A leading Polish office furniture manufacturer made its first steps on the market in Dubai with a LinkedIn and offline dealer acquisition campaign.

Project highlights:

International marketing for a leading office furniture manufacturer.

Integrating digital marketing and offline activation.

Combining the elements of social selling, content marketing, and ABM.

Shaping the future of office furniture

Established in the early 1990s., Mikomax has become a leading Polish office furniture manufacturer. The company is well-known for its innovative solutions and modern design. Following the success on the home market, Mikomax decided to expand further to over 50 countries across the globe. 

In 2019, the company started to explore the prospects in Dubai. As one of the first steps to launching in the UAE, Mikomax planned to exhibit at WORKSPACE, the largest trade show in Dubai. In the first place, the company looked to book as many sales meetings during the fair as possible.

How to attract the attention of local players

Innovative products, complete office furnishing solutions, and considerable expertise in global workplace trends. Mikomax had what it takes to introduce its offering to the new market. What it missed, though, was a strategic approach backed by local insights.

The company started to seek ways to capture the attention of local business decision-makers in a short period of time before the fair. However, as Dubai is a highly saturated market, impressing local players can be challenging.

That’s why Mikomax decided on creating a dealership acquisition campaign that would attract the attention of the target audience in a more unusual way.

 

The dealer acquisition campaign

Our process

With an office and several years of work for clients in Dubai, our team at Clipatize has gained considerable insights into the local business scene. Even before establishing a physical presence in the UAE, we had worked with numerous clients located in Dubai, such as dnata, Microsoft MEA or Dubai Airports.

Several of our past projects involved supporting international market expansions of our clients. We offered help in challenges such as bridging the intercultural communication gaps or catering for new target audiences.

This local know-how, paired with our strong B2B marketing experience, helped us to come up with a winning strategy.

Big idea and project assets

Our big idea was to engage prospective leads in an exchange of experiences and discussion on the local trends. LinkedIn was a perfect platform to enable such conversations. 

We proposed to:

1. Swap the marketing narrative for relatable, peer-to-peer communication with prospects.
2. Introduce the elements of personalised account-based marketing.
3. Position leads as industry and market experts.
4. Embrace Dubai-specific trends and tendencies.

 

To boost credibility, one of the company’s executives became a social seller representing Mikomax in the campaign. Once connected with the leads on LinkedIn, she engaged in conversations, shared plans for building a local presence, and encouraged feedback and advice.

The dealer acquisition campaign comprised four main elements: building a dealers’ database, managing LinkedIn outreach and ads, creating a value proposition deck, and coordinating offline tactics.

Dealers’ database

Following our client’s criteria, we defined characteristics of an ideal lead and created a database of around hundred contacts from over fifty companies. We then selected strategic contacts for individual offline activation. 

LinkedIn outreach

The campaign combined organic and premium InMail communication. 

As the first step, we prepared a series of messages–from a personalised invitation to connect and a “thank-you” note to follow-up InMails. Our messaging funnel positioned the recipient as an industry expert and encouraged their feedback on the product-market fit of our client’s offering. 

The follow-up messages invited the leads to schedule a meeting with the company’s representative at the trade show to discuss how trends and technology were likely to drive revenue. 

Value proposition deck

We created a value proposition deck to facilitate the process of collecting feedback on Mikomax’ product-market fit in Dubai. 

The presentation starts with an outline of the local workplace design trends and then defines the opportunity by indicating a market niche. The deck also highlights a competitive advantage the leads could gain by addressing the needs of the market in Dubai. 

We then tie the trends with key features of the Mikomax range and provide a strong reason-to-believe and case studies. The deck also outlines support for dealers and invites them to further discuss the partnership opportunities.

 

Linkedin Ads 

In parallel with the outreach activities, we also ran LinkedIn Ads aimed at capturing leads and handing them over to our client’s sales team.  

The idea was threefold. One LinkedIn Ad directed the users to the Mikomax’ website. The other two Lead Ads highlighted the competitive advantage of partnering with our client and focused on the business benefits of their office solutions. 

Throughout the campaign, we used A/B tests to identify the best performing copy and creatives, continuously refine the overall assumptions, and optimise conversion.

Offline activation tactics

Dubai dealers can be difficult to impress, so our tactics allowed for that challenge, too. We chose to catch the attention of the selected leads with offline activities.

The strategic leads got personalised invites to meet Mikomax’ executive at the trade fair. The letter was fixed to a plant gift sent to their offices and it included a QR code to facilitate connecting on LinkedIn. Unexpected yet pleasing, this tactic resulted in a high response rate and more appointments for our client.

 

Photo and video coverage of the event

On top of the campaign, we also supported our client in photo and video coverage of the trade fair. They later used this material in follow-up communication with the leads and shared on the blog and LinkedIn.