The shift
Partway through building a content plan, it became clear the target customer was wrong. End customers weren't the ones signing government contracts. Integrators were. That changed the audience, the message and every channel decision after it, so I rebuilt the program around partners.
1. A persona built from real partners
I analysed 34 integrator businesses from their own websites, grouped them by how well they fit Nirad, and identified which already ran an SD-WAN practice. The result was a partner persona based on evidence rather than assumptions, used for every piece of work below.
2. A partner recruitment test
Nirad already had a database of integrators, so the Display campaign targeted that list directly rather than the open web. The goal was to start a conversation, not explain the partner program, since commercial terms are discussed by phone. I developed three concepts to test against each other:
| Concept | The hook |
|---|---|
| Revenue | The deal sizes partners can win |
| Made in India | Government procurement preference and a railway deployment as proof |
| Competitive displacement | A comparable solution at a fraction of incumbent pricing |
Each concept was produced in three standard sizes, nine banners in total, from a creative brief I wrote for the designer. It covered audience, copy per concept, layout per size, naming and the test plan.
3. Collateral for a distributor's network
A Delhi-based distributor with a large integrator network asked for materials partners would actually use, not technical documents. I designed and built a company profile and product brochures from scratch. The brief I set myself was to avoid the cluttered, logo-heavy look typical of vendor collateral in the category: dark hero sections, one accent colour, card-based product tiers, a short "trusted by" row and press coverage of a flagship railway deployment.
Layout sketches of the two A4 pieces. Client logos shown as grey blocks.
4. A WhatsApp campaign from a messy database
Integrators respond on WhatsApp far more than on email, but the partner database was a raw licensee list of 6,261 rows. The name field mixed people's names with titles, designations, typos and structured text. I cleaned it in Python:
- Removed honorifics and designation words, including typo variants, while keeping name particles that look like titles but aren't.
- Extracted real names from structured entries and normalised capitalisation.
- Deduplicated on mobile number down to 5,493 contacts, and set aside 201 cases where one number mapped to different companies for review rather than deleting them.
- Added a single greeting field that falls back to the company name when no person's name exists, plus tags splitting the list into 2,092 contacts with names and 3,401 without.
The creative is a carousel comparing Nirad's branch device with a Fortinet equivalent: security, SD-WAN, dual-SIM 5G and advance replacement included at around ₹18,000, against up to three times more for the competitor once add-ons are counted. When the first cards were cropped on phones, I diagnosed the cause as a wide aspect ratio and rebuilt the set as squares with a safe zone. The detailed comparison moved into a datasheet the card offers on request, so each card only has to earn the tap.
Three touches, one comparison
The campaign ran as a sequence of three touches, each doing a different job and all pointing to the same Nirad versus Fortinet comparison:
- Urgency. "Your Fortinet renewal is coming. Compare it first." A reason to act now, and a reassurance that switching is easier than partners expect.
- Risk and margin. "Moving off Fortinet, made simple. Zero risk. Better margin." The two things a partner weighs before recommending a switch, with Nirad's team backing the proof of concept before and after the sale.
- Proof at scale. "3000+ BigBasket vending machines run on Nirad." A named deployment to close the loop on credibility.
The live creatives, in the order partners received them.
From a raw export to a segmented, sendable list.
| Raw entry | Greeting used |
|---|---|
| MR. P VASANTH DIRECTOR | Hi Vasanth |
| NAME:RAJ KUMAR Designation:MD | Hi Raj |
| Md. Imran, Authorised Signatory | Hi Md. Imran |
| (blank) | Hi Sunrise Infotech |
The kinds of patterns the cleanup handled. Names and companies are changed.
Result Campaign ongoing
The campaign went to a cleaned, segmented list of 5,493 partner contacts. The first run achieved a 75% open rate, and 173 system integrators were onboarded as Nirad partners off the back of it. The campaign is still running.
The bigger outcome is alignment. Marketing now targets the people who close deals, using a persona, a database and creative built for them.