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ECI: Leveraging Influencer Voices

Leveraging influencer voices to advance the conversation around the future of leadership in SMB tech

Challenge

ECI Software Solutions is a provider of industry-specific business management software and services, for small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) in manufacturing, wholesale/retail distribution, building and construction, and field and IT services.

After numerous conversations with customers, ECI picked up on a theme- many SMBs still had an essential fear of a full digital transformation from on-premises systems to the cloud. ECI sought a new and different way to uplevel the dialogue in their content and came to us at Brands2Life to help them do it. We planned to launch this standalone piece, to be formatted as a magazine: ECI’s first in-person customer event in 3 years, held from November 9 to 11, 2022 in Denver, Colorado.

Approach

We hit the ground running with the idea to develop a standalone piece of thought leadership, with insights directly from key recognizable tech influencers across ECI’s space, to help us create a fresh, dynamic narrative built around four content pillars – the red thread running through all of them being leadership and the next generation.

With this in mind, we decided to call the magazine ‘Empower’ tied to ECI’s central mission for its solutions, and as this first piece was designed to be version one of many to come, we dubbed it ‘The Future of Leadership Issue’.  From there, we began the process of identifying the influencers who could bring the fresh insights, SMB star-power, and expertise to deliver conversations that moved the needle and provided ECI’s customers with information they couldn’t get anywhere else.

Impact

Brands2Life’s influencer identification and analytics process, PUNCH, made for a smooth, targeted process that helped us find the right experts, efficiently. All four influencer contracts were executed within two weeks of initial contact and vetting, and all content was produced an average of 1.5 months ahead of schedule, alongside Brands2Life’s design team, which also moved forward ahead of target dates.

V1 of ECI’s Empower magazine was officially completed in mid-September, 2022, and copies were successfully in-hand at the opening of ECI’s Connect conference on November 9. Feedback across customer readers on-site was positive and focused on how insightful and helpful the influencer content was.

Next, we’re gearing up for V2 of Empower to be developed and produced in 2023!