Virgin Media O2 Business Capturing the elusive 95%

A media campaign that generated £2.7m in total contract value by aligning brand and demand.

£2.7M

Total contract value generated

1.6M

Views across marketing channels

At any one time, only 5% of buyers are in market, according to research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. The remaining 95% may be anything from years to days away from purchase. As a B2B vendor, how do you cater to this vast and varied group so that when they flip from the 95% to the 5%, your brand is front of mind?

Virgin Media O2 Business were struggling to cut through in an overcrowded market with an always-on paid media campaign that was failing to deliver. They approached The Marketing Practice to help them refresh their approach, not only to deliver in terms of awareness but to generate valuable insights into their audience, to continuously improve and ensure messaging was performing.

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The creative thought

In the past, people used to fit themselves around technology but now they expect technology to adapt to what matters to them and the way they work. Virgin Media O2 Business provides customers with more flexible options, in terms of contracts, deployment and configuration. ​

These were the insights the team used ​to craft their central creative theme of ‘Mobile shaped to what matters’. ​

Virgin Media O2 Business hadn’t assigned a specific creative identity to its always-on campaign before; instead using generic brand messaging. The new creative concept was brought to life in visuals which marked a departure from the existing style. 

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Brand and demand

​The always-on campaign was designed to fit between broad brand marketing at the top, ​ and campaigning pillars at the bottom; creating awareness for the business mobile proposition and warming up prospects until they were ready to enter the funnel. It would sit horizontally across sectors and roles. 

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The experience

The team designed an integrated digital engine covering multiple touchpoints. They created specific landing pages for the education and consideration stages, with paid social, display advertising, PPC and email marketing driving traffic to them. The email campaign used data on contact interaction with the communications to determine the nurture flow journey. Leads were used to feed our demand generation team and the inside sales team. 

Continuous optimisation

Data was used to tweak creative and make decisions on which adverts to serve up more and which to remove. Equally, tests were carried out in the email strand, trialling different subject lines and call-to-action boxes. ​

The outcomes

The differentiated message and distinctive creative assets cut through the noise and ​have delivered outstanding results.​

By joining up activity streams and creating an integrated plan, the data generated across the funnel has been transformational for the programme.​ The approach successfully bridged the divide between brand and demand campaigns, delivering:

  • £2.7M in total contract value generated, against a target of £1.5M

  • 1.6M views across marketing channels 

  • 3.7% increase in unique click-to-open email rates ​

  • 9% increase for in-month conversion from opportunity to closed-won

The campaign won silver at the 2023 B2B Marketing Awards for Best use of third party or paid media.

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“I’m delighted and impressed with the way our team and agency partners collaborated on this programme. In isolation, the streams of always-on activity would have had little measurable impact, but by joining forces to set objectives and create an integrated digital plan across display, social, PPC and email, we can see tangible increases in reach, consideration and leads into the funnel.” 

Adam Wilson
Marketing Campaigns Executive, Virgin Media O2 Business

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