RSA Conference 2015 attendees convening on San Francisco April 20-24^th in search of scantily clad woman fronting vendor booths will be sorely disappointed, as RSA became the latest group to ban “booth babes.”

There are many factors at work in the push away from booth babes, with the most substantive being that they are undeniably demeaning. In evaluating this conference shift, I can’t help think of the recent Hooters TV ad with Jon Gruden, which infers that “Hooters Girls make your wings taste better and your beer colder.” I’m not sure that can be scientifically proven, but if it could then the chain is really onto something. Along those lines, my guess is that conferences and technology vendors would likely give greater pause to moving away from booth babes if the women in fact made their technology produces look cooler and work better.

But there is scant evidence that booth babes generate more leads and sales. In one such proof point, Spencer Chen, head of marketing and growth at Frontback, penned a guest post for TechCrunch that drew attention to their own split-testing (two different booths at a show, one with booth babes, one staffed with subject matter experts) at a major industry conference. The result: the booth babes generated a third of the foot traffic and less than half the leads.

Isolated results? Perhaps, but probably not. The attendees who are drawn to booth babes are probably the same ones who are more interested in stuffing their swag bag than they are evaluating vendor offerings. For me personally, I find vendor employees far more approachable and less intimidating than women in bikinis, but I wasn’t exactly High School prom king so maybe that’s just me. Either way, given how this booth tactic portrays women and lack of evidence the strategy even works, booth babes smack of an outdated relic that can undermine customer perception of the brand.

For vendors that have used booth babes and now must look at alternative approaches, it is a gut check to solidify common sense strategies such as staffing the booth with seasoned employees who can address prospect inquiries at a business and technical level; ensuring prospects and customers are alerted pre-show and are compelled to stop by your booth; aligning the show marketing team with public relations and social media efforts, etc.

I’ve attended several major technology conference shows with clients over the past year, and beyond the tried-and-true tactics referenced above, some of the more effective booth “pull” strategies I have seen include:

• Booths that adapt to time of day – Attending a recent conference, one vendor had a gourmet coffee station set up during the morning and early afternoon hours of the show, and then switched to a beer tap towards later afternoon. This ensured a steady flow of traffic throughout the day.
• Smartphone charging station – One vendor at a security conference set up a charging station, which not only became popular as the day progressed and batteries drained, but also led to a longer attendee booth visit and individuals had to wait for their phones to sufficiently charge.
• Lounges – Typically booth seating is reserved for customer/partner/press/analyst meetings. Offering a small set of seats or lounge if budget permits can provide attendees with something that is very hard to find on the show floor – a place to rest. Even better, provide demonstrations at designated times for those seated for further engagement.
• Raffles – Give attendees a reason to come back during show times and days that are typically low traffic. Whether it is through capturing information that can be used to email/text later in the Conference for a giveaway, this can bring back individuals during parts of the Conference that might otherwise see light traffic.

The DC tech startup community has a chip on its shoulder. That’s not a bad thing; it motivates entrepreneurs and area leaders committed to advancing the interests of the DC tech community to fight for respect. This respect can assume many forms, including funding, an available pool of highly educated, skilled workers, or just positive publicity and attention relative to Silicon Valley, New York, Boston and other tech hubs that seem to glisten more in the eyes of venture capitalists and industry pontificators.

As I networked and dined at MAVA’s annual holiday luncheon last week and reflected on the week that was in the local tech space, a scene from Jerry Maguire popped into my head. It was when Tom Cruise and Kelly Preston feed each other breakfast in the buff. Ok, that’s not the scene, but figured I’d throw it in there to make sure everyone is paying attention. It was Jerry Maguire racing home after the football game, bearing his soul to his wife, and exclaiming, “Tonight…our little company had a very big night. A very, very big night.” The flurry of venture capital raise announcements by local companies last week in fact represents a very, very big week for the DC tech community.

The three venture capital raises undermined a prevailing but increasingly antiquated notion that technology innovation emerging from the nation’s capital is government-skewed, exclusively b2b or, for lack of a better word, boring. Optoro, a startup that caught my eye approximately five years ago as a presenting company at a MAVA event, announced a $50 million funding raise on December 10^th. The company stood out to me that day because the business model was simple (heck, even I could understand it which is no easy task) and it was clear to everyone in the room what the industry pain point was (retailers were not efficiently and cost-effectively able to sell excess and returned inventory), and that Optoro has developed a very clever way to address it (a cloud-based, multi-channel selling technology enabling retailers to optimally manage their reverse logistics).

