RPTA Case Study

How do you reach an audience that doesn’t know what it doesn’t know?

That was the issue for Real Property Tax Advisors (RPTA). The organization is an expert in solving a significant problem many companies have: about 90% of commercial property is over-assessed and therefore over-taxed. The trouble is, most companies accept property taxes simply as the price of doing business and never question the expense – which is a mistake, as they are the largest cost of occupancy for businesses.

Getting the attention of and educating smart, busy executives to generate demand for RPTA’s services came with several challenges:

How do you target enterprises that don’t realize they have a problem -- or know about its solution?
How do you create demand for a process (in this case, tax reassessment) when the process itself seems cumbersome and complicated?
And how do you communicate all this to enterprise-level CFOs who have plenty of other pressing issues on their plates?

Research and Discovery:

RPTA helps enterprises uncover the actual valuation of their real estate, machinery, equipment, and inventory so they pay accurate taxes. Reaching a whole new audience with messages about property tax savings and appeals would help RPTA tap deeper into the $300 billion commercial property tax market and accelerate its growth.

A successful demand generation program blends research, data, content, and technology to create and implement the most effective approach for attracting new business. For RPTA, Marsden Marketing’s research focused on gaining a greater understanding of CFOs – the decision-makers in this case – and targeting the industries most affected by property tax issues.

The agency not only relied on published market research, but also spoke with existing clients to discover more about their issues, pain points, and information preferences and sources. From that initial research, the agency created robust buyer personas -- representations of RPTA’s ideal customers and their characteristics. Buyer personas help organizations focus on and attract the right prospects – those who are more likely to purchase and stay with the company over time.

Content Syndication:

With a clear picture of the RPTA audience and messaging that resonates with them, Marsden evaluated content syndication and paid channels to understand how the organization could effectively address its targeted CFO audience.

After the initial research, Marsden knew that the target audience relies heavily on industry-specific media outlets for updates and thought leadership. After reviewing potential outlets, a webinar with CFO.com offered the best opportunity to educate the audience about property taxes, filling the knowledge gap and generating demand for RPTA’s services. The webinar was a significant investment, particularly for a small organization, but one that made sense given the difficulty in reaching the target audience.
The webinar Marsden created featured both the CEO and founder of RPTA as the expert in property tax and a respected attorney in the field of liquidity transactions, who walked through the leading reasons properties are over-assessed. Because the webinar wasn’t vendor-led, those attending earned Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits.

Paid Advertising:

Developing an ad strategy based on audience data is the critical first step in defining a digital advertising program. However, using data gathered from the campaign itself to optimize the channel is the critical step that will dictate its success.

For RPTA, LinkedIn was the primary social channel for the target audience; search wasn’t as viable because of a lack of awareness about key terms. Marsden targeted key accounts by promoting a variety of materials, including whitepapers, case studies, and ebooks, in paid advertising. That approach tested what the audience would engage with and where they were in the sales funnel.

Over time, promoted assets that focused on specific pain points and keywords were top performers. With that knowledge in hand, Marsden rolled out the assets to larger audiences targeted by title and company size as well as group memberships, creating a cost-effective, sustainable demand generation program that continued to produce high-quality targeted leads after the webinar.

Content syndication and advertising jumpstarted RPTA’s lead generation and helped tie prospects more closely to the organization.

The webinar produced a 490% monthly increase in qualified leads, with 53% of those leads sales-ready. The remainder were added to an automated email nurture with lead scoring monitoring their progress
In a post-event survey, 100 percent of attendees said learning objectives had been met and program materials were relevant
For the paid advertising program, the average cost per click was a quarter of the original cost, and cost per lead hovered well under half of the original