Clay AIRScaling Clay AIR, a gesture recognition technology transforming the AR and VR industry through a global inbound marketing strategy resulting in 33x revenue growth over 3 years and a cession to the public company Qualcomm.

Founded in 2015, Clay Air offers high-performing, hardware-agnostic solutions for real-time hand tracking and gesture recognition, with numerous applications across consumer, enterprise, and virtual reality markets.

To gain adoption in a young market, the first step for Clay Air was to raise awareness of this emerging technology and the tremendous benefits it can bring to many sectors. A second challenge Clay Air faced was that it was a B2B organization that required a significant investment upfront. Additionally, Clay Air had a very long sales cycle, as potential clients needed to understand the benefits, test the impact of the technology, and finally decide to implement it into their products.

In order to create effective growth and significant long-term value for Clay Air, we sought to position Clay Air as the market leader and raise awareness, to convert decision-makers at an efficient CAC. Our messages were tailored to appeal to a variety of internal stakeholders, including engineers, project managers, and executives.

Our solution was to combine a strong brand presence with a strong inbound strategy, collecting qualified leads to educate and convert them. Our strategy was designed around educating key audiences on why and how this technology can address their pain points or bring value to their business in order to create effective awareness of what Clay Air has to offer.

Our goal was to attract our key audiences using a combination of paid and organic content. To accomplish this, we built a complete editorial line, creating content to support SEO. This included articles, use cases, white papers, and market studies, as well as videos and interviews.

• Tradeshow and PR: Developed a strong presence at major international trade shows such as CES, creating a unique and memorable experience showcasing the technology while supported by a niche public relations presence.

• SEO: In order to increase Clay Air’s visibility, each piece of content focused on specific and strategic keywords to improve ranking and drive qualified leads. Additionally, we built links with industry influencers, media, and indexes.

• Social Media: The goal of Clay Air’s social media strategy was to build a presence, gain visibility and reassure both the press and the decision makers.

• PPC: Our goal was to target specific industries,  locations and audiences leveraging both direct conversion campaigns to collect leads, and content pushes to build awareness and increase the database.

To maximize Clay Air’s collection of qualified leads, we developed features to track site visitors’ journeys and understand their behaviors and interests.

• Screen Recorders and Event Trackers: Our goal by installing these features was to understand user behavior and interest

• Quiz: We developed a quiz that allowed users to access restricted content and contact forms.

• Email Collection: Allowed users to access special content with the collection of their email.

• Automation Workflow: Clay Air’s automation workflow supported the process of nurturing leads and converting them

A major challenge for Clay Air was to strategize how to educate key audiences while reassuring them about Clay Air’s benefits. With an automation workflow built to nurture leads with relevant content, our goal was to attract potential clients with direct benefits for their industry and explain how and why Clay Air supported their goals.

• Articles: Build SEO and Traffic on specific subjects
• White Papers: Provided a deep dive into the technology and its benefits
• Technology Resources: This content focused on the spec tech and the performances.
• Studies: Clay Air’s studies focused on market opportunities and future growth perspectives.
• Videos: Demo videos allowed people to project themselves into the technical applications of Clay Air.
• Use Cases: Use cases detailed real client product applications and industry disruption.
• Interviews and Podcast: Industry leaders discussions on the fast-growing adoption of Clay Air’s technology.

While the sales team managed the top-rated leads, the lower-rated leads were nurtured by the content and automation workflow features we implemented. This method allowed time for lower-rated leads to develop an interest in Clay Air’s offerings while the sales team scaled accordingly to manage a larger volume of leads.

To boost Clay Air’s expansion, we developed a strategy to attract and convert a large number of qualified leads efficiently. This involved identifying eight distinct personas and target audience and customizing our messaging for each group. We emphasized psychological factors for engineers, while focusing on profitability for executives. We collected approximately 100,000 profiles. Our personalized targeting approach resulted in a Cost Per Lead of $21 and a 400x ROI.