Launching Sales Companion: How we built it.

The need for change

CHASM project: Defining our ICP

We started 2024 with a mission to define our ICP. We initiated the CHASM project a project with the aim, of defining our 'headpin' in market. Headpin? Picture ten pin bowling.

If you hit the very front and first pin, your headpin, straight on, you get a strike. Your headpin in this metaphor is your ICP, hit that and the rest will follow.

In simple terms we wanted to identify our niche in the market, determine who benefits from that and build out a product offering that addresses the needs of those that fit the now defined ICP.

The project was divided into three phases:

The target market initiative began with a simple hypothesis: many fast-growing tech scale-ups struggle to hit their sales targets in key European markets due to rigid outbound sales strategies.

These approaches often fail because they don’t account for the diverse regulations, languages, and business practices unique to each country. To test this, we conducted in-depth interviews with 17 of our customers - and our hypothesis resonated with every single interviewee.

We confirmed that U.S.-style sales processes are often too aggressive and transactional for European markets. Many companies attempt to apply a successful playbook from one region to another, only to see it fail.

This is the building blocks of what’s to come…

Validating our hypothesis - customer & market research

Building on the CHASM findings, we wanted to dive deeper. Using UserEvidence and our own data analysis, we uncovered some compelling insights:

• 85% of customers believe connecting with the right people is the biggest benefit of having a sales intelligence provider.
• Customers continue to struggle with CRM data quality - 65% of customers believe their CRM is missing data and 61% of customers indicated that their CRM contains the wrong data.
• Europe is the most important region for our customers current sales and their future growth. 82% of customers cited that Europe is key to their companies growth.

This was a game-changer—it reaffirmed our need to prioritise delivering more higher quality decision-maker data to our customers so they can spend more time connecting with the right people.

Looking beyond our bubble - the state of the B2B market

To gain an external perspective, we used Wynter to survey sales decision-makers within our ICP on the current state of the B2B market. The findings validated our existing insights:

• 72% of respondents cited data quality as their biggest challenge with sales intelligence tools.
• 80% agreed that the most important benefit of a sales intelligence provider is the ability to connect sales and marketing teams with the right people.

Across both our customer and market research, we found a recurring theme: 

Companies prefer quality over volume of data. Both customers and prospects understand the importance of high-quality, easy-to-use data to connect with the right people.

This highlights the need not just for accurate data but also providing contacts that are key decision makers in the buying process. 

The research confirmed our CHASM work and customer research - European expansion is a top priority for many companies.

This represents a massive opportunity for Cognism to position itself as the European leader in delivering high-quality decision-maker data.

Developing our brand story for Cognism 3.0

Armed with extensive market research, we needed to consolidate our insights into a compelling brand story.

We used the data from our CHASM project and market research to clearly define the problem our ICP faces and position Cognism as the solution.

We believe that Go-to-Market teams don’t struggle with a lack of data. And, that their challenge lies in the quality, context, and prioritization of the data available to them.

Cognism exists to deliver high-quality, compliant, global B2B data, complimented with unmatched European expertise and actionable intelligence, so you can personalise prospecting at scale to accelerate your growth.

This brand narrative became the foundation for everything—from the product itself to the ads and campaigns we created. Our vision is now deeply embedded in our DNA:

From Cognism 3.0 to Sales Companion

Sales Companion: A new era for Cognism

This isn’t you’re average product launch - it's the future of Cognism. We’re talking about our biggest product launch to date (a full migration to a next-gen sales intelligence platform).

And as a marketing department, it’s our job to deliver a high-impact, multi-channel launch that drives market awareness, customer adoption and position Cognism as the category leader in personalised sales intelligence.  

From the offset we set out clear goals that would help us achieve that:

Maximise awareness & excitement 

Position Sales Companion as a game-changing innovation across every touchpoint – from website to campaigns – with a clear narrative.  