The day before Optoro announced its massive funding raise, marketing software firm TrackMaven snagged a $14M Series B round from NEA, Bowery Capital, Silicon Valley Bank and others. TrackMaven is striking a chord with overwhelmed digital marketers seeking products to help better track and act on relevant data related to earned media, SEO, ads, content marketing and social media efforts.

The final venture capital raise last week is a company I’ve been privileged enough to call a client for the past several years – Canvas. The Reston-based company, which raised $9 million, has quickly emerged as the global leader in mobile apps for collecting and sharing business information. Canvas is truly disrupting how work gets done by enabling businesses to replace expensive and inefficient paper forms and processes with customizable mobile apps for smartphones and tablets, with no programming or IT required. There are also now more than 15,000 apps in the Canvas mobile business application store – apps that can easily be downloaded, customized and shared by Canvas’ growing community of partners and subscribers.

Not only do these funding raises reflect the diversity of startups and challenger brands that now call the DC area home, but also strengthens the region’s global position. Canvas’ Jason Ganz reaffirmed as much in his recent blog post that analyzed every startup funding round the last ten years. Among several compelling pieces of data, Ganz calculated that the DC region has 138 funding rounds listed so far in 2014 – making it the 7^th highest region for startup funding globally. For the sake of comparison, there were 52 area funding rounds in 2009 and 157 funding rounds last year.

It was a very, very big week for the Greater Washington technology community, one that holds the promise for even greater activity and growth next year.

My exposure to Israeli technology companies over the past several years has admittedly gravitated towards cyber security, video surveillance and biometric startups like BriefCam, FST21 and others often born out of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) or Israeli Military Intelligence. Whether it has been at ASIS or other security industry conferences, I come away impressed with the sophistication of the technology and potential applications for both commercial and government purposes.

One of the reasons the Showcase of Maryland/Israel Business – which took place on November 18^th in Silver Spring, MD – caught my attention is that it extended beyond some of the aforementioned security categories to robotics, e-discovery software, medical equipment, and mobile emergency response solutions. The event was hosted by the Maryland/Israel Development Center, a non-profit organization promoting trade and investment between Maryland and Israeli businesses and research institutions.

In some cases, the companies were Israeli-based and looking to push into the U.S. market more aggressively, while others had Israeli origins but had been operating in Maryland for several years. As someone who has tracked and worked with scores of Maryland technology companies and startups – first as founder of a Maryland Tech PR firm and currently in my role as Partner at Bluetext – it is exciting to see collaboration and efforts by the Maryland Tech community to foster closer ties with Israeli tech firms.

Some of the more provocative demonstrations and companies I spoke with included:

Roboteam – This company designs, develops and manufactures cutting edge, user-oriented, multi-purpose, unmanned platforms and controllers for Defense, Law Enforcement and Public Safety missions. One of its unmanned ground vehicles was on display and operational at the event, where it demonstrated its ability to not only move on flat service but also ascend a podium staircase.

iControl Universal Collaboration Solutions – Collaborative Business Intelligence firm based in Burtonsville, Maryland helping retailers gain unified data insights across its supplier network.

NextNine – Cyber Security firm focused on oil, gas, mining, defense and other critical infrastructure verticals.

RADiFlow – This company provides secure industrial Ethernet solutions for critical infrastructure applications.

Standing out in a sea of 400 of the world’s leading cyber security vendors and startups is no easy feat. Each year, more than 28,000 cyber professionals swarm to the RSA Conference North America to experience the latest and greatest of what the industry has to offer.

For emerging and even established cyber security vendors, few opportunities like RSA exist where so many existing and potential customers are accessible. PR and marketing planning for RSA begins months before the event itself, and can be expansive in nature – ranging from message development and creating innovative, dedicated landing pages to booking and providing on-site support for press and analyst briefings.

Capturing the attention of decision makers, press and analysts at RSA 2015 will be no easy feat.  Reporters and analysts are bombarded with hundreds of briefing requests, often reserving 1×1 slots for familiar names with significant announcements to make. That said, success is possible and there are strategies that do work. Here are 5 tips for generating buzz and briefings at RSA 2015.

