Smartsheet Power Your Process Campaign

The Campaign: Power Your Process

Today’s dynamic business thrives on ideas. But the traditional model of deadline-driven project management just can't keep up.

The truth is, it's all about process—the steps in the middle that turn ideas into reality. They are the secret sauce that differentiates products and wins competitive advantage.

In a sense, everyone is a project manager responsible for finding a better way forward and building the right process to get there. It's a new way of thinking for companies, but also for the individual managers trying to set priorities. So, we needed a campaign that tells a big story, while also feeling personally relevant to the people doing the work.

The Opportunity: Turn Research Into Engagement

Recent customer research told us that working professionals, regardless of industry, sector or job level, all fell into one of eight categories of work patterns and personal archetypes. We transformed that scholarly language into a colorful, interactive quiz experience. Respondents were asked to identify their priorities, responsibilities, and personal working preferences and, in return, were shown their individual “Power of Process.” Although designed to be engaging and shareable, the questions and results were all meticulously crafted to stay rooted in real academic data. This experience provided the perfect accompaniment to our marketing efforts, turning the focus from the broad needs of the business to the personal concerns of individual project managers.

The Media

Our media both promoted the importance of “process” and directly promoted the quiz. With an omnichannel media plan, we carefully showed up in relevant and endemic places, across pubs like TIME, Morning Brew, and WeTransfer, along with fun social places, like Instagram Reels, Reddit, and Twitch.

We designed our communications strategy and channel plan to meet our audience in modern and relevant places with messages that were uplifting, engaging, and natural to each specific channel. In order to choose these channels, we very deliberately looked at where our end users spent time and chose to meet them where they were receptive to work-related messaging, like work newsletters, respected publications, business podcasts, and LinkedIn.

Using language that spoke to making the impossible become possible, bringing ideas to life, and making an impact, we wanted our audience to feel simultaneously understood, both in their ambitions and frustrations, and hopeful in the solutions our platform provides.

The Launch: A World Without Process

Our first hurdle was to explain why a mundane word like ‘process’ was so important. So, we launched a series of ads showing what happens to ideas that aren’t powered by process.

Then we quickly followed with engaging ads that spoke to the upside—what process makes possible—and driving to our interactive quiz experience.

For less traditionally work-oriented channels, like Instagram stories, Twitch, and Reddit, we made sure to use language and ad formats that felt custom to what the audience was doing on each platform. Our copy on Twitch used gaming language like, “Unlock your secret weapon with Smartsheet,” while our ads on Reddit used simple shorthand language like “Your smarts + our smarts = great results on projects.” While these channels were important avenues for reach and engagement, it was equally as important to never feel intrusive.

The Results

The Power Your Process campaign tapped into a deep truth that our competitors missed: our audience doesn’t just want technology that is playful and easy to use — they want customized technology solutions ready to empower their long-term success.

As a result, we saw an overwhelming interest in the quiz and extraordinary engagement with the campaign as a whole.

The incredible response to the quiz and our “power your process” messaging proves that our message and offering deeply resonated — even more than we hoped.

Engagement Levels

• 4% Increase in brand aided awareness

Since the launch of the Power Your Process campaign and quiz in May 2022, we saw an unprecedented leap in brand awareness, effectively reversing the downward trend we’ve fought since 2020. In the context of our category, our competitors lost an average of 1.5% during the same period.

• 74% Quiz completion rate
• 37.6k Quiz completions
• 3:30s Average time spent on quiz
• 4:28s Average time spent on landing page
• 17% Landing page call to action click through rate
• 30% Template download growth
• Exceeded Daily Brew ad engagement benchmarks by 184%