ISACA is a global learning organization that provides training and certification to the technology industry. The training and certifications are marketed directly to professionals in the technology industry, to Enterprises for group training, and through 3rd party resellers (accredited training organizations). ISACA’s two most well-known certifications are CISA (Certified Systems Information Auditor) and CISM (Certified Information Security Manager).

Additionally, ISACA has a cyber maturity model & assessment SAAS product that is marketed to enterprises. Per ISACA’s website, Recognized as a global gold standard for performance improvement, CMMI was originally created for the U.S. Department of Defense to assess the quality and capability of their software contractors, the CMMI model has expanded beyond software engineering to help any organization in any industry build, improve, and measure their capabilities and improve performance.

Historically, there had been a number of one-off marketing activities to support the b2b offerings, but not a comprehensive, intentional funnel across the various go-to-market channels. Additionally, lead reporting wasn’t in place, so the organization had limited visibility into previous performance of b2b marketing efforts.

The first step was to understand current state and where leads were coming from which required a combination of traditional marketing analytics and anecdotal insights from sales. The goals and actions were as follows:

  • Refined Messaging: Develop an elevator pitch that captured the demand story & tailor it for different audiences, for example channel partners (3rd party resellers) wanted to understand the market sizing and potential for ongoing training and certifications.
  • Leverage Existing Content Asset: Repurpose thought leadership content where possible, given much of the marketing content was ultimately focused on addressing the b2b audience needs & challenges. The content was integrated into the nurturing stream and used as an engagement metric to move prospects closer to being sales ready.
  • Create a Full Funnel: Launch an orchestrated funnel, ensuring activities at all funnel stages and orchestrate activities to move prospects through the funnels to be sales ready. This required additional skills and existing external relationships that the team didn’t have in place, in particular digital b2b media.
  • Develop Reporting: Develop dashboard reporting across all stages of the sales funnel – establish a cost per lead target based on historical performance and industry benchmarks. Provide reporting visibility to key stakeholders.

Through these efforts, a 15% increase in MQLs was achieved. Additionally sustainable & scalable processes were put in place.