Customer Profile
- Leading provider of computer-based instrumentation hardware and software
- Headquartered in Austin, Texas
- 3,800+ employees
- In 2005, sold products to 25,000+ companies in 90 countries.
- For past seven years, NI named one of FORTUNE Magazine's "100 Best
Companies to Work For in America".
Marketing Challenge
- Diverse customer base demanding highly targeted, technical product information
- Looking for new media platforms that could offer both reach and targeted content
delivery in a cost-efficient manner
- Started by launching online marketing and developing content-rich website
- Sought better way to drive traffic to its website and apprise customers
Solution
- Search engine optimization
- Google AdWords campaigns
- NI Advertising Team Initiatives
Results
- Search engine optimization
- Google AdWords campaigns
- NI Advertising Team Initiatives
Business Overview: Industry
Engineers and scientists across a wide range of industries use instruments to
design, test, control, and automate manufacturing activity. The market for these
instruments comprises a $50 billion industry known as the measurement and
control instrumentation market.
Traditionally, instrumentation products had been inflexible and manpower-intensive.
They were typically designed with a single-purpose, required expensive proprietary
architectures, and relied on complicated user interfaces.
However, the technology of instrumentation is now evolving away from mechanical,
standalone systems to computer-based "virtual" instrumentation systems that have
multiple applications, integrated architectures, and vastly improved user interfaces.
The $4.5 billion market for virtual instrumentation systems is now the fastest
growing segment of the general instrumentation market, growing at a rate of 16%
per year versus 4%-6% for the rest of the market.
Business Overview: The Company
NI is a leader in the high-growth virtual instrumentation market. Founded in 1976,
NI has grown into a successful company with more than $500 million in revenues
and 3,800 employees worldwide. The company's growth story over the last 15 years
has been particularly impressive. Since 1991, its revenues and earnings per share
have increased at compounded annual rates of 18% and 22%, respectively.
Over the years, NI's customer base has grown and diversified to cover a wide range of
industries, including automotive, aerospace, computers and electronics, education,
medical research, semiconductors, and telecommunications. Volume has emerged
as the key driver of sales, with the company's average order size at ~$2,500. Today,
NI presently sells to more than 25,000 companies in 90 countries, with no single
customer accounting for more than 3% of total sales. In addition, no industry
represents more than 10% of NI revenue. While this diversity has played a positive
role in the long-term sustained growth of NI, it also presents a marketing challenge in
terms of communicating with this very large and diverse market.
The range of NI's product offerings is also extremely broad, covering more than 950
different products that fall into two broad groups: 1) Instrument Control Systems
(12% of revenues) – PC-based tools that enable control over traditional instruments
and 2) Virtual Instrument Systems (88% of revenues) – PC-based tools that replace
traditional instruments to form integrated instrumentation systems.
Finally, the geographic distribution of NI's sales attests to its global presence. In
2005, 48% of total sales came from North America, 30% from Europe, and 22%
from Asia.
Marketing Challenges and Goals:
Diverse Audiences Demanding Targeted Content
Marketers within the instrumentation industry face a difficult challenge. Their
companies address engineers and scientists who need a wide variety of applications
related to testing, measurement, and control, and also at different stages of the
production process – from research and development, to simulation and modeling,
to product design and validation, to production testing, to industrial control, to field
and factory service and repair. Accordingly, industry marketers must reach hundreds
of thousands of potential customers across dozens of industries and geographies.
At the same time, they must provide prospective customers with targeted technical
information on hundreds of specific products.
The marketing challenge for NI is especially acute. Selling to such a diverse
customer base, its growth depends on its ability to find efficient marketing tools
that give it the maximum possible reach, yet allow precise targeting and delivery of
detailed information to meet individual customer needs.
"We have more than 950 products and tens of thousands of accounts worldwide," says
Chris Bombarger, NI advertising and research manager. "It is a tremendous challenge
to reach such a large community of engineers and scientists spread around the world,
and provide adequate depth of information on so many different products."
In addition, the sheer pace of technological innovation at NI poses yet another marketing
challenge for the company. NI brings an average of one new product to market each
business day. This constant flow of products necessitates a mechanism for disseminating
updated product information to customers frequently, quickly, and broadly.
"With so many products changing so quickly, reaching and educating a worldwide
community of engineers and scientists, and garnering their interest in purchasing,
requires innovative marketing," says John Graff, Vice President of Marketing and
Customer Operations for NI.
Over ten years ago, NI relied on traditional forms of marketing that entailed a classic
tradeoff between reaching a broad customer base and providing in-depth technical
information to a narrow audience. While many of the marketing programs were
effective along one dimension, they fell short in the other.
Since then, the NI marketing team realized that only a new, innovative approach
could circumvent this tradeoff. The company's internal research also uncovered
a surprising fact – most of NI's target customers were using the Internet as the
primary source for information on instrumentation products.
NI soon launched an online marketing initiative called, "WebFirst". NI broke
new ground within its industry by creating a content and feature-rich website.
"Customers could select the product categories and topics that interested them,
which made our website an efficient, cost-effective marketing and education tool,"
says Bombarger. The company's early experiment online had demonstrated that the
Web could offer a viable answer to its marketing challenges.
