CREATE A SERIES of concise white papers, published via a microsite, that can easily be shared and disseminated by customers. The original research would be designed to increase Accela’s lead generation in sales, build its industry thought leadership and increase its online influence directly and indirectly through earned media.

1. GOALS: The goal of this project was straightforward: Create a series of white papers to grow sales leads and attract customers. The key metrics for these aims also followed common metrics for successful marketing content: this included stats like the number of PDF downloads, social media shares and page visits.

2. CHOOSING THEMES AND TOPICS: The research themes were drawn from Accela’s overall content strategy, four themes that included Digital Service Delivery, Emerging Regulation, Next-gen Economic Development, and Government Experience. Each of these tied back to Accela’s suite of cloud solutions and applications.

3. GATHERING RESEARCH: I coordinated the collection of original research with the Center for Digital Government (CDG), a national research and advisory institute on information technology policies and best practices in state and local government. Working with the CDG’s team of senior researchers and analysts we designed a series of survey questions designed to gauge city and state sentiment on issues. I facilitated meetings to review this research and to ensure its correct interpretation. This was a joint effort supported by executive leadership, as well as Accela’s product marketing and engineering teams.

4. OUTLINES & MESSAGING: To ensure proper messaging was in place, I coordinated the outlines of each white paper as well as the editing rounds for each piece. It was important our readers saw an immediate value, that the message was clear, and the structure of each paper rooted itself to the primary research points. To show value, the white paper topics were hyper focused on common pain points in government IT. Like the private sector, public sector IT departments are always looking for ways to improve their services, accelerate technology rollouts, reduce costs, improve cybersecurity, and modernize their aging legacy systems. These white papers spoke to these concerns with valuable research and subject matter expertise.

5. PRINT & PUBLISHING: With so much time and investment in these white papers, we wanted to maximize their audience as much as possible. The strategy included a phased rollout. We published one paper quarterly, usually timing it to a company event or public relations announcement to bolster its impact with local, national and industry media. Further, we hosted webinars with industry thought leaders that highlighted key findings in the research. We also leveraged the white papers in multiple email campaigns, in our newsletter, blog and social media channels to expand the reach. Finally, once all four white papers were completed, we created microsite with the Center for Digital Government’s Government Technology magazine to host all of them and to complement their findings with a self-populated feed of relevant Government Technology articles.

THE RESULTS WERE phenomenal. Compared to previous white papers, the percentage increase in monthly downloads was exponentially higher as well as white paper web page traffic and sales leads. Other key benefits included national and local media coverage. Further, the research provided a launch pad for additional content generation via blogs and press releases.

THERE WERE A few key lessons learned in this initiative. Phasing the research and publication provided a consistent flow of content and support for company events and marketing campaigns. Integrating with social media, blogs, newsletters, emails, webinars captured a much larger audience and engagement. Digital publication in a microsite also made the content more digestible and easier to reference.