How Capgemini Created One of the Largest Content Marketing ROIs I’ve ever Seen (and The Honest Team Behind It).

If you have heard me speak at a keynote event in the past two years, you may have heard me recount the story Lyly Lepinay, who was the digital marketing manager at Capgemini. Lyly reached out to me via phone 5 years ago for some help with their content marketing strategy.

A year later, I was informed by Lyly and her Capgemini team that they were achieving some of the best content marketing ROI I'd ever seen. When it came time to write my next book How People Suck I reached out to Lyly in order to tell her about how Capgemini didn't suck.

Lyly refused to give permission and said she couldn't take credit for the platform and the strategy. She said that Rena Patel, who was at the time leading Capgemini's digital branding and advertising, should take full credit. I reached out Rena who, after leaving Capgemini, went on to work for LinkedIn and is now CMO at Kantar. Here's her story…

Follow the Herd

Capgemini was founded with two goals in mind. The first goal was to increase their revenue from IT services. The second was to increase brand awareness and reputation of their consultants. Capgemini is competing with other well-respected consulting brands such as Accenture, Deloitte and KPMG. The executive team felt they were losing ground.

Their competitors were sponsoring golf tournaments and professional golfers in addition to traditional advertising. The executive team noticed this. Patel tried these strategies along with other tasks like tweets, campaigns and press releases. These tactics were costly and difficult to track. She knew there had got to be a better way.

The executive team had other ideas. After seeing the advertising campaigns of their competitors, they asked Patel to begin the process of sponsoring a professional golfer. She was as excited as her colleagues about the idea, as were her CMO and colleagues. They anticipated the possibility to get front row seats at major golf tournaments as well as the chance to meet some famous golfers.

Patel, however, reacted constructively. (Ways to Rena!)

What's in it for the customer?

She analyzed the content that the company had created. Capgemini was behind its competitors according to the hunch of their executive team. Their reasoning was not entirely correct. Capgemini wasn't producing content that was engaging with their audience.

Rena was clear in her communication with the executives that she needed to highlight the reasons why sponsorship of a professional golfer might not be the best approach. Rena wanted the customer to be at the center of the company. Rena asked first, “What's in it to the customer if they sponsor a golfer?”

She didn't stop there. Patel talked to customers and found that many of them weren't golfers. Many customers didn't like golf and few of them watched tournaments. Except for Tiger Woods, few would recognize the majority of professional golfers. Rena understood that sponsorship of a professional golfer wouldn't bring the results Capgemini required.

She was inspired to think. She was certain that they could achieve and exceed many ambitious goals despite having a much smaller budget. She believed that engaging content would help raise awareness, improve the reputation of their consultants, and bring almost a million more visitors to their website.

She bravely stated this idea to her managers when she presented it to them.

Answering customers' questions

Rena persuaded her managers to allow her to move forward. Rena created a website that focused on their prospects and customers by sharing the expertise of their consultant in a brand storytelling format.

Capgemini customers asked for answers to their questions through the content on the website. Questions about Big Data, Cloud, Technology and any other topics related to their consulting services were all covered. Rena also discovered that almost all their customers were on LinkedIn. Rena decided to focus her efforts on creating and promoting LinkedIn content.

It worked! It worked. Capgemini's website saw nearly one million visitors in a year. LinkedIn page of Capgemini had over 100,000 followers, with an average of 3,000 to 4,000 new followers per week and more than 1.8million shares.

Rena had done it. Rena increased awareness, engagement, but most importantly, she generated the one million visitors she promised. This incredible story has more. Not only did the site see an increase in traffic, but it also saw a decrease in spam. They also discovered some prospects who reached out to authors of articles. Some of these prospects requested proposals. Some of those proposals led to booked projects, amounting to nearly $1 million.

It would be great to find a million dollars.

But there are more!

You promised the most amazing example of content marketing ROI

A few years later, I was presenting the story to the global digital marketing department at one of the largest technology companies in the world. I was telling Rena/Lyly my story. A man approached me after I finished telling Rena/Lyly's story. He stated that they had generated almost 10 times the Return on Investment in the second year of the program.

Think about a program that generates $10 per dollar spent.

He said that the success of the program was due to the fact that it was customer-focused and that consultants were sharing their knowledge. This created a trust cycle that allowed prospects to contact more consultants. He also credited the success to his team.

Refocus. Concentrate on customers. Activate employees. Demonstrate ROI

Rena's success is due to a few things, I believe. She was able to recognize that current efforts were not working, and had the courage and awareness to make a stand.

Second, she was allowed to challenge the bosses and finally listened to her suggestions. This is a great example of what happens when employees are trusted and put customers first.

Third, despite their huge content marketing ROI, they are three of the most humble people that I have ever met. These mean people are a real pain. These folks do not!

What's your ROI? If you don't see ROI from your content marketing efforts then reach out to us. We can help. More than 70 brands have used our services to help them create their strategy and define their editorial process. We also helped them get their content engine up and running, as well as measuring their ROI.

This story is an excerpt from the book Mean People Suck. Available October 25, 2019.