Nevertheless, the successes achieved under WebFirst provided only half
the solution. While the NI website could serve as an effective platform for
communicating detailed product information to a large, diverse customer base, it
still relied on a self-serve model that presumed awareness of NI and its website
among its target audience.
NI needed a way to build awareness of its products at the moment customers began
looking for information, and to drive those customers to its website.
The Google Solution
The decision to approach Google was an easy one. "When we looked more carefully
at where our traffic was coming from, we realized most of it was coming from search
engines," says Graff. "And most of that was coming from Google."
"Compared with the early days of catalogs and data books, I saw firsthand the power
of Google to deliver relevant information to people at the exact point they were
actively researching a topic," says Dr. Truchard, the company president, co-founder
and CEO. "It made perfect sense for our business."
A short conversation with Google representatives convinced Graff to explore using
search-based advertising with Google AdWords. The NI marketing team evaluated the
company's products, customers, and specific marketing goals. Then, the team, with
the help of NI product managers, created a list of keywords, determined how to best
leverage Google's distribution platform, and planned out strategies for managing the
campaign. The entire process from initial conversation to launch took only ten days.
The Results
NI tracks visits and page views as an overall measure of online marketing effectiveness.
NI also uses those metrics as inputs to forecast lead generation and online revenues.
In this context, the company's marketing objectives were to increase site visits
across this diverse user base and to do so at minimal incremental cost.
Google natural relevancy and AdWords program helped NI reach significant results
against its objectives.
- Site visits from Google doubled over past year
- 60% average quarterly increase in traffic year-over-year
- Cost per click remained steady, with 9% average quarterly increase year-over-year
AdWords allowed NI to identify entirely new sources of demand. "Recently, we
bought keywords around a product we considered a bit of a commodity, with no new
features and a limited promotional budget," says Graff. "After purchasing related
keywords, we noticed a significant jump in demand for the product."
"In general, the Internet has been a great source for getting feedback quickly. Faster
customer feedback helps facilitate beta feedback," said Bombarger.
In 2004, NI cut the size of its print catalog budget, trimming catalog pages from
900 to 500 pages. The marketing team understood that print catalogs became
immediately out of date by the time they were published due to increasingly
prolific product updates. More importantly, they confirmed that print catalogs no
longer represented the primary means by which customers and prospects found
product information. The savings from trimming print budgets were reinvested into
developing online tools and programs to better promote NI's products.
NI now spends 20% of its advertising budget on search advertising, up sharply from
10% to 15% the previous year. In light of the company's positive experience with
Google, Graff says the amount spent will likely be higher next year.
Conclusion
For NI, the benefits of using Google AdWords were conclusive. By using Google
to drive traffic to its website, NI was able to achieve both reach and depth – at a
significantly lower cost. "The beauty of Google is that we can be diverse and precise
at the same time, just like our product offering." says Graff. "This is prohibitively
expensive when advertising in traditional media. But Google gives us both the reach
AND the depth we needed."
AdWords not only provided the key to unlocking the value in NI's Internet strategy, it
also conferred a host of ancillary benefits and improved customer feedback.
Too often, companies with superior products are constrained by inferior marketing.
As NI discovered, creative technology must be matched with equally creative
marketing solutions to achieve lasting business success. "We were looking for a
marketing approach that could mirror our innovation in technology," says Graff. "We
found our answer in Google."
Business and Industrial Markets (BIM) at Google
The Business & Industrial Markets
team provides dedicated account
service to customers across four
segments – manufacturers, distributors,
service providers & publishers in
the following subverticals:
- Business Services
- Payroll Services
- Business Supplies
- Chemicals / Energy
- Construction
- Electric Components
- General Manufacturing
- Industrial Equipment
For more information, or comments and
questions, email bimcases@google.com.
About Google AdWords
Google AdWords is currently used by thousands of businesses worldwide
to gain new customers in a cost-effective way. AdWords uses keywords
to precisely target ad delivery to web users seeking information
about a particular product or service. The program is based on
cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, so advertisers only pay when an
ad is clicked on. Advertisers can take advantage of an extremely
broad distribution network, and choose the level of support and
spending appropriate for their business. For more information on launching your own campaign or getting expert help, visit http://adwords.google.com.
Would you like to share your Google AdWords success story with us? We'd love to hear from you!
Return to BIM overview page
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“Google gives us both
the reach AND the depth
we needed.”
John Graff
Vice President of Marketing
and Customer Operations
|
“We have more than
950 products and
tens of thousands of
accounts worldwide. It is
a tremendous challenge
to reach such a large
community of engineers
and scientists spread
around the world, and
provide adequate depth
of information on so many
different products.”
Chris Bombarger
Advertising and Research Manager
|
“Compared with the early
days of catalogs and data
books, I saw firsthand the
power of Google to deliver
relevant information
to people at the exact
point they were actively
researching a topic.”
Dr. James Truchard
President, Co-founder, and CEO
|
“With Google, we could
scale our marketing
globally at marginal cost.”
Chris Bombarger
Advertising and Research Manager
|
“We were looking for a
marketing approach that
could mirror our innovation
in technology. We found
our answer in Google.”
John Graff
Vice President of Marketing and
Customer Operations
|
|