Don’t wait until RSA pitch to connect with reporters

Your firm may have relationships with some reporters and analysts, and lack them with others. Fair or not, reporters are going to pay more attention to emails from PR practitioners they know – particularly when it comes to sifting through 200-300 conference meeting requests. In one of his parting columns for Forbes, A Day In The Life Of A Tech Reporter’s Email Inbox, contributor J.J. Calao broke down one day’s worth of emails. Of the 34 PR story pitch emails that day, he responded to six of them – and he personally knew five of the six he responded to and did not respond to 29 pitches from publicists he didn’t know.

The point is this: many PR professionals worry about reaching out to reporters they don’t have strong relationships with before the RSA pitch – thinking it is better to wait until they have “big news” to get their attention. The problem is that your news probably isn’t as big as you think, and if you wait until the moment when a reporter is receiving the highest volume of pitches they get all year to try and break through, you will be out of luck.

Instead, find a way to get on the radar of influencers before the RSA pitch to make a connection. This could be as simple as tweeting the reporter in response to a recent article they have written, or alerting the reporter to new cyber security research. It is hard enough to try, in a single brief email or phone pitch, to explain what your company does and then explain any news announcement. Use a pre-RSA pitch strategy to expose the reporter or analyst to your brand and where you fit into the cyber security ecosystem. Then, the RSA pitch can cut right to the chase on news being announced.

Understand what to announce

There are reporters at RSA who will conceivably be interested in new products and writing product round-ups. But to pitch reporters who have, understandably, grown cynical about new product proclamations, it is very risky to have this be the anchor of your outreach strategy. At the same time, reporters are not interested in hearing your CEO’s “perspectives on top cyber threats” or “insights into the next vulnerability that will be exploited by cyber criminals.”

What reporters may be interested in is provocative new research your firm has conducted that supports any trend position you are staking out or that is being overlooked in the current cyber conversation; or customer case studies/customer-based research that attaches real-world examples to evolving trends. You can announce products at RSA, but the product story must fit into a broader narrative that is supported by data and/or customers.

Don’t go it alone

The limited amount of time reporters and analysts now have for 1×1 meetings at RSA borders on the comical, as the time windows have shrunk to as little as 15-20 minutes. I can’t even run through what I had for breakfast in 15 minutes let alone have a meaningful conversation that a reporter will remember at the end of a day full of 32 quarter-hour briefings.

Make the reporter’s life easier by killing two or three birds with one stone. Is your cyber security product part of a broader suite with partner solutions that a customer is using? If so, coordinate a single plan of attack with these partners that will add greater weight and simplify the story. Instead of a reporter getting a similar, overlapping pitch from three vendors, they get one tight, singular pitch that ties everything together. This approach is particularly valuable for emerging cyber brands that partner with a more established brand with established inroads to key reporters.

Working with partners, you can also set up landing pages in advance of RSA and direct influencers to key information on that site. This can whet the appetite of influencers and drive momentum into the conference.

Research Conference Product/Company Awards

RSA has meaningful award and innovation programs, such as the RSA Conference Innovation Sandbox Program, that offer a credibility check when communicating with customer decision makers, partners, press and analyst. These award deadlines are several weeks in advance of the conference and require the client to have sufficient advanced knowledge it will be announcing a new product at the show.

Engage on social if not in-person

For cyber security reporters and analysts you are not able to connect with in person at conferences, engage on Twitter to in advance of and during RSA to identify what is capturing their interest. Finding a key reporter at a large conference is akin to the proverbial needle in the haystack. You can increase your chances by following these influencers on Twitter, and perhaps one might post that they are headed into a particular panel session – thus shrinking that haystack considerably.

For everyone at RSA, there are also hundreds of others who want to attend but cannot for budget, schedule and myriad other reasons. Use your presence at RSA to deliver on-the-ground intel from sessions, themes, and demos, and promote that you will be doing this in advance of the Conference.

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as “…a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

This definition is of course part and parcel to a CMO’s core objectives, which is why marketing teams are devoting a greater share of budget and resources to content marketing. In a 2014 survey of Fortune 500 CMOs conducted by The CMO Club and Spredfast, 60 percent of respondents intend to increase their content marketing budgets. Their enthusiasm is not based on a “cross our fingers and hope it works” approach; almost two-thirds (66%) of CMOs are predicting a positive return on investment (ROI) from their content marketing campaigns.