Seamless customer migration  

Guide existing customers through the transition with clarity & confidence, delivering everything they need to understand the new platforms value.  

Sales enablement  

Arm internal teams with best-in-class collateral, training and messaging to drive consistent, confident conversations.  

Demand generation  

Fuel the pipeline with targeted campaigns that generate high-quality leads and accelerate product adoption.  

Market leadership  

Own the sales intelligence conversation – from thought leadership content to press coverage – positioning Cognism as the go-to solution for modern B2B prospecting 

Creative concepts and launch plans

Kick off & assembling the project team

With our groundwork in place, it was time to roll up our sleeves. Following a detailed kickoff call, we quickly assembled the Cognism 3.0 project team, led by our Marketing Project Manager. 

To keep things on track we held bi-weekly check-ins, ensuring every task stayed aligned with our ambitious launch timeline.

We mapped out every deliverable in Asana - a total of 604 tasks distributed across the different teams, and less than 120 days until launch, the work began.

Team-by-team strategy

Demand Generation

Objective: Develop a compelling campaign concept that aligns with our brand story and drives product awareness.

Instead of focusing only on functional product benefits, the Demand Generation team saw this as an opportunity to shift toward emotive storytelling to articulate the brand story and highlight the need for change. This meant overhauling existing assets, developing a creative theme, new campaign concept and ensuring these assets stood out in a crowded market.

Product Marketing

Objective: Build powerful value propositions, messaging frameworks, and best-in-class enablement materials.

The Product Marketing team developed tailored messaging frameworks for each core persona, talk tracks for sales, one-pagers & key collateral and product positioning for external and internal use. All whilst conducting a full website audit, identifying key pages that needed a redesign to reflect the new product and messaging (basically a complete redesign of the website 😮)

Customer Marketing

Objective: Ensure a seamless customer transition with clear onboarding, engagement, and advocacy strategies.

The Customer Marketing team laid out detailed onboarding workflows, email nurtures, and transition plans to ensure existing customers moved onto the new platform effortlessly. They also worked closely with beta customers, gathering real-world testimonials (both written and video) to fuel demand generation and product marketing initiatives.

SEO

Objective: Optimise visibility and rankings for key search terms tied to the new product.

SEO started with in-depth keyword research, to identify any content gaps. One key finding? Competitors were actively targeting high-intent terms like "market intelligence tools"—a space we needed to dominate.

The team also identified new product-specific keywords (like "Buying Signals") to ensure strong search visibility for important features Sales Companion provides. To prioritise efforts, they categorised existing pages into Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 based on their influence on MQLs, pipeline, and revenue, starting with Tier 1 optimisations first.

Project Management team

Objective: Keep everything on track, bridge gaps between teams, and ensure a flawless launch.

The Project Management team served as the glue holding everything together, ensuring smooth coordination across marketing, legal, product, and other key teams.

Beyond execution, they planned a detailed launch-day strategy, ensuring a big-bang moment that celebrated everyone's hard work and maximised the impact of our launch.

Content & Social

Objective: Amplify thought leadership, drive engagement, and create buzz across organic channels.

The Content & Social team developed a comprehensive thought leadership plan, leveraging key figures within Cognism, including ghostwritten LinkedIn newsletters for our CPO & CRO and press releases to maximise media coverage.

To ensure company-wide participation, all assets were packaged into Media Kits and distributed to sales and internal teams before launch, along with usage guidelines—ensuring everyone was aligned, informed, and ready to drive momentum.

Bringing Sales Companion to life

With detailed plans developed for each team, it was time to get creative - here are the before and after’s of everything we created for launch…

+1 creative concept

At its core, Sales Companion is a sales rep’s personal assistant—a dependable +1 that supports them in their daily outreach.

Demand Generation took this concept and ran with it, developing a creative theme that draws a direct parallel between having a reliable +1 in everyday life and Sales Companion’s role in sales.

