BMV’s client Wanclouds, which it has helped build a beachhead in the U.S. market as a multi-cloud SaaS and managed service provider, was looking to launch a new cost optimization service – based on the early success of a singular cost feature – to complement its disaster recovery and migration as a service offerings by the close of 2022. As it looked to launch this feature in late Q3 of 2022, BMV identified an opportunity amid the cloud pullback and market headwinds to capitalize on the current need for this type of solution. However, Wanclouds had no reputation within the cloud cost optimization space dominated by much larger players such as Datadog, CloudCheckr, and CloudZero.

Given its lack of mindshare, specifically in the cloud cost space, BMV recognized that Wanclouds product launch product would not capture attention in the market by itself. It, therefore, advised Wanclouds to commission a survey of IT leaders which BMV would then utilize to formulate a report focused on IT teams looking at ways to cut cloud costs. BMV strategically planned to use the findings from the survey as a ‘tease’ within the product launch messaging to validate market need, and then within a standalone report following the product launch to amplify it. This would seamlessly attach Wanclouds’ new offering to the news cycle and accelerate distribution, as the report’s data would inform reporters on rising cloud costs.

Objectives

Therefore, the objectives for this report as a content marketing asset were twofold.

1. Utilize the report’s data-driven insights to raise awareness within the cloud market as a cost optimization provider by increasing media impressions, improving SEO/increasing backlinks, and spreading word of mouth (social and online/offline industry discussion).
2. Create consideration among potential buyers by driving prospects to download the report on its landing page and convert to demos/purchases of the new cost optimization product.

Strategy/Tactics:

1) The initial phase consisted of researching the cloud cost market to see if current research existed on cloud spending and if IT leaders were looking to pull back spending amid the market headwinds. It became apparent based on that research that there wasn’t current data out within the market to backup the sentiment that IT leaders were really pulling back, so any new data that was released would quickly standout.

2) From there, BMV moved forward quickly with scoping out the initial ideation of questions for the survey to be first-to-market with the data.

3) Once questions were finalized BMV commissioned the survey with Momentive to get responses from 500 U.S. IT decision-makers in August.

4) BMV then worked with the team from Wanclouds and Momentive to analyze the insights and produce an outline for the report the data would inform.

5) BMV drafted (copy/graphics) the report, entitled “2H 2022 Cloud Cost and Optimization Outlook”.

6) BMV utilized the top findings from the drafted report to support a press release it wrote for the launch of Wanclouds’ new Cloud Cost Optimization as a service (COaaS) on September 8.

7) Two weeks later, on September 22, BMV worked with Wanclouds to publish the finalized Wanclouds 2H 2022 Cloud Cost and Optimization Outlook and a press release highlighting its top findings.

8) To support the content launch and drive distribution, BMV did an aggressive round of media follow-up with all media targets it initially hit around the launch of COaaS. This was an excellent follow-up for reporters, and given that cloud costs were increasingly under the microscope.

9) BMV also produced a series of social media posts to amplify the report’s main findings and drive traffic to the report’s download page.

Results

The report Increased awareness for Wanclouds around the issue of cloud costs:

• The report quickly became the talk of the cloud industry and Silicon Valley as market influencers utilized its data to cite the oncoming cost crunch coming to cloud services such as AWS.
• The report was backlinked to by more than 68 domains, with high domain rating websites across the world linking to it including: Tencent (91DR), VentureBeat (91DR), HackerNews (90DR), and techhq.com (75DR).
• The landing page for the report is now the top all-time trafficked page for Wanclouds outside of its homepage.
• The report earned coverage with outlets including Forbes, VentureBeat, InfoWorld, and Tech HQ. Furthermore, VentureBeat named Wanclouds’ report as one of its top five reports of the year for 2022.
• Overall, media mentions for Wanclouds Sep-Dec 2022 were up 280% from Sep-Dec 2021 following the report’s release as media continued to cite it.
• It also spurred product consideration as it was downloaded hundreds of times, leading to 10-plus customers demoing and then purchasing Wanclouds COaaS.