As CMOs gain confidence directing more resources and budget towards content marketing, there is very likely a team within the organization growing less sure of its footing within the content ecosystem – public relations. There is irony here, as public relations professionals no doubt read the content marketing definition and grumble to themselves (or perhaps out loud), “sorry to burst your bubble here, but we’ve been doing this content marketing thing for quite some time.”

This is true, to an extent. The efforts may not always be branded in this fashion or as inclusive of as many channels, but PR professionals have long been tasked to create and distribute high-strategy content. And therein lies the danger; that CMOs may forge ahead with content marketing and pull in the PR team as an afterthought, or not at all. This approach threatens to create counter-productive silos by leaving capable, experienced PR teams without a role that can add the most value to the organization.

Because content marketing increasingly lives in an organizational gray area, CMOs with ownership of content marketing budget, staff, and direction should consider the following to fully maximize the value of PR staff, and ultimately the content marketing program itself:

Recognize budgets are growing, but not infinite

Content marketing budgets are expanding, but unless CMOs are seeing immediate, across-the-board ROI it will be difficult to get blank checks from CXOs. Earned media is a no-cost (beyond labor time) investment that can allow content marketing efforts to continue interrupted – even during periods when budget is not allocated to “paid media” channels.

While drawing a straight line between media relations and lead generation or website visits can be difficult to see, it is there. Earned media can drive down customer acquisition costs for a content marketing campaign, as long as the right measurement tools are in place to capture the results of these earned media efforts.

Earned media remains top purchase influencer

Not only can earned media be the most cost-effective content marketing channel for CMOs, it can also be the most effective. A 2014 Nielsen in-lab study commissioned by inPowered exposed consumers to three content sources: third party news and other credible sources (earned media), branded content (owned media), and user-generated content (reviews, etc.). Not surprisingly, earned media emerged as the most effective information source at all stages of the purchase lifecycle and across all product categories. And the difference was not subtle; against branded content, earned media was found to be 80 percent more effective at the bottom-of-the-funnel or purchase consideration stage, 80 percent more effective at the middle-of-the-funnel or affinity stage, and 38 percent more effective at the top-of-the-funnel or familiarity stage.

Bottom line: content marketing initiatives are ultimately judged by sales and revenue generation, and earned media continues to prove itself as a powerful purchasing influencer.

Be cognizant of PR paranoia

The current state of media likely has your PR team fairly freaked out at this point. Print publications continue to disintegrate faster than BlackBerry’s market share, and chasing the social media payoff pot of gold is a tedious exercise. If the CMO shuts PR out of content marketing strategy and execution, or brings the team in so late that it is relegated to a tactical role, significant PR brainpower is going to be left rotting on the sidelines. Identify areas where public relations – whether it is an internal team or external agency – can add the most value, and then provide them with the mandate and resources to execute in those areas.

All content writers are not created equal

Marketing teams excel at developing content designed to sell – whether it is through collateral that provides air cover for the sales team, website and landing page content that can convert leads, advertising copy, etc. Editorial content opportunities however, tilt increasingly towards sponsored content, advertorials, and even earned thought leadership content that requires a much softer sell. In fact, much of the time this type of copy cannot reference the company’s product/service or be in any way self-promotional.

PR teams understand how to walk the tightrope of creating and placing content that communicates core messages without reading like overt marketing copy, and CMOs should leverage this expertise.

Don’t let content volume kill content marketing

Ending up with too much of a good thing is problematic enough – the gourmet cupcake craze is Exhibit A of that fact. Too much of a bad thing is even worse, and therein lies the danger for content marketing operations that spew out page after page of useless content. PR teams are a proven source of valuable content, understanding that low-quality articles cannot be placed in reputable, high impact articles.

$135 billion will be spent on new digital marketing collateral (content) in 2014, and automation tools will spike this volume even further. In this scenario, quality content becomes the great unequalizer for CMOs to differentiate their products, services and brand.