The messaging and creative strategy aimed to tap into relatable social dynamics, bringing Sales Companion to life as a tool that complements and empowers sales reps. 

To reinforce this message across multiple formats, we repurposed it into video ads, ensuring consistent storytelling.

Cheat Codes (product playbooks)

One of the biggest takeaways from our Demand Gen campaign planning was that we needed to use our brand story to change the perceptions of how buyers perceive contact data.

Our goal with the campaign was to show that more data isn't the answer - we wanted to emphasise the importance of having the right data—and demonstrate, in a tactical and actionable way, how using quality data effectively leads to significantly better results.

To bring our narrative and campaign to life we created Cheat Codes—a hub of tried-and-tested prospecting plays designed to help sellers turn high-quality data into meaningful conversations and better outcomes.

Again, a compelling creative theme was essential to bring this campaign to life. We drew inspiration from classic arcade and video games like Pac-Man and Space Invaders, seamlessly integrating the Cheat Code concept across our ads, landing pages, giving it a core campaign identity.

Take a look for yourself and let us know what you think! View Cheat Codes

Webpage and landing page redesigns

You probably noticed our home page and product pages look different (in a good way we hope).

We mentioned earlier that the product marketing team had enormous job updating and in most instances redesigning the entire website with new messaging, value props and imagery to improve the overall visual identity of the website.

With support from our amazing website and graphic design team and multiple revisions based on legal and product feedback, key pages went under major transformation

And as you can see from these before and after shots, we're pretty proud of the outcome.

Working with influencers to amplify launch 

We knew that amplifying our launch beyond our own organic channels was crucial.

To reach new audiences and maximise impact, we partnered with external subject matter experts and industry influencers whose audiences aligned perfectly with Sales Companion.

To execute this, we collaborated with Flooencer to identify high-impact influencers across the US and EMEA markets.

Together, we crafted tailored briefs, ensuring that each influencer’s messaging was on-brand, authentic, and highly relevant to their audience. This strategic approach helped us extend our reach and drive meaningful engagement beyond our existing networks.

Take a look at how these influencer posts turned out 🤩

Localising assets for the DACH & France markets

Quick interjection here to clarify what we mean by ‘localisation’ and how it differs from ‘translation.’

Localisation goes beyond simple translation. It involves adapting tone of voice, calls to action, and imagery to align with cultural nuances, ensuring content feels natural and relevant to each audience.

That’s why we didn’t just translate our new webpages into German and French—we developed and executed regional content strategies, leveraging the expertise of local subject matter experts (SMEs) to maximise impact.

For English-speaking regions, we collaborate closely with Morgan J Ingram, while for our core non-English markets, France and Germany, we work with Mattia Schaper.

Partnering with regional SMEs not only enhances our credibility and authority in these markets but also allows us to tap into their audience and influence—a powerful way to amplify awareness, especially for major campaigns and product launches like this one.

Sales enablement materials 

Our entire sales enablement toolkit underwent a complete transformation—a massive project led by our Product Marketing and Enablement teams.

From battle cards and one-pagers to sales decks, talk tracks, and SDR cadences, every asset was reimagined to align with our new positioning and strategy.

You'll notice the insights from our CHASM project and market research—which shaped our brand narrative—are woven into every piece.

And by integrating our core campaign messaging  into all enablement assets, we’ve created a fully aligned, cohesive experience at every touchpoint—ensuring that every sales conversation, email, and presentation reinforces the same powerful story.

One Pager - Redesigned and updated product messaging, summarising key points about the new product for sales teams to distribute to prospects. 

Sales Deck - Updated deck placing the narrative at the heart of the deck to highlight the need for change, before showcasing Sales Companion and how it helps them solve their existing challenges.

Customer migration and beta testimonials 

To build anticipation and drive early adoption, we launched a brand-new email nurture campaign, teasing the new product and enticing customers to join the waitlist.

