Impacting a niche industry

Who are they?

Docucorp wanted to strengthen its profile among senior management as a leading provider of customer communication management (CCM) systems.

What was the problem?

However, the company's corporate and product news was limited and - even if it had not been so - media interest was limited too. Its software products have selective media interest, other than from specialist publications, albeit they are generally unlikely to be read by senior managers who are the decision-makers.

How did we help?

One of Docucorp's key markets is general insurance. Marketforce researched the impact of the new regulatory regime for general insurance, to identify how it would drive demand for Docucorp's solutions. We then undertook a survey to gauge readiness for this which revealed that many firms would not be compliant by the January 2005 deadline.

Marketforce also surveyed 1,000 UK consumers, asking whether they read the financial letters/statements they received, with the aim of highlighting a need for the cost-effective personalisation enabled by Docucorp's solutions. Marketforce then used the statistics to release a story showing that most consumers are more likely to read the back of cereal packet than their financial mail!

In addition to this research-based approach, Marketforce generated a number of feature ideas and articles which were 'sold-in' to the quality financial services trade titles such as Money Marketing, Financial World, Financial Adviser... These focused on a specific business issue within the industry, such as the Financial Services Authority's Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) initiative.

What does this mean?

Through this approach, Marketforce has achieved coverage for Docucorp in the national media, including the Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, BBC Online, Evening Standard, The Times... Feature articles have appeared regularly in the quality financial press, such as Financial World and Post Magazine.