A custom media channel that put Salesforce Platform in direct conversation with the exact executives it needed to reach, at one tenth the cost of traditional prospecting.
Salesforce Platform caters to CIOs and CTOs who build applications on top of their CRM. But while sales and marketing teams knew Salesforce well, the IT decision makers and buyers at these organizations had no idea Salesforce Platform existed to meet their needs. And every traditional channel for reaching these IT execs was expensive, crowded, and hard to measure.
This is the same dynamic playing out across enterprise tech today. In a market being reshaped by AI, every vendor is competing for the attention of the same small group of technology executives, and those executives have less time and more noise than ever. Buying impressions doesn't buy their trust. Salesforce Platform needed a way to earn a seat in the conversations CIOs actually value.
Mission launched IT Visionaries in partnership with Salesforce Platform: a twice-weekly interview show featuring trailblazing CIOs, CTOs, and CISOs. Rather than renting attention through ads, the strategy was to own a channel that IT leaders would seek out on their own.
IT Visionaries was designed for one audience only: senior IT decision makers. The show has ranked among the top tech podcasts multiple times, including hitting #1, with 340+ episodes and 1.5M+ downloads. Mission handled everything from guest recruiting and vetting to prep, production, and post-show follow-up.
The show's guest chair became Salesforce Platform's most effective door-opener. Instead of cold outreach, target executives received an invitation to share their story on a top tech podcast. The conversation starts as a red-carpet experience, not a pitch.
Every episode became a durable asset: customer stories, social clips, video, and organic search traffic that keeps working long after air date, and can be repurposed for new campaigns and sales plays.
This is where a custom podcast separates itself from every other channel. Since launch, IT Visionaries has featured 92 Fortune 1000 CIOs as guests, along with hundreds of technology leaders from the Global 5000. Each one is a direct, warm relationship between Salesforce Platform and its ideal customer.
Where a $50,000 event might produce one conversation with a prominent CIO, the podcast starts that same conversation with an invitation, an hour of their story, and a piece of content they're proud to share with their own network.
"They're a dream team. Was the best podcast experience I've had to date."
IT Visionaries guest"Such an awesome episode and your team does a great job with the production of it all."
Guest team, Taco Bell episodeBy rolling out the red carpet for each guest, Salesforce Platform is left with a lasting impression it can build on: a real relationship with a named executive, opened at a fraction of the cost of any other enterprise channel.
Enterprise sponsors typically evaluate media partnerships against three questions: does it open new accounts, does it deepen strategic relationships, and does it position the brand where the market is going? IT Visionaries delivered on all three.
A 130% increase in awareness among key Salesforce Platform prospects, while cost per qualified introduction fell 10x.
The podcast gives Salesforce Platform a steady window into the pain points its customers and prospects are living with, described by one Salesforce project lead as a source of constant information. In their words, "It's about making that hour worth of time and compounding the content from it."
Because the interviews are evergreen, episodes keep drawing traffic long after they air. Platform leverages content in real time as it's created, and returns to the archive to repurpose past conversations for new initiatives.
In the years since IT Visionaries launched, Salesforce Platform has continued to lean on the show as its needs and marketing goals evolved. The production is what listeners hear. The partnership is everything underneath it.
"The team at Mission has been instrumental in the success of our podcast. What you get to hear on the surface when listening to the podcast is only a small piece of what the team at Mission brings to the table. The team handles everything from recruiting and vetting candidates to podcast prep and production to post-show follow-up. What makes Mission an absolute powerhouse and amazing partner are their strength in growth marketing and social, where they shine and are always generating quality downloads and engaging content. But most important of all, the entire team is completely professional and agile so that they easily pivot to new directions for content or ideas we want to test. From day 1, our experience has been nothing short of extraordinary."
Salesforce VPMission is the media network built for the C-suite, with 45M+ downloads and thousands of executive conversations behind us. If executive access is the outcome you're after, let's talk about what a partnership could look like.
Start a conversation