Building brand awareness for an industry innovator.
GTC Technology is a global licensor of process technologies. They offer engineering services, process equipment solutions, chemicals and catalysts to the chemical, petrochemical, refining and gas processing markets. While the company has been established for years, they were perceived as a small niche technology provider and struggled with brand awareness, which limited their ability to participate in the RFP process. Learn how this industry innovator increased brand awareness and sales leads through refining their brand message and online presence.
Assessing the challenge
GTC is an industry innovator that offers a unique spectrum of services and solutions to refining and gas processing markets around the world. As a global licensor of process technologies, they offer engineering services, process equipment solutions, chemicals and catalysts to the petrochemical, refining and gas processing markets. Essentially, they have a lot to offer the industry and just needed our help crafting and delivering the message to the market. We needed to redefine GTC as a dependable one-stop shop that provides novel solutions to consumers with single-source accountability. Backing their offerings with highly trained and knowledgeable engineers, GTC assures their clients that they will do whatever it takes to find a solution. To accomplish this, we built a new website to push out the new brand message, developed a media plan and advertising strategy to increase awareness and created rich marketing content to drive sales leads.
Engineering a solution
We started with an in-depth analysis of GTC Technology’s existing brand, market position and future growth objectives for the company. We used this information to develop a detailed brand strategy and core messaging that would help them achieve their growth goals. Once the strategy was defined, the next step was delivering the message.
Targeting the audience
To provide lasting results, we focused on a target audience that held a certain level of influence on long-term business decisions for their companies, such as business planners and corporate executives. This demographic is typically male, ranging in age from 40 to 65 years old, and has Bachelor’s degrees in science or engineering. Many business decision makers have MBAs or higher, and ultimately influence or are the company’s gatekeepers that make substantial impacts. We concentrated on mid-sized companies such as Citgo, ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil, and Valero, as well as major corporations like ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Dow.
Rethinking the message
The engineering team of GTC has developed a variety of novel solutions to standard refining challenges. In fact, their solutions are so unique and beneficial they require you to rethink what was previously impossible. Building on this idea, we developed the ‘ReThink’ campaign. We paired the word ‘Rethink’ with key words such as ‘Innovation’, ‘Customization’ and ‘Optimization’ that represented their most unique solutions. By doing this we invited clients to bring their most complex challenges to GTC’s experts and redefine their expectations of GTC’s capabilities. This prompted a new way of thinking about the GTC brand.
To improve web traffic and create sustainable results we redesigned the website with SEO best practices in mind. Content was expanded and new pages were created to better explain their technology and process equipment portfolios. We incorporated custom flow charts to better illustrate their unique technology processes and benefits. Additionally, we incorporated a new section for highlighting articles and white papers that was used to generate leads. After the site was launched we implemented an on-going organic search engine optimization strategy to ensure GTCTech.com consistently ranked well with search engines.
To increase brand awareness, we developed a media plan with strategic placements in key trade publications that are well-known and trusted within the target audience. Since the media budget was limited and our primary goal was generating sales leads, we chose to opt-out of print and focus solely on digital ad buys. We translated the ‘ReThink’ campaign into a variety of animated and static display ads that ran on trade publication websites, e-newsletters and sponsor profile pages.
To capture leads we worked with GTC to create a series of white papers detailing the technology benefits and ROI. The white papers were hosted on a landing page. Prospects were then able to download a white paper by providing their contact information via a form on the page. Each ad placement linked to this landing page.
Delivering a sustainable impact
The ReThink campaign was extremely effective, and GTC experienced unprecedented growth. Through the website redesign and digital advertising campaign, we optimized results and increased brand awareness in their target markets. Within the first three months, GTC increased website traffic by 67%, and gained 350 white paper downloads. The ReThink campaign ran for a total of three years and has continued to be a fertile source of sales leads and increased brand awareness.
This increased awareness made GTC a robust competitor in the bid process. In fact, the new website has generated more than 616 requests for proposals since the launch of the campaign. The branding campaign was recognized by the BMA Houston Lantern Awards of Texas for excellence in website redesign and online banner ads. It also received the AMA Houston Crystal Award for outstanding online banner ads.