Whether it is a 12-year-old buying a new basketball shoe, a college student looking for a new smartphone, or an IT manager evaluating which cloud CRM tool to purchase on behalf of the company, there is no denying that each can be influenced in the buying decision. Price, design, and features all play a huge part, but consumer and business brands have also recognized, going back centuries, that the right celebrity endorsement can have a disproportionate impact on the buying decision of a large number of individuals.

 

For businesses considering the use of celebrity spokespeople for their brands, it is not as simple as forking over a sack of money to someone famous and expecting a flood of new product/service orders to follow. Success requires a mix of the right chemistry, strategy, and execution.

A brand might turn to a celebrity for a variety of reasons ranging from inspiration to desperation. In the latter category, one might look to when BlackBerry appointed singer-songwriter Alicia Keys “Global Creative Director” a couple of years back. BlackBerry was suffering from a brand perception as a functional device lacking innovation and hoped that Keys, a genuine BlackBerry user/fan, could inject creativity into branding efforts.

While opinions differ on how much a celebrity can impact sales, research published in Marketing Science in the March/April 2013 issue found that the right celebrity endorser could in fact boost sales. Research authors found that from 2000 to 2010, the Nike golf ball division secured an additional profit of $103 million via the acquisition of $9.9 million in sales from Tiger Woods’ endorsement. Through additional sales generated when Woods topped the rankings, Nike recovered 57 percent of the $181 million the company paid Woods between 2000 and 2010 – and that was on just U.S. golf ball sales alone.

Celebrity endorsements can and often do work. To maximize the use of celebrities for brand marketing campaigns, there are a few considerations and strategies to keep in mind:

Analyze the celebrity’s social reach and audience

When partnering with a celebrity for a marketing campaign, your brand should conduct a thorough analysis of the celebrity’s social channels (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.). This analysis must extend beyond simply concluding the celebrity has a large number of followers, and take into account several questions:

• Is the celebrity willing to reach out to his/her followers as part of this campaign? If so, how often?
• Does the general profile of the celebrity’s social audience align with the product or service your brand offers?
• How has the celebrity’s audience reacted in the past to brand endorsements? Receptive? Hostile? Skeptical?
• What is the tone of the celebrity’s past social media communications, and does this tone pose risks based on the current brand mission?

If your brand believes the celebrity’s social media presence needs to play a significant role in the success of the campaign, it is critical to answer these questions before any paid partnership is struck.

Leverage celebrities passionate about your brand

It goes without saying that the overwhelming majority of celebrity endorsements are transactional in nature. In other words, a brand offers to pay a celebrity a certain fee to serve as spokesperson, and the celebrity agrees to that price. Brands should be tuned into how celebrities talk about their brand – whether it is a particular smartphone, food item, airline, or even a conference calling service – and if it finds celebrities organically speaking positively about the brand in a passionate way, a more genuine marketing opportunity is created. It is hard to artificially create “celebrity chemistry” with a brand and/or its product, so when that already exists, audiences will recognize it and the impact can be more tangible.

Don’t fear “odd couple” pairing of brand and celebrity

Chuck Norris’ endorsement of The Total Gym makes sense. So does, for example, a supermodel hawking a skin care product or an NBA player endorsing Gatorade. These endorsements follow a logical path of how we perceive the celebrity’s persona to be (even if that persona is purely based on fictional characters they play) and the brand, product or service.

But sometimes the celebrity marketing campaigns that stand out are the ones where the celebrity’s persona clashes in a humorous or dynamic way with the brand. A few years back, our team worked on a marketing campaign for Identity Guard that leveraged the in your face, brutally honest, comedian Lewis Black. On the surface, having a comedian film a series of Web videos for an identity theft protection and credit monitoring service might seem an odd fit, but it worked because at the time LifeLock was marketing with their CEO spokesperson daring thieves to steal his identity. We took the opposite tact and used Lewis Black’s personality to say NONE OF YOUR D*MN BUSINESS (NOYDB). Who better to say NOYDB than loud comedian Lewis Black?

Don’t get hung up with A-List celebrities and professional athletes

Brands often fear that only A-List celebrities can move the sales needle, but the fact is that these endorsement deals are very expensive and there is no such thing as a sure thing when it comes to the economic impact of a celebrity endorsement. A-List celebrities can come with an entourage of rules, handlers, skepticism and endorsement “baggage,” and the irony is that some celebrities are so over-exposed that when we see them endorsing a product it doesn’t have the desired impact.

