Have you ever questioned the enormous investment – both in terms of time and finance – it requires to attend an industry event? You may have asked why are we spending this money and why is our PR team scheduling so many meet and greets with attending media and analysts?
While it’s true we’ve moved into a more mobile world where physical meetings seem to happen less and less, the fact remains that in an ultra competitive business environment you have to stand out and show up to garner the attention you need from key influencers and make a place for your products or services in the industry. You can’t be a wallflower when it comes to building a successful thought leadership presence.
Your b2b tech PR agency partner plays an instrumental role in making your industry event presence a success so it is essential to work with an agency that you can rely on, that knows the industry and you as a client well enough to advise you on what will work to meet your needs.
More often than not, a successful event begins with a solid business strategy: What are you trying to achieve? Who is most important for you to meet with while at the event? What is your idea of success before, during and after the event?
Once you have this in place, the PR team will collaborate with you closely to develop a compelling invite to secure meetings with media and analysts.
Here are three key things you need to consider having in place to successfully secure event briefings:
1. Newsworthy announcements: You can’t expect to have a meeting if you have nothing new to tell people. So plan to make some kind of product or company announcement timed with the event. This doesn’t mean you need to do a press release, though we highly recommend this as a way to amplify your presence at the conference. The announcement must be something meaningful and interesting to the industry at-large or your customers and prospects to secure any attention.
2. Cater to the media: This doesn’t mean serve them a meal or buy them a drink! Media and analysts attending these events are often on tight deadlines and under pressure to deliver relevant news items. Keep this in mind when doing outreach, the more you can provide them with information for timely news stories the more likely they will be to take the time to meet with you and hear what you have to say.
3. It’s all about relationship building: The success of your conference attendance should not be measured on the number of meetings secured. It’s really all about the quality of the meetings with the most influential media and analysts in your particular space. Building a relationship is far more important than landing a handshake. Target the influencers who matter most and lean on your PR team to make these recommendations. Once you have these meetings scheduled, you need to do your homework to understand what they cover and are interested in and where you can slot in your expert insight. Again, your PR team can help with this and prepare detailed briefing notes to ensure meetings are a success.
With CES over and MWC just around the corner, we can help determine which industry events are the best ones for you to attend, identify key influencers you should be meeting with, and schedule these meetings for you to align with your marketing and b2b tech PR goals, resulting in a positive outcome. Please contact TechComms, a b2b tech marketing and communications agency on + 44 (0) 203 322 8928.
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