Introduction
Arlo is security business by NETGEAR. They provide video monitoring solutions for homes, competing with the likes of Eero and Nest.
Our client, Chris Salazar was head of the entire digital transformation and customer acquisition team at NETGEAR. He was charged with:
- Directing all digital transformation, brand building and demand generation activities for Arlo's growing suite of products.
- Set and own "the number" for sales activity and marketing to support revenue growth.
- Managed an in-house marketing team along with external contractors and vendor relationships.
Chris faced headwinds in Arlo's effort to from zero revenue to IPO.
Facing off against two of the largest companies on earth with regards to market cap: Amazon and Google. Who, oh by the way, also own the three largest search engines in the world (YouTube, Google.com, Amazon).
To top it all off, Amazon and Google have nearly unlimited budgets to invest in sales & marketing activities compared to Arlo.
Outwit the competition
The competition will always have more resources than Arlo. Especially with regards to paid media spend. That’s a given.
We can’t square up to the competition and trade punches; we need to be innovative and attack the market differently.
Instead of a paid strategy … we need to think of an organic marketing strategy. And Chris wasn’t going to hire a bunch of FTEs on staff. It was up to MKG to create and execute on our strategies.
- Digital Strategy: the approach was to focus on organic marketing channels. Social media, organic search (SEO)
- Deep product connection: Worked directly with Chris’s team as well as the product marketing team. Unusual for NTGR or Arlo to allow agencies to work with product marketing. Had to in order to understand the key differentiators/buyer’s journey to communicate organically.
- Organic on the front end = content strategy. What content did we need to produce (and in what format) to clearly highlight
- Organic on the back end = technical SEO. How can we consume more social media & search engine results page real estate? A deep use of product and price schema helps us organically eat up more space when showing up against the competition.
From zero dollars to IPO in less than four years
Out-competed Ring and Nest in the organic marketing sphere, leading to annual increases in the double digit percentages when it came to organic traffic and sales
The CEO of the company equated organic traffic to brand awareness. The goal was 10% organic traffic growth each year. In consecutive years, our work produced 20-50% compounded organic traffic growth year/year
In less than 4 years, went from $0 in sales to an Initial Public Offering (IPO)
On day 1 of trading, IPO closed at 33% better than opening price (source: MarketWatch)
Where to next!
Are you a new security business ready to scale and out pace your competition? Have you considered SEO? Chat with one of our strategists and see what opportunities lay in waiting for you to kick off build your digital marketing strategy momentum on.
Book a call with AnDrae' Jones to share your growth challenges.
