Ever wondered what happened to that specialist B2B marketing agency for digital security & ID sector? The one you’d always see around the big industry trade shows like Biometrics, Trustech, SIMalliance or SDW?
You remember them right? They were the ones bright enough to get national attention for your digital security & ID news stories when no one else could. The ones who made biometrics look Tom Cruise grade sexy on the international news channels. The ones with enough vision and creativity to position your new start-up alongside Microsoft and Google in the global media markets.
Ever wondered what happened to these guys?
Five years ago, just a week after completing a major promotional programme for one of our digital security & ID clients, we were asked a question we’d never been asked before. It wasn’t a question from the marketing director, it was a question from the sales director:
“If all this exposure in the news and on TV is so great, then why isn’t my phone ringing?
The sales director had a point. 20 million people had seen what his product was capable of on major networks like Sky and CNN. The managing director was on cloud nine thanks to a full page profile and picture in the New York Times and the marketing director’s exposure per $ invested ROI chart looked like the Kangshung Face of Everest.
But in spite of all this high end exposure, folks in the sales department hadn’t noticed anything different.
Above all else, two things have driven change in B2B marketing over the past five years: new technology has opened up powerful new communications channels for B2B marketers, and the worst global recession in living history has meant that no company that cared about survival could afford to ignore them.
As we emerge from these past years of austerity, B2B marketing has changed for good. The demand for national news coverage and the high profile TV spots that marketing managers wanted because they would “boost company awareness” look like fuzzy, ill-defined objectives these days.
Today marketing directors in the digital security and ID sector want awesome content marketing and online conversion tactics that demonstrably boost sales. Press releases and news announcements that were carefully crafted to connect company decision makers to the most influential journalists have been replaced by blogs and social engagement tactics that target prospects directly online and via LinkedIn,G+, twitter and Facebook.
So what happened to that really cool marketing company that used to get unprecedented international attention for your digital security and ID news stories? Well we changed. The world changed, and B2B marketing changed.
If major news attention in the press and on the big TV networks is all you want then that’s fine. But if you’re looking for something more, then you’ll be glad to know we’re back.
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Five things your should know about Now if you’re in the digital security & ID business