Find spokespeople

who embody brand philosophy

Brands often find it challenging to attach a set of values to what is in effect a faceless corporate entity. In these cases, it can be more effective to try and find an individual whose career and experience embodies that philosophy. This approach was used for an advertising campaign, Game Changer, on behalf of leading accounting firm CohnReznick (a Bluetext client). Torre was a strong choice to serve as CohnReznick’s national spokesperson because, as the firm stated, “Joe Torre exemplifies the same characteristics that CohnReznick strives for every day in serving our clients – excellence, integrity, dedication, proven performance, and results-driven leadership.”

In summary, for businesses considering the use of celebrity spokespeople, success requires a mix of the right chemistry, strategy and execution.

Something has happened on the way to marketing automation domination: brands are realizing that they didn’t have as much content as they believed; had a large quantity of content that was low quality; or burned through its content reserve and lacked the time, focus or resources to maintain the required pace of content creation. Out of this realization we are starting to see startups and even established players develop tools to automate content creation and delivery.

My latest PR Week Hub Comms article looks at the key role content automation may plan for companies seeking to maximize the ROI marketing automation can deliver.

Wouldn’t it be better if car trunks had built-in refrigeration for transporting groceries? What if the shower didn’t let out water until it was actually at the temperature you set it to?

These are just two of thousands of ideas put forward on the crowdsource ideation site Betterific. The ideas referenced above are nifty, but you might wonder how they benefit the individuals who come up with them, or ultimately if these ideas will ever get on the radar of companies in a position to execute on them.

To help businesses get a better sense of how to leverage the wisdom of crowds for product, service and marketing ideation, I recently conducted a Q&A with Betterific CEO and Co-Founder Micha Weinblatt – and wrote about it in my PR Week Hub Comms column. You can read the full article here.

There probably isn’t a week that goes by when you don’t come across – on television or radio, in print, online or via social media – a research survey on a consumer or business topic. What factors lead a survey to pique the interest of reporters, analysts and social media influencers? Why do some surveys resonate with everyday consumers or workers, while others flounder and quickly fade into obscurity?

Surveys are conducted not just to generate external attention, but also to guide internal decision-making. To ensure your research survey is constructed, managed and communicated most effectively, below are 9 strategies to consider.

 

Ensure survey is not duplicative

Surveys are an effective tool to gain market intelligence and generate attention from key press outlets and influencers. As such, it is very likely that competitors and others in your space have conducted research that touches on similar themes. If you are building a survey designed for external consumption, scan competitor news sections to see surveys they have released, and conduct more expansive searches on anything that might resemble your survey.

If others have touched on your survey theme, it doesn’t mean you need to avoid it. Instead, develop angles not previously covered and, most importantly, understand when competitors put out annual surveys so you are not conflicting with that timing. If two surveys come out that are similar in theme but have different results, reporters will question the viability of both and may choose to avoid covering the data altogether.

 

Aim for contrarian results

Surveys that tend to be widely reported and viral are ones where the results buck conventional wisdom. The satirical publication The Onion once ran the headline, “Poll finds majority of Americans have never met William Dafoe.” The faux poll headline pokes fun at real surveys that come up with unsurprising results. And while this is headline news for The Onion, predictable survey outcomes are a death knell for generating survey coverage.

Generate questions that you believe might lead to unexpected answers, because results that counter expectations will prove most interesting to the market because you are telling them something they don’t know, not simply reinforcing their previously held assumptions.

 

Ensure data will have external and internal value

From time to time, I’m brought into a survey process near completion, and find that many of the questions have been designed for the company to gain useful intelligence for internal purposes. This could be research for a pending product launch or a company pushing into a new market. Often, the questions are suitable for internal intelligence, but rather useless for externalizing the data. This is due to the fact that the questions don’t follow a cohesive theme and are too scattered to assemble into a strong media story, lack the necessary filtering to break up results in a meaningful way, or lead to answers that are just plain boring. This is a wasted opportunity; research surveys are not cheap, and that means you want to squeeze every possible ounce of internal and external value out of it. You can’t go back and add something after the survey is complete, so take the time to think about questions and answers that can serve multiple objectives from day one.