To further encourage migration, we introduced a customer migration webinar series—giving customers an inside look at how beta users were already leveraging the platform. These webinars highlighted what the upcoming product roadmap and provided a clear roadmap for a seamless transition to the new product.

Customer Marketing's other priority was to gather beta customer testimonials to power demand generation campaigns and their own customer advocacy programs. Luckily the beta customer's loved Sales Companion, so working with these customers to develop written case studies and video testimonials was a breeze.

Celebrating launch internally with a bang 

Launch day was more than just a milestone—it was a moment to unite global teams, celebrate our collective efforts, and introduce Sales Companion with energy and excitement.

We kicked things off with an opening speech from senior leadership, reinforcing the vision behind the product and the impact it would have.

This was followed by a fireside chat with beta customers, where they shared real-life use cases and the tangible success they experienced with Sales Companion. The goal? To create internal advocacy so that excitement carried through to every conversation our sellers had with prospects.

Much like the premiere of a blockbuster film, we built anticipation by watching the official launch video together (check it out below), counting down to the highly anticipated moment Sales Companion officially went live.

And because every great launch deserves a little extra buzz, we set up a branded mobile coffee cart outside HQ, treating Cognism colleagues to complimentary coffees served in custom-branded cups—making sure the excitement started the moment they walked through the door.

What you really came here for - the bloopers! 

Considering the team aren't full time actors, the videos we created for launch turned out amazing...

But of course there was a lot of bloopers (we're not professional after all)...

So enjoy some of these snippets that didn't make the cut.

Launch day impact - taking over LinkedIn

We kicked off with a bang—launch day delivered our best website traffic of the year so far, generating 17.5k page views in just 24 hours. High-intent pages like demo and pricing captured 10% of total traffic, signalling strong engagement right out of the gate.

On LinkedIn, our product campaigns—especially the +1 static creatives—are off to a powerful start. While it’s still early, these ads are driving a 90% higher CTR than our average for product value campaigns.

Our video ads are also making a serious impact. In some cases, we’re seeing 50% longer dwell times and a 95% higher completion rate compared to our typical benchmarks—proof that the content is not just stopping the scroll, but compelling users to watch and click.

Thanks to these performance lifts, we drove over 900 visits to our paid landing pages in just two days.

What's next in this new era for Cognism?

As you’ve seen from the incredible plans and assets we created, this launch was a true team effort.

From graphic design and product marketing to project management, every team played a crucial role in bringing Sales Companion to market.

What we learnt

"Launching a product of this scale requires careful planning from day one—you need to fully scope the size and complexity of the launch upfront. Trying to scale as you go is dangerous!" 

"I’d also stress the importance of internal marketing. Whether it’s a major product launch or a flagship campaign, internal marketing should never play second fiddle. The excitement and alignment within your team are just as crucial as the buzz you create externally!"

Alice de Courcy, CMO

"I think the launch showed to us the importance of getting all your ducks in a row, I think often we had everything together but maybe in the wrong order. And by this I mean, starting with a solid brand story first is super important."

Liam Bartholomew, VP Brand & Customer Marketing

Launching a product of this scale—while simultaneously refreshing the brand and visual identity that the new product deserves—made message testing absolutely critical. Partners like Wynter and UserEvidence streamlined the process, helping us validate concepts quickly. But landing on a strong messaging framework is just the start—ensuring it cascades seamlessly across every activation channel is what truly drives impact. From sales enablement to web, ads, and influencers, alignment was key. 

Mick Loizou, VP Product Marketing & Demand Generation

What's next...

Since you’ve made it this far, we’ll let you in on a little secret…

This definitely isn't our last product launch of the year.

As we wrap up our first big campaign, we’re already deep into the next one—and this time, it’s something for marketers.

If you’re an ABM specialist, Demand Gen marketer, or a hands-on CMO, you’ll want to keep an eye out.

Stay in the loop for the next instalment of “How We Built It”—where we take you behind the scenes of our next product launch: Audience Builder.