Creating brand and thought leadership for niche consultancy
Kiran Consulting Group

Goal:
Create wider brand awareness as a strategic business resource and generate additional revenues.

Summary:
Kiran Consulting Group (KCG) is a consulting organization specializing in the delivery of quantitative solutions for complex business problems.KCG’s area of expertise includes process and performance solutions such as six sigma and simulation modeling, flow manufacturing, advance planning and finite capacity scheduling.KCG offers expertise in methodologies designed to model and identify best business practices for improved revenues and performance prior to implementation.

KCG’s target market is comprised of executive-level decision makers for globally recognized companies, including Wells Fargo, Disney, and others. The organization wished to expand its marketing initiative beyond the word-of-mouth referral it enjoyed; yet realized that traditional advertising and marketing techniques would hold little relevancy for it’s targeted CXO decision-makers.

As a boutique-sized organization, KCG often competed with the market’s top consultancies. Stephenson Group needed to develop a program strategy that would position KCG as a thought leader in its field of consulting expertise, while developing valuable brand name recognition.

Approach:
SG recommended that KCG focus its efforts on its key target vertical market, financial services, in order to achieve the focused market presence that could be successfully parlayed into future market wins. SG then worked with KCG to identify the top pain points within the financial services industry, and the strategic solutions that KCG could leverage in support of those issues.

Based on this input, SG devised a six-month brand and thought leadership program focused on delivering key market exposure through publication of bylined article placements on key topics, leveraging of the bylined article wins in their marketing efforts, news release campaign, and the securing of high-visibility speaking engagements with targeted industry organizations.

Results:
Within a six-month period, SG had earned the following results for KCG:

• Three bylined article placements in targeted financial services publications: Technology for Finance, SearchCIO and Bank Technology Strategies.
  
• Speaking engagement placements with three industry-leading organization conferences:BAI Smart Tactics, Thomson Financial Branch Banking and ABA Sales Management Conference.
  
• Analyst briefings and endorsement from Gartner, Celent Communications, IDC Financial Insights and Aberdeen. Briefings resulted in a research report endorsement and case study feature.
  
• Media coverage in the following key publications: CBSMarketwatch, American Banker, ComputerWorld, 1to1, USBanker, Bank Systems & Technology, American Banking Association Journal, Bank Technology News, SearchCIO, Technology for Finance, CNET, Yahoo Finance, EETimes, NBC6, CNET Investor, and others.
  
• Public relations campaign results were posted to the website, re-printed and distributed at seminars, sales presentations and speaking engagements, and forwarded to current customers and prospects for pass-along marketing exposure, providing valuable third party endorsement of KCG’s performance and support for KCG’s sales efforts.