 

Use surveys to support product/service launches

Contrarian and compelling results are great, but if they undermine business objectives the survey is rendered useless. For example, let’s say your company is in the process of developing or launching a new Cloud-based mobile videoconferencing solution for small businesses and want to conduct a survey showing that the small business market is demanding this type of product. Be sure to have enough knowledge of the market to surmise whether it is ready for the solution, because if survey results come back and are underwhelming, you will likely not want to externalize that data.

A better way to approach this scenario is to flip the questions and focus on what this market is looking for in a mobile videoconferencing solution from a price, features, and functionality perspective. This strategy not only generates less threatening results, but also provides valuable intelligence to ensure your product matches what the market is looking for.

 

For survey questions, KISS (Keep it simple, stupid)

A key objective of a survey is to generate deep, meaningful results. That said, the more complex the Q&A, the more difficult it can be to communicate survey results to the media. For example, let’s say you ask the following question: “One-third of executives who have been in their position more than five years have strong compliance measures in place.” These results are a tough sell because they introduce multiple data points and filtering into a single response, and it is unclear if this filtering even has any added significance. Develop questions that will generate clean, easy to consume data points that a reporter, analyst, business decision maker or the lay consumer can relate to.

 

Make data more ‘consumable’ with infographics

While there will always be an audience receptive to deep, granular survey data, most individuals do not have the time or wherewithal to sift through pages of text and numbers – no matter how compelling the results are. Instead, marketers are seeing better traction when the data is presented through engaging, visual infographics. Images and videos are used ‘tell a story’ through the data that can be consumed quickly and easily. Infographics also allow organizations to imprint their brand look and feel with the data, and direct audiences visually to data points that you feel are most significant or beneficial to broader story.

 

Go one step further with ‘snackable’ graphics

In the era of social media, even some larger visuals are not optimal for the condensed content formats of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Vine. To ensure that survey data can be easily communicated via social channels, create ‘snackable’ or ‘bite-sized’ graphics that are scaled down to a more shareable format. These graphics are sized to remove the extra step for consumers of the graphic to have to click on a lick or navigate to the full-sized graphic.

 

Use survey results to anchor thought leadership

Sure, many organizations conducting a survey might build a white paper or report around the date and put out a press release, but this leaves several other opportunities on the table. Don’t be the organization that spends $50,000 on a survey, has the results come in, and only then asks what they are going to do with the data.

If the results tell a strong story, extend the life of the results by building content around the data, such as byline articles that can be placed in target publications, webinars, conference speaker entries, and slideshare.

 

Create a home for your survey

Depending on budget and ultimate objectives, there is value in creating a digital home for your survey to live at for an indefinite period of time. If the survey is unique enough in nature, it is not uncommon for the data to be cited by press, analysts, and even other companies for weeks and months after the survey is released. If organic search leads individuals to a landing page that is dynamically updated with complementary and current information – rather than routing searchers to a dated, static press release – the benefits of the survey can have a long shelf life.

This digital home can include other types of content referenced in this column, such as infographics, white papers, byline articles and videos that support the data or relate to it.

– See more at: http://www.agencypost.com/9-pr-and-digital-marketing-strategies-to-promote-a-marketing-survey/#sthash.E4HMxGxi.dpuf

The Bluetext team is in the thick of industry conference season for clients, recently concluding support for Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and the RSA Conference in San Francisco, with ISC West in Las Vegas and Enterprise Connect in Orlando on tap in the next few weeks.

Support we provide for key industry conferences often begins months before the event itself, and can be expansive in nature – ranging from message development and creating dedicated landing pages to booking and providing on-site support for press and analyst briefings.

Generating press and analyst attention and briefings at Conferences – especially large ones such as Mobile World Congress, RSA and CES – is no easy feat.  Reporters and analysts are bombarded with hundreds of briefing requests, often reserving premium 1×1 slots for familiar names with significant announcements to make. That said, success is possible and there are strategies that do work. Here are 10 tips for generating buzz and briefings at your key industry conferences:

