leader for Digital & Marcom for Johnson Controls’ retail technology division, my role was to drive the digital transformation for the retail tech portfolio including ShopperTrak, a cloud-based retail technology that provides in-store foot traffic analytics. My mandate was to architect a comprehensive digital roadmap spanning the entire marketing and sales funnel, from demand generation and lead generation to conversion and cross-selling.

The analytics provided by ShopperTrak’s user-friendly dashboard allow retailers and malls to increase in-store conversions, optimize labor, and deliver an optimal customer experience.

The Challenge

My charter was to address several key issues that were limiting marketing’s impact:

• Disjointed Marketing and Sales Funnel: The organization lacked a cohesive, end-to-end digital roadmap. There were gaps between demand generation, lead generation, conversion, and cross-selling, making it difficult to track a prospect’s journey and prove the value of marketing efforts.
• Inefficient Team Structure: The global team was geographically distributed and lacked a centralized structure for key functions like campaign management, lead generation, and digital operations. This created inefficiencies and inconsistencies across different regions.
• Lack of Optimized Processes: The organization lacked standardized processes for program planning, budget tracking, and localizing content. This resulted in fragmented efforts and a reliance on ad-hoc activities rather than a scalable, predictable approach.
• Underutilized Technology: We weren’t fully leveraging our existing marketing technology, including Salesforce and Pardot, to manage opportunities and leads effectively. This hindered our ability to track performance and make data-driven decisions.

Key Outcomes

Built a robust growth engine that delivered significant results for the business:

• Tripled the number of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) within the first 18 months.
• Increased the value of new pipeline opportunities for the last fiscal year, accounting for nearly 40% of all new opportunities.
• Increased marketing efficiency, reducing spend by 30% to fund new aspects of the program.

Building the Growth Engine

Achieving these results required a complete overhaul of our programs, processes, and people. I architected and implemented a new marketing pipeline across the entire funnel, which included:

• Architected a Global, Integrated Team and Processes:
  • Restructured our geographically distributed team across six time zones, building new global functions from the ground up, including a global campaign management team, a demand and lead generation program team, and a digital operations team.
  • Built a new budget tracking process and developed standardized workflows for global programs, including content localization and tactical execution.
  • Fully leveraged our existing Salesforce and Pardot platforms for opportunity and lead management, and created dashboard reports to forecast close percentages across different lead stages.
• Re-engineering Demand & Lead Generation Programs:
  • Developed a closed-loop lead generation capability within our complex, matrix organization. Engineered and continuously optimized global demand and lead generation programs, using a range of integrated tactics to engage our audience.
  • SEO & Messaging: Programs were built around key insights from keyword analytics, SaaS use cases, and web behavior to drive content creation. For example, a program focused on tying marketing spend to traffic analytics used an “optimizing marketing spend” eBook as a central asset.
  • Social Proof: Created SEO-driven content, including blogs and eBooks, to address specific use cases. Used a variety of tactics to promote this content, including paid search ads, display ads, paid social, and third-party newsletter sponsorships.
  • Behavioral Nurturing: Once a user downloaded an asset, they were enrolled in a nurturing email stream. These emails would drive re-engagement by promoting other content around the same use case, ensuring a personalized and timely follow-up.
• Sales-Marketing Collaboration
  • To further build our online community, we launched LinkedIn Elevate. This tool enabled centralized curators to create posts for our employees to share.
  • Sales and other customer-facing teams could then quickly customize and republish these posts, ensuring a consistent and integrated message across the network during specific marketing campaigns.