Case Study: Hyland

Hyland is a leading global provider of enterprise content management and content services (ECM & CS) software. The company has grown rapidly since its inception through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions but sought a consistent, structured approach through which to assess the performance of its brand assets and to guide its brand building efforts.

To achieve its goal, Hyland recognized a need for an independent market research program with the following key priorities:

• Benchmark and understand brand performance to then assess the progress of brand building initiatives and campaigns
• Diagnose the brand’s core strengths and weaknesses to ascertain improvement areas
• Identify market needs and priorities and leverage these to drive brand messaging strategy
• Assess performance across the Hyland brand portfolio including brands inherited through acquisitions
• Develop a comprehensive brand playbook to continue and deepen its leadership position in its industry

The research captured brand funnel data to identify which brand metrics to address as priorities for increasing market share and revenue. We also uncovered more specific, tactical insights around how to optimize the brand’s positioning, which benefits to emphasize in messaging collateral, and which media investments to prioritize.

The research helped Hyland better understand its core brand strengths to reinforce in messaging, including a category-leading NPS and strong associations with top decision-driving criteria. Survey respondents were also asked to share unprompted / open-ended brand associations, which highlighted that the Hyland brand enjoys top-of-mind associations with key positioning attributes.

Hyland was found to have the strongest emotional connection with its target audience compared to all other providers, excelling on critical emotional engagement factors such as trust, authenticity, and empathy. This emotional positioning matters in the ECM & CS space, especially when it comes to driving customer advocacy and word of mouth. Research indicated several rational and emotional attributes where Hyland has established a considerable competitive advantage that should be amplified.

An additional outcome of the study was to inform Hyland on optimal messaging content to ensure it addresses the key business objectives of focus to the customer and empathizes with pain points.

Through these insights and assessments, we developed comprehensive recommendations for how to improve brand health and build brand equity. B2B International presented and helped socialize the resulting brand growth strategy across the Hyland organization, including with the C-suite. Equipped with recommended actions and with internal buy-in, the Hyland marketing team incorporated these insights and recommendations into existing campaigns and used them to plan and inform a forthcoming corporate brand campaign.

A year after the first survey was conducted, Hyland commissioned a second wave to assess the outcomes of the new brand strategy and campaign. In this follow-up survey, we found clear evidence that the strategic recommendations and actions taken by Hyland were driving successful brand outcomes, as evidenced by statistically significant improvements on priority brand metrics.