1. Better to be early than late – For conferences where press and analysts attend, a pre-registered media list is available for sponsors and exhibitors in advance of the show. This is a valuable tool and one that should be fully leveraged; however, waiting until it is available can be risky. Most shows make the list available roughly 4-5 weeks in advance of the conference, and it is not uncommon to reach out to in-demand press and analysts upon receiving the list to find that their schedules are already fully or mostly booked. The fact is that there is no penalty for reaching a reporter before they start working on their schedule, but irreparable consequences for getting to a reporter after their schedule is already booked. Research which reporters and analysts attended the prior year’s show, use your domain expertise to make educated guesses on others who might attend the show, and float an email to them before the pre-registered media list comes out to see if they are attending and taking meetings. Worst-case scenario is that they are not yet working on their schedule, and you can follow up at a later time.
2. Don’t rely too heavily on pre-registered media list – Yes, most reporters and analysts will be captured on this list, but some prefer to remain off of it precisely because they do not want to be bombarded with briefing requests. For that reason, follow the previously referenced strategy of researching who attended the prior year so that no key contacts fall through the cracks. This strategy is also valuable and far more necessary for clients that are not sponsoring or exhibiting, thus do not have ready access to the pre-registered media list.
3. Expand timetable for briefings – One of the more ironic aspects of conference briefings is this desire to try and communicate a critical piece of company news in a horribly sub-optimal environment. Reporters are racing from one briefing to the next, must digest multiple announcements and often have a fraction of the time they would allot for a typical briefing. Increasingly, we are seeing more value in working with clients to arrange briefings immediately prior to or after the conference, when the media contact has more time and can give the client announcement full attention. Phone briefings cannot match the benefits of a face-to-face interaction, but how valuable is 15 minutes in a noisy, chaotic environment? There is a balance to strike.
4. Yes, announcements matter – For every PR practitioner who extols the virtues of making a tangible announcement at key industry conferences, you will find another arguing that it is mission impossible to expect a client’s announcement to rise above 200 others. There is no cut-and-dry answer here, as it depends on the conference, the news, and the client. The fact is that many reporters and analysts will reserve their 1×1 time for clients with significant news, and if your pitch is simply to “catch up” or “brief the reporter on recent activities,” it is very likely that the pitch will be de-prioritized. If the client does not have a major product or news announcement, consider other means to provide media and analysts with value, such as a first look at results from an industry survey you have conducted.
5. Team up – Another option for clients that don’t arrive at conferences with name cache or big announcements is to team up with a Partner, or better yet a customer. Strategically aligning with influential partners and customers allow reporters to kill two birds with one, while adding more perceived weight to the briefing request itself.
6. Research Conference Product/Company Awards – Many conferences will hold award programs for “Best in Show” or “Most Innovative Product or Solution.” These award deadlines are often several weeks in advance of the conference and require the client to have sufficient advanced knowledge it will be announcing a new product at the show. That said, by entering it is another way to get on the radar of reporters who view these awards as a way to identify companies and products held in high regard.
7. Don’t ‘wing it’ when it comes to meeting locations – Conference floors are huge, and reporters book briefings back-to-back with little margin for error. If you have a reporter meet at a spot not conducive to the meeting, and then spend 10-15 minutes searching out a better spot, you will draw the ire of the reporter and waste what precious time he/she has. If budget allows, book a dedicated meeting room, or virtually scout out the conference layout in advance to understand spaces available near the client booth. Conferences often have a “Media Center’ for briefings, but you can’t just walk in and expect a table and chairs for hours at a time.
8. Go outside the traditional 1×1 briefing structure – Beyond budget and planning, there is no restriction on creativity when it comes to engaging reporters and analysts. From non-conventional demos to cocktail hours, think about ways to reach influencers outside of the traditional briefing format.
9. Engage on social if not in-person – For reporters and analysts you are not able to connect with in person at conferences, follow them on Twitter to gauge what is capturing their interest and what they are doing. Finding a key reporter at a large conference is akin to the proverbial needle in the haystack. You can increase your chances by following these influencers on Twitter, and perhaps one might post that they are headed into a particular panel session – thus shrinking that haystack considerably.
10. Be wary of going against the grain – Standing out among the crowd can be a good thing at conferences, but refrain from going too far askew of the hot trends at the conferences. Look in advance at what the meat of the agenda is and the types of companies speaking for a hint of what direction reporters will sway in coverage. The fact is that reporters’ daily roundups bucket company activity around prevailing show themes, and if you are part of those themes it is more likely you can be in the conversation. If your announcements focus on areas that are peripheral, they become harder for reporters to bucket into coverage.