Tanya Mackenzie, Director of Field Marketing, AlgoSec
“I also think that we will see greater focus on ABM and personalized marketing within personas as a way to get more with less.”
“Small, top-notch digital events must use top-notch
platforms to ensure that the participant experience is
excellent. You cannot rely on a PowerPoint or Zoom
presentation.”
The field marketing group at AlgoSec is responsible for lead generation, and we relied heavily on face-to-face communication. Before the shift toward working remotely, regional events and big trade shows were crucial for lead generation.
The first week or two of the transition was a whirlwind of navigating canceled events—figuring out what people were doing and regrouping. Net new leads are crucial, so we decided to go to the RSA Cybersecurity Conference in February 2020 as a sponsor. Big sponsors such as AT&T and IBM had already pulled out, but we decided to go because it was such a huge investment for us. It turned out to be a good decision because we ended up with a lot of leads for our sales development representatives to work with while we regrouped.
While we had money coming back from cancelled events, we still needed to generate new high-quality leads for our pipeline. Given the economic uncertainty of the pandemic, we also worked to do more with a reduced budget while transitioning to virtual events. So, we looked at all the core third-party vendors in our space and emphasized the quality of leads in our decision-making process. We selected only those vendors that offered lead guarantees.
So far, this approach has worked well. It has forced us to expand our relationships with key vendors that are vital in helping us reach our marketing qualified lead goals. Face-to-face leads are expensive, especially the large trade shows. They are also more time consuming, so you have little time to focus on other areas.
We are now getting fewer leads, but with the focus on quality, we have higher conversion rates. For this reason, I view this transition time as an opportunity for growth for myself and my team.
This is an excerpt from 15 Experts on Reimagining Field Marketing. The eBook was generously sponsored by Mighty Guides.
