Same investment, twice the sales: the result of an innovative communication strategy

A B2B communication project, which has grown over time, generating visibility, credible technical content and new business opportunities. Victor Caronni explains how the collaboration with Atlantide has helped to double the sales generated by the company website which, although not a traditional e-commerce site, is a source of qualified sales leads.

The collaboration between the Atlantide agency and Victor Caronni, Marketing Manager at a multinational manufacturer of mechanical and hydraulic OEM components for the automotive, mechanical engineering, machine tool, food, plastics and rubber, paper and cardboard, chemical and pharmaceutical industries, has, over the course of three years, led to significant growth in various key indicators, from visibility to turnover.

In this interview, Caronni explains how the collaboration with the agency came about and how, over time, an initially experimental project has evolved into a structured initiative capable of generating visibility (a 27% increase in website traffic), valuable content (over 30 press releases and case studies) and concrete commercial opportunities (over 100 qualified leads per year, with a doubling of revenue generated by the website).

How did your collaboration with Atlantide begin? What aspects of their offering convinced you to choose them?

When I took over responsibility for marketing at this multinational, I developed a fairly comprehensive strategy and realised that, in terms of communication and brand building, there were some gaps. Activities were focused on Google Ads campaigns, which served as a customer acquisition tool but were not sufficient to support the brand’s positioning.
I felt it was necessary to complement this tool with targeted PR activities capable of driving qualified traffic to the company website. The website is not strictly speaking an e-commerce site, but it represents a very important sales channel: it is the source of requests for quotes which, in most cases, lead to sales.
That is why I contacted three agencies specialising in industrial B2B. I chose Atlantide because their proposal was very practical: it combined press office activities with targeted advertising in trade publications, and the agency already had significant experience in our technological sector.

The partnership began with a modest investment and has developed over time. What made you decide to expand it gradually?

Initially, we set up the collaboration as a limited-time trial, although it was designed to be scalable should the results prove positive. The idea was to see whether combining press office activities with a small-scale advertising campaign in specialist publications could yield tangible results.
The results came through fairly quickly. On the one hand, we achieved increased visibility in trade publications; on the other, we established a steady stream of credible and technically sound content, which was not perceived as self-promotional but as useful information for industry professionals. This content was also widely used internally: by marketing, the sales force and even by other international branches, where it was translated and reused within their own operations.

Which results do you consider most significant in terms of visibility and return on investment?

Over the course of around two and a half years, the combination of ‘paid’ and ‘earned’ activities has had a very tangible impact on the business generated by the company website.
The volume of traceable sales originating from the website has reached and exceeded €400,000. This represents a doubling of turnover attributable to that channel: largely the result of the communication activities carried out with Atlantide, to which we allocated the budget previously used almost exclusively for Google Ads.
Despite the absence of investment in Google Ads, traffic to the website has grown significantly, with a 27% increase during a period in which, in many B2B sectors, web traffic tends instead to decline. Over this period, we have also seen a steady increase in sales-qualified leads converted into sales.
Naturally, other marketing activities within the company, such as our social media presence, have contributed to the overall result, but the core of the work was precisely what was developed with Atlantide. 

A key feature of the collaboration was the creation of case studies. How important was this type of activity?

It was a very important project. In the mechanical engineering sector, what makes content credible is the ability to place technical details within a real-world context.
When you manage to describe a concrete application, featuring a client who actually uses a specific component or solution, the content immediately becomes more understandable and, above all, more credible in the eyes of industry professionals.
Our collaboration with Atlantide allowed us to do just that: identify the right sectors and partners, interview the end-users of the products and gather genuine feedback. The fact that the agency directly managed the interviews, the sourcing of photographs and the publication permissions made the whole process much simpler from an operational standpoint, allowing me to spend far less time on these aspects.

You have decided to involve Atlantide in overseas markets as well. What prompted this decision?

Having verified that the method used in Italy worked, I decided to replicate it in the foreign markets I was directly responsible for, specifically Germany and Spain.
However, this was not simply a matter of translating the activities carried out in Italy. Each market has its own editorial dynamics, its own key media outlets and a different industrial context. It was therefore necessary to rework the content and adapt it to local specificities.
The difficulties were inevitably greater, because working with foreign media always involves a few more complexities. However, the agency was able to tackle them methodically and consistently. I put the agency in direct contact with the management of the foreign branches and from that point on I was able to limit myself to a supervisory role, which did not take up an excessive amount of my time. 

What kind of results have you observed in these markets as well?

Our activities have also yielded promising results in international markets. We have seen an increase in qualified traffic to our subsidiaries’ websites, a growing number of interactions with landing pages accessed via advertisements and content published in industry publications, and, more generally, greater brand awareness.
This has also resulted in an increase in leads compared to the situation prior to the activities carried out with the agency, for both the German and Spanish subsidiaries.

If you were to recommend working with Atlantide to a colleague in the industry, what aspects would you highlight?

I would say, first and foremost, the ability to transform technical expertise into credible narratives. In our sector, this is essential: you need to understand the language of the industry and know how to translate it into content meaningful to the reader.
Another important aspect is the ability to place this content in the right places – that is, in the publications and editorial contexts where it can truly reach the target audience.
Finally, there is the operational support provided by the people I’ve worked with at the agency. In particular, Marta and Claudio have been very effective in managing all the minor complexities inevitable in this type of work: publication permissions, deadlines for gathering materials, and coordination with end clients and editorial teams.
In many cases, these are issues that do not depend directly on either the company or the agency, but which someone must nevertheless manage to resolve. From this perspective, I have always found their support to be very reliable.
This collaboration has resulted in a tangible impact on the company’s commercial performance.

A summary of the results of the collaboration

Over the course of our three-year partnership, our integrated press office and media planning strategy has helped to significantly strengthen the company’s online presence.
Traffic to the website grew by 27% at a time when many B2B sites were seeing a decline in visitor numbers.
Over the same period, trackable sales generated by the website grew to over €400,000, with turnover attributable to this channel doubling.
Communication activities contributed to the generation of over one hundred sales-qualified leads each year, results of particular significance for a company active in the production of OEM industrial components.
At the same time, the combination of editorial content and advertising in specialist publications has enabled the brand’s visibility in the sector’s media to be steadily expanded, producing technical content used both on channels managed directly by the marketing team and by the sales force, as well as by the company’s other international branches.

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