User-friendly ebook version of Forrester research

Epicor

When Epicor commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ study of the Epicor ERP solution for manufacturers, the results were very positive — but conveyed in a dense, 30-page report of the research. The paper had little visual appeal and the ‘good stuff’ was buried in a lot of detail on methodology and layers of repetitive narrative — all conveyed in a carefully neutral tone.

Epicor wanted to create marketing materials that would do a better job of drawing attention to the key results and great customer quotes. They also wanted to use the content as support for the company’s brand messages to the manufacturing audience. This meant taking specific elements of the content, placing them in a different context, and conveying them through a more lively tone, so as to amplify specific themes and tell a more vivid story.

The challenge was to do this while respecting Forrester’s strict usage rules and avoiding embellishments that would make Forrester unwilling to approve the new marketing materials. The solution was to ask for HN Marketing’s help.

We tackled the challenge in two ways:

• We created a structure for a user-friendly ebook that let us top-and-tail extracts from the study with broader messages that were clearly related, but not specifically linked, to the study results.
• We also included notes for Forrester about the rationale for the structure, and clearly indicated where the content did and didn’t draw on the study. This kind of forward thinking — anticipating potential issues and acting to counter them — often saves a lot of time during approval processes.