Using PR and Advertising To Create a Market

For most high tech companies, advertising is not the most effective way to reach an audience. Only for products with broad utility such as ASICs, FPGAs, DSPs and EDA tools does it really make much sense. Open a copy of EETimes and check out the advertisers; you'll see what I mean. For a small company trying to build a market, the best way forward is via PR. However, this does not mean launching meaningless press releases into a vacuum or badgering the technical editors to print your datasheets. PR also requires some creativity and the creation of a story. Big issues, competitive compare and contrast pieces, non-partisan technical articles and well written press releases followed-up by phone calls to editors and press presentations are the way to go. Treat the editors with respect and provide them with both sides of your story. Never exaggerate the capabilities of your product to an editor. Sometimes, possibly to support a product launch or roadshow, it is wise even for a single product company to place some advertising. Just like contributing to a political party - your money does not tell the politician what to think, but it does often buy you the opportunity to tell an editor what YOU think, and that's important.

Using the Web

Web based marketing. What I have done in the past, what worked and what did not. Details coming soon.

Making the best of tradeshows

15 years ago people attended trade shows to get information - most companies did not yet have websites and so the best way to find out about new products was to go to a trade show and grab leaflets. In 2004, most attendees at trade shows are not there to get datasheet information, they are there to network, to attend the conference and for the wild-card element that such events turn up from time to time.

Although it is more work and definitely more worrisome, I prefer to run "events" at trade shows rather than simply spend a $gazillion on a booth and throw my datasheets on the walls. The net is scattered far and wide and is not well targeted, but it's better to search though 700 leads for 10 key opportunities than to hunt through 40 leads and find none that are worthwhile. At ChipX we attended just two shows a year, but the lead generation, PR and general "presence" that we formed in the market by ingenious and creative events made the trade show an effective marketing tool, even in internet age.

Telemarketing (uuugh!)

Telemarketing has a very bad reputation and many people feel that it has no place in the high tech world. Such was my opinion also until I was asked to include it by a board member as part of my lead generation program at ChipX. I was very surprised to find that it worked very well and was not such a huge headache or reputation-killer as I had expected. I had one part time person pulling company and engineer names from technical press and the internet and another hourly paid person working through a telemarketing script. The lead generation amounted to about one reasonable opportunity per day for the year that I ran this program and was very successful. It's not usable in all cases and is probably not helpful for products with a small number of target customers. However, for ChipX is worked very well and I can replicate this success in future if it's appropriate.