Cyber Con Florida: Building for Long-Term Success
Challenge
Cyber Florida, The Florida Center for Cybersecurity (Cyber Florida) is a state-funded organization dedicated to positioning Florida as a national leader in cybersecurity through education and workforce development; innovative, interdisciplinary research; and community outreach. Drive attendance to this year’sevent & build awareness outside of the state to increase future attendance.
Solution
STRATEGY: FULL FUNNEL MARKETING APPROACH Upper + Mid-Funnel Prospecting: LinkedIn Sponsored Content & Google Display Step 1: This year we opened our targeting for LinkedIn to ensure that we were also hitting our goalof building awareness. We targeted professionals on LinkedIn with IT related titles, software engineer related titles, professors in the field & every C-Level title across the state of Florida and across the entire of the U.S. We also had capabilities that were not available in the previous years such as LinkedIn’s interest targeting. Using this new feature,we expanded our targeting to include professionals within the financial industry and government that showed interest in topics related to cyber security and tech. Three variations of creative were run to build interest. One was emphasizing the keynote speaker,one using a ‘geeky’ joke and one promoting a fun competitive event. Step 2: We also took a slightly different approach with our Google Display Network prospecting tactic. Initially we invested more into a national audience for awareness. To do so we bought placements on less niche sites and went with publishers that focus on government, financial and investment and business journals.This was mainly to generate interest in these areas since the keynote was General Paul Nakasone, NSA Director. Lower Funnel Conversion: LinkedIn In Mail & Google Retargeting Display+ PPC We looked at which job titles responded positively to the Sponsored Content in terms of who clicked on the ad and who purchased a ticket. We picked the Top10 titles and then sent a message to each person in their inbox prompting them to purchase a ticket to the convention. The effectiveness of this strategy stemmed from the fact that these individuals were either already exposed to the Sponsored Content Ads or they were similar in job title to those who were. This meant they were more likely to purchase a ticket. This year we also began to narrow our audience using three specific time frames. One month before the event we only targeted the South East US, 2.5weeks away we narrowed this to just FL and 10 days before only targeted people in Tampa and Orlando. This approach allowed us to filter out people who may not be able to travel and contributed greatly to the secondary goal of gaining as many impressions as possible for awareness.We expect to see this awareness goal generate even more attendees for next year’s event.
Results
Attendance from previous year: 46.8% increase Proportion of out-of-state attendees:Highest ever Total impressions for brand awareness:11,179,678
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