Kentico’s Journey to Thought Leadership

MSR Communications is excited to announce that Kentico CMS is presented with the  League of American Communications Professionals Gold Award for excellence within its Competition Class on the development of “Kentico’s Journey to Thought Leadership”

Kentico is a Czech Republic-based midmarket content management system (CMS) provider that came to MSR Communications in January of 2013 to build brand awareness among professional marketers and digital agencies in the US where large-scale competitors such as Sitecore and Ektron were much more well-known. Not only did Kentico compete in a very crowded space dominated by more established players with significantly bigger marketing budgets, the company had made few inroads with US-based analyst research firms. In addition, Kentico had not received any general media coverage beyond two content management trade publications, nor had they any press-reference ready customers and partners or new products slated for the upcoming 2013 year.

With a budget of only $10K per month, MSR created a lean and aggressive content marketing and influencer relations program that was designed to build mindshare through a steady push of engaging, shareable content aimed at educating and inspiring marketers; as well as shed new light on how the job of brand marketing is constantly being reshaped by customers’ evolving needs and behaviors in the dynamic digital age.

The cornerstone of this effort was MSR’s creation of the “Kentico Digital Experience Survey,” an ongoing research series that provides new data each quarter about how both B2B and B2C customers are interacting with brands, and the most effective methods with which to engage and provide service to customers across a variety of medium including traditional and new channels and such as social, mobile, websites and email. Quarterly highlights have helped elevate brand awareness of Kentico as a thought leader and key resource for helping marketers better understand brand marketing trends and witness examples of effective campaign strategies and results. A sample of the survey’s unique highlights include:

• Only 32% of respondents believe email marketing has improved over the past 5 years
• 85% of respondents use smartphones to comparison shop
• 44% of respondents will never return to sites that aren’t mobile-friendly
• 69% of respondents would allow for the collection of personal data in exchange for more customized service, and
• 68% don’t pay attention to the brands they “Like” on Facebook

Critical to the success of Kentico’s content marketing program have been the demonstrable  examples of digital marketing strategies which significantly impacted its partners’ and customers’ businesses. MSR has worked closely with the company’s Sales team to develop specific programs that enable both audiences to showcase their most successful campaigns and joint projects while in tandem demonstrating initiatives that are complementary to the types of methods featured in the Kentico Digital Experience Survey.

As a result of consistently generating interesting and exclusive statistics that feature hard data about various facets of digital marketing and customer experience beyond the company’s core domain—including marketing automation, transparent marketing, and multichannel marketing—Kentico is now considered an invaluable and proven industry partner that successfully delivers research, expertise and technology—all in the spirit of helping all digital marketers succeed.

To boost awareness of Kentico in the business and technology arena, MSR made numerous introductions to significant industry analysts that resulted in company coverage in industry reports for the first time in its history. A sample of these introductions and coverage includes Altimeter Group, Constellation Research, Forrester, Gartner, GigaOm Pro, and SiriusDecisions.

Reporters and bloggers in the marketing, PR, advertising, web, customer experience and sales trade publications and technology outlets have come to rely on and value Kentico’s efforts in helping educate their readers with MSR-authored content such as case studies, tips, and creative pitches, blog posts, contributed articles, infographics, social and other shareable content.

In fact, Daniel Burstein of MarketingSherpa has paid MSR the highest compliment stating that “MSR’s pitches have been better than 99% of the pitches I see every day.”

A sample of coverage from the past 12 months includes all top-tier targets in the digital marketing landscape:

Biz Report, Bulldog Reporter, Business News Daily, Business Reporter, Business2Community, Channel Market Report, CITEWorld, CMO.com, CMSWire, DemandGen Report, Direct Marketing News, eM+C, FOX Small Business,  iMedia Connection, Independent Retailer, MediaPost’s Marketing Daily, Marketing Power (American Marketing Association), MarketingSherpa, Media Bistro, Mobile Commerce Daily, Mobile Commerce Insider, Mobile Marketer, Multichannel Merchant, Retail Touch Points, The Agency Post, Total Customer, VentureBeat and Website Magazine.

Coverage has also been secured and published on numerous corporate blogs from many of the digital agencies that Kentico targets in its sales efforts.

Kentico cites MSR Communications as having played a vital role in helping  the company firmly establish its brand in the United States and reports 2013 was its best year in terms of revenue generation since its founding 10 years ago.