From $0 to Millions: Scaling Canon's Pipeline with Demand Gen

The Solution

GTM Strategy
Ziggy proposed a data-driven GTM strategy focusing on markets with the highest demand and industries with the largest print expenditure. This approach aimed to maximise success before scaling the optimised program into new markets.

The demand generation program positioned Canon as a leader in print by distributing helpful content to production print organisations and companies facing hybrid working challenges. The campaign, launched in five languages, used 1-many ABM and ICP targeting across paid social and programmatic channels, with retargeting programs to nurture prospects down-funnel. Paid search programs targeted high-intent audiences searching for brand keywords, category terms, product-related searches, and competitor keywords.

What did we test and learn?
After scaling the programme across 5 key markets, we quickly identified that the demand capture programmes running across paid search and retargeting were driving the most opportunities at the most efficient price. We also found that deals from key commercial print verticals were moving through the funnel faster and with higher conversion rates than workspace verticals, which helped us reallocate our budget into campaigns that had the strongest return on investment.

Two key audience groups were tested: Workspace (SMBs, Mid, and Enterprise companies needing flexible print solutions) and Production Print (commercial print industry). We found that our strategy was more effective for Production Print than it was for Workspace, largely due to the deal sizes from production print making the unit economics more favourable. Reaching the right workspace audience has been more of a challenge, we’ve scaled pipeline efficiently, but were more exposed to SMB audiences looking for basic office print solutions, that they could otherwise buy online. We’ve refined the strategy by optimising campaigns by deal quality.

The programme was launched in five languages, with localised ad experiences delivering 3x more pipeline at a 4x stronger ROAS than English-only ads.

How we worked with the client

Ziggy built a dedicated demand gen team that comprised of an account director, demand gen strategist, a performance lead, growth markers and a data engineer. This team worked as an extended strategic partner to Canon, making strategic decisions around markets prioritisation, budget allocation by business unit and market and how to deliver the most revenue for our spend. One of the critical services Ziggy delivered as part of this campaign was building out an automated data pipeline and dashboard that connected marketing investment with sales data. Using our propriety data tools, we extracted marketing and sales data into a data warehouse, transformed it in a way to maximise insight and unioned it so we could see the full funnel performance across critical dimensions like – business units, regions, countries, languages, campaigns, keywords, ad copy. Having this insight helped us deliver consistent performance gains every quarter.

Results
The always-on media investment has since scaled into the millions, delivered consistent opportunities growth every quarter and returning 8-figures in pipeline since launch, achieving a 5.7x pipeline ROAS. Year-over-year, we increased opportunities by +154%, whilst reducing the cost per opportunity by -41%.

Canon’s demand generation program successfully navigated the challenges of a shrinking market and the cancellation of a key industry event. By focusing on data-driven strategies and localised ad experiences, the program delivered significant pipeline growth and efficient returns on ad spend.

*Updated: 9.26.2024 – Award-Winning Excellence: Canon Europe’s PPC Campaign

We are proud to announce that our collaborative efforts with Canon Europe have been recognized with a prestigious UK Agency Award for Best PPC Campaign. This accolade is a testament to the innovative strategies and exceptional results achieved through our partnership over the past two and a half years.

Key Highlights:

1. Award: UK Agency Award for Best PPC Campaign
2. Timeframe: 2.5 years of collaboration
3. Partners: Ziggy | Revenue-First Demand Gen Agency and Canon Europe’s B2B Demand Gen team
4. Achievement: Scaled revenue into the millions with consistent quarter-over-quarter improvements in both scale and efficiency

This award-winning campaign demonstrated:

• The power of centralization in marketing efforts
• The effectiveness of an outcome-driven mindset
• The importance of transparent, performance-focused partnerships
• The potential for growth and innovation, even during challenging times like the COVID-19 pandemic

The success of this campaign goes beyond the award itself. It has proven the viability of demand generation as a strategy and set new benchmarks in the digital marketing landscape. This achievement underscores the value of deep-rooted partnerships between agencies and clients, showcasing how collaborative efforts can drive exceptional results and overcome unprecedented challenges.

As we continue to push the boundaries of digital marketing, this award serves as both a celebration of our past efforts and an inspiration for future innovations. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all team members at Ziggy and Canon Europe who contributed to this outstanding achievement.