Learn how we enabled a team of Digital Transformers at Belden unify a content strategy spanning 11 operating companies & the globe.
With revenues eclipsing $1b, Belden is comprised of a series of brands daisy chained together, offering a comprehensive catalog of products in the cabling, connectivity and networking space.
With a business model fueled primarily by acquisition, Belden and its family of brands had established a wide and diverse footprint across a minimum of 15 markets within the Industrial and Enterprise applications of its products.
Belden engaged with Conduit Innovation during a comprehensive, multi-year, digital transformation effort that spanned across Belden and Belden’s subsidiaries business units. Belden’s choice to transform was fueled by three primary goals:
A critical function of the Digital Transformation Team at Belden’s role was to align the various internal marketing teams within each of the Belden Family of Brands operating companies. In most cases this entailed integrating to understand what marketing strategies were currently in place while also determining the best way to ensure each operating company felt supported and empowered through the transformation.
For this reason, Belden engaged Conduit Innovation to provide a framework that would serve the following core functions:
With the goals of Belden’s Transformation Team in mind, Conduit produced a comprehensive template-based Content Strategy Playbook, designed to turn the Marketing Teams within each of the companies into vested participants in the Transformation Process.
These materials would provide the Transformation Team at Belden a scalable model so they could effectively identify synergistic content and relational opportunities amongst the Belden Family of Brands by better understanding:
Within 30 days, Conduit produced a comprehensive set of materials bringing to life a scalable strategy and structure enabling the Digital Transformation Team at Belden to align internally on business priorities and ultimately leverage it to create a content strategy in support of the global Belden brand.
Considering the varying levels of information, data or behavioral customer detail, that “could” occur during the strategic and tactical alignment period, Conduit’s templates were designed to account for gaps, unique circumstances or scenarios which may arise.
The enablement materials prepared by Conduit Innovation for the team at Belden were built towards a content framework that begins and ends with the customer.
Consequently, the deliverables were structured in such a way that, once completed would establish a priority of marketing and content while also forecasting the potential impact of those efforts given the target customers and their buying behaviors.
The format of Conduit’s final framework took the shape of a comprehensive curriculum featuring enablement material to support:
Conduit’s final deliverable featured a three-part process with elements structured in progressive stages to encourage adoption.
As each stage progresses, the framework will allow for a cohesive narrative to take shape. As the narrative became clearer, the Belden Transformation Team and each internal Marketing Team within the various Belden Brands could realize increased momentum. This increased momentum and better clarity would then serve as a basis to further tighten Belden’s internal alignment.
Conduit’s materials provided an opportunity to index each brand’s legacy marketing efforts and associated strategies. By better understanding the environments each business unit operated within, the Team at Belden would be better informed on how to position the content for the target customers.
Taking the product and use case centric approach that each Belden business unit/operating company/brand deployed and backing into a real-world profile of that customer’s motivations.
When possible, taking that profile a step further and linking buying behaviors (recency, frequency of products purchased and LTV of customers). This linkage would work to establish a system to prioritize the impact of content marketing efforts to customer acquisition or increases in current customer wallet share.
Once steps one and two had been completed, the final step was a comprehensive Strategy Document and Website Guide intended to align the business context, climate and customer priorities with strategic goals and critical website elements for each Belden brand/business unit.
High Level features of this document were to include:
After producing the entire curriculum, Conduit Innovation partnered with the Belden Transformation Team to roll it out to one of the fast growing and well-regarded brands in the Belden family.
The feedback from the Head of Marketing of the Brand was very positive both in the comprehensiveness of the materials provided and the true impact this framework would have on their business. “Knowing this information can not only help us with our content strategy but I can see this also playing a role in shaping our sales process as well” he was quoted, saying.
While the scope of Conduit’s efforts was to better enable the Belden Transformation Team to align an expansive and fragmented content strategy, the true measure of success was in these materials serving as a mechanism to promote dialogue which would help the talented people across all of Belden’s family of brands to think differently about their businesses while in the midst of the transformation.
