ABAX had a big B2B push for UK awareness. Here’s how it worked...

Norwegian equipment tracking firm ABAX helps construction firms prevent theft, by providing remote inventory tracking across their whole portfolio of vehicles and equipment.

Our research into our audience of builders initially did not bode well for us as marketers. As an audience, they are among the most jaded by – and least susceptible to – marketing jargon. Hard to reach and damn near impossible to impress, they’d have no qualms telling us where to stick our eBooks and white papers. However, there was one way we could reach them.

The universal language of building sites is humour. What appears to be a culture of piss-taking and practical jokes is actually more profound. It’s a way for men not typically known for being comfortable with expressing their feelings to bond emotionally. Which is why, ironically, the best way to get a builder to take something seriously is by making them laugh. So that’s what we did.

We launched the campaign with real-life scenarios that every builder could relate to. From a digger submerged in a river, a

driver sunbathing in the country, to a bloke taking his girlfriend on a date in a wheelbarrow, we showed the humorous situations that can happen when you don’t track your equipment with ABAX.

Then an influencer driven film featured real-world stunts from real building sites.

Fronted by construction sensation Ryan Belcher of @sq2_contractors, he brought a cross-platform audience of well over a million followers with him, made up of our exact target demographic. We began by posting a series of hilarious short-form films on social channels that landed simple product truths (efficiency, loss, productivity) in a fun way.

We even created a World Cup related film – ‘Who’s watching your equipment when you’re watching the footie?’ – that ran during England’s opening match (with a goalkeeping JCB digger). While the fun stuff landed key product messages, it also helped to hook our new audience in so we could hit them with a powerful prank they couldn’t afford to ignore.

The hero stunt in the series realises every building company owner’s worst fear – that all their equipment has been stolen. But we brought this fear to life for real.

Filmed covertly on smartphones, a builder has their entire inventory removed from a site overnight. Then, the next day, just at the apex of their ensuing meltdown, Ryan appears from the bushes to resolve all the drama with ABAX, which instantly locates the equipment via GPS.

Social media was at the very heart of the campaign. Organic short-form content optimised for Instagram Reels and TikTok performed a powerful mass-awareness job, while retargeted pranks from real building sites helped drive click-throughs further down the funnel.

The campaign utilised HubSpot’s Marketing Hub to streamline lead generation, manage customer interactions, and track campaign performance. This platform enabled the campaign team to nurture leads effectively, automate marketing workflows, and gain valuable insights into audience behaviour.

Leveraging social media advertising platforms, the campaign effectively reached and engaged its target audience across various social media channels. By utilising advanced targeting options and optimisation features, the campaign ensured that its messages were delivered to our exact target audience at the exact right time.

Results

With most B2B brands getting TikTok so wrong, this influencer marketing campaign got it so right. With an astounding 51m impressions, 23m video views and 316k click-throughs as well as +195% increase in web visits, according to Sofia Toll, CMO, ABAX Group, the campaign ‘really put ABAX on the map’.

Filmed candid-cam, in one day in July 2022, the entire campaign was live across channels just one month later.

The campaign was created on a shoestring budget of under £30K, yet performed like one of at least ten times that cost.