So you put together a beautifully organized and strategic events plan for 2020 to increase brand awareness and generate leads for sales. But then COVID-19 happens and life as we know it changes. We’re unsure of when large gatherings like tradeshows and conferences will go back to “normal”, but the good news is that this pandemic has brought out the gentleness in everyone, allowing the world to take a breath, innovate, and refocus.
As marketers, we know the show must go on. As long as coffee is still brewing and the internet doesn’t crash, we are fortunate enough to be able to continue doing our jobs from the comfort of our homes without much disruption. And, we know that our beloved sales teams will continue to knock on the door for leads. So it’s up to us to find new (and creative) ways to engage with current and future customers.
I’m going to share some ways that my team and I have pivoted and restructured our marketing and events strategy in this newly remote-world.
Don’t Panic
There’s always a choice.
Reinvent the Wheel, Sorta
Revisit your tradeshow list for the next year and highlight the events your team was depending on the most for lead generation. Once your team goes through this exercise, the next step would be to reach out to the event organizers and find out if they plan to bring the event virtual, or if you can transfer funds to 2021 in lieu of the pandemic. Some event organizers are offering partial refunds and still hosting their event virtually so exhibitors and speakers get exposure and leads.
If exhibit A doesn’t pan out, exhibit B would be get together with your SMEs and brainstorm 5 webinar topics that your company can hold on its own to reach this audience. Once you have a plan on what content to cover, look into affordable options of how you can optimize the advertising for your webinars; maybe you can run a few paid social ads, or purchase a web banner ad with an industry media outlet that drives people to your webinar landing page. There are several ways you can promote a webinar series without breaking the bank, including having your sales team post about it on LinkedIn and Twitter, e-mail marketing, send it to Partners to blast out, and invite industry influencers to attend and promote by giving them a guest blog post in return. Leveraging an existing network is the smartest and cheapest way to gain reach.
Phone a Friend (and by a friend I mean Partners)
One thing I’ve enjoyed about the cybersecurity/technology industry is how eager companies are to form a partnership that bring solutions to market. My team has a handful of partners that we keep a close relationship with on a regular basis. We collaborate on content, use cases, networking events, blog posts, webinars, and trade shows together throughout the year. The first thing we did when shows started getting canceled was sit down and think, “OK, let’s get in touch with partners and start co-hosting webinars together over the next few months.”
Spread Love, It’s the Customer Marketing Way
RIP Biggie. Marketing teams are always so focused on lead generation, that often times we fall short of giving our #1 homies some love. With the cancellation of shows and the Sales team off the road, now is the perfect opportunity to execute a customer marketing campaign. It doesn’t need to be anything extravagant– maybe it’s a combination of 1:1 phone calls from Sales to check in, followed up by a few relevant content pieces tailored to their pain points. Or a free trial on a software product that could benefit them while working remotely. A little bit goes a long way in times of need.
Invest in Conversational Marketing, Like… Yesterday!!
Ever since we started using Drift for conversational marketing, our web leads have quadrupled. Whether it’s the sentiment of someone available live to talk, or that users just hate filling out forms, Drift chat has dramatically improved our team engagements. It’s also helped our team understand what visitors are coming to our website for, and if we have the right information on there for them. By tracking what chat users are asking us for, we’ve been able to update our website with more relevant content for our audience.
Drift chat has also assisted us in shortening the sales cycle. By the time a visitor wraps up their conversation with either our ChatBot or live employee, they leave our website with a meeting or demo booked. Before Drift, the visitor would have to fill out the form, wait for someone to get back to them, compare schedules to pick a meeting time, send a carrier pigeon, yada yada yada. Now we are converting more, faster
To wrap up, events marketing isn’t canceled. Your marketing strategy isn’t canceled. Lead gen is still possible! Now is the time to leverage your network of cybersecurity marketers, join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society, test out new tools, fail a little, and find new ways to promote your brand. Below is a list of key tools my team has leveraged for lead generation during the pandemic:
Get started with our favorite lead generation tools today:
Your fellow marketing nerds,
Aileen, Gianna, Maria
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