Case Study: How Low-Cost Conversation Starters Built Community, Generated Leads

by Kimberly Smith

Published on 8/4/2009

Tags: Brand Awareness, Case Studies, Community, Creativity, Humor, Lead Generation, Marketing Budgets, Social Media, Videos, Word of Mouth, YouTube

Company: Open Kernel Labs
Contact: Marti Konstant, Vice-President of Marketing
Location: Chicago
Industry: Software
Annual revenue: Confidential
Number of employees: 50

Quick Read

Virtualization-software developer Open Kernel Labs wanted to attract 1,000 members for its branded community. That may seem like a modest goal, especially when you consider the volumes of users that networks such as Facebook and Twitter manage to pull in. However, the entire global audience of Open Kernel Labs consists of fewer than 20,000 people.

Finding and attracting these select users was only part of the challenge. The other was a sparse marketing budget, requiring that the company be resourceful and creative instead of simply relying on traditional, proven channels.

With the help of social-media specialist Cerado, however, the company had no trouble in achieving its goal two months ahead of schedule, and generating more leads than its sales team could handle.

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