The Amtower B2G Market Report

The Amtower B2G Market Report
Volume 3, #18, May 3, 2004

(Sign up for your free subscription at http://www.FederalDirect.net and if you like this, please pass this along to your colleagues. To unsubscribe, email me at amtower@erols.com). Past issues available at http://www.federaldirect.net/newsletterarchives.html)

In this issue…
1) Amtower Off-Center Observations
2) The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Advertisements for some friends
3) Events
4) One-Minute Marketing Clinic: Seminars as Marketing Tools

AMTOWER OFF-CENTER OBSERVATIONS

End of FY is coming up – I will be watching closely for the Good, the Bad and the Ugly marketing efforts and reporting on same. If you need assistance on your end-of-FY tactics, give me a shout, and do it soon, as my calendar is filling up.

Item: The Spring 2004 Government Marketing Best Practices road show is NOT over. We just reserved one more Tower Club (Vienna, Virginia) date – May 26. My thanks to all that sent kind comments from the cities I have visited so far. Fall dates and cities will be announced shortly.

Item: Apparently I am not alone in thinking “solution” is over-used (see last issue). Several messages came in as a result of the last newsletter (not all in agreement, but most). But it was enough to prompt the next Off-White Paper, which will come out before my FOSE 2004 Off-White, both papers out in about 2 weeks. If you are not familiar with the Amtower Off-White Papers, I encourage you to take a look. You can find them at www.FederalDirect.net/offwhitepapers.html. These are far from scholarly dissertations; they are among the most visited pages of the www.FederalDirect.net web site.

Item: Federal Schedules is at it again. This time they are spamming (the Fed Schedules email is still not CAN-Spam compliant) the sponsors of my events with a “Federal Government Opportunities The Annual Catalog Conference” message, but the message has no reference to a conference. And its disclaimer on how they obtained email addresses leads one to wonder about their overall ethical standards: “We have your email address because you attended a related tradeshow or conference in the past and provided your email address for future contact. In addition, you may have opted in to hear from organizations in a field related to your own.” They have it NOT because you or I gave it to them, but because they are “harvesting” names from competitive sites. There is no reference to them acquiring these names by any legitimate means. The point here is that CAN-Spam, Do-Not-Call, and Do-Not-Fax legislation has reduced the distance between voluntary ignorance and criminal behavior.

Not that I have an opinion.

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY: ADVERTISEMENTS FOR SOME PARTNERS

All of my business partners offer excellent services. Here are some examples.

Item: In Government Marketing Best Practices we talk about end-of-FY tactics. In-agency events are critical to maximizing end-of-FY sales. Go to www.FBCinc.com and see what our friends at FBC have coming up that you might find useful.

Item: We use lots of Market Connections data in Government Market Best Practices. If you have not seen the annual study, call them! Now Available the 2004 Federal IT Marketing report - Operate on Knowledge, Not Guesswork.

Learn what's crucial to your targeted Federal audience. The 2004 Annual Federal IT Marketing Report goes beyond budget numbers and spending projections. Easy to understand findings include the results of 600 interviews with IT decision makers, detailed survey response analysis, actionable recommendations and conclusions and optional quality perception modules (QPI). Used by CDWG, Cisco, HP, IBM, GTSI, Microsoft, Titan and Northrop Grumman IT. Order your copy before June 15th and receive a Five-Point Industry Benchmark Summary FREE. http://www.marketconnectinc.com/IT_report.html
or call 703-378-2025

Item: Eagle Eye offers some great contracting and grants data, and the price will not break the bank! This is not limited to information technology data like some others. Visit www.eagleeyeinc.com

Item: I have known Christina Nelson for about 12 years, since she was the conference director at FOSE when FOSE was still owned by National Trade Productions. Several years ago, she started the Digital Government Institute, which produces some highly targeted high-end events. Visit www.DigitalGovernment.com

EVENTS

GOVERNMENT MARKETING BEST PRACTICES – May 26, 7:30-11:00 AM, Tower Club, Vienna, VA
Info at www.FederalDirect.net/bestpractices2004.html

FEDERAL CHANNELS: Selling and Marketing to the Government

Date: July 19, 2004
Time: 8:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.
Location: Fairview Park Marriott, Falls Church, VA

The Federal Marketplace has undergone significant change in the past few years. Federal Channels 2004 will feature sessions on the most recent changes to the federal business environment and the best methods for using those changes to your advantage.

This is a really good informational and networking event, with something for people of any skill level, novices and professionals alike. The FBC staff spends lots of time putting together a good program, and they have some great presenters.

Sessions will include presentations covering the following 3 key areas.
1.Agency Focus - The Federal Landscape
2.Gaining Entry and Access Methodology
3.Procurement and Contracting
See full details at
http://www.fbcinc.com/federalchannels/default.asp

ONE-MINUTE MARKETING CLINIC: SEMINARS AS MARKETING TOOLS

One of the inquiries I deal with regularly deals with using seminars as marketing tools. The scenario will go like this. Someone calls, and says the CEO or marketing team has decided to do a seminar, or series of seminars, as a primary prospect conversion tool.

Several things are right and wrong with this. First, seminars and other informational events are always good marketing tools. These always rank well on the annual Market Connections (www.MarketConnectinc.com) study of Federal managers buying habits. Any time you can have customers or prospects listen to real information (not a sales pitch) about your offering, it is a win-win situation.

Getting people to attend events has become more difficult than it was a few short years ago, and will become even more difficult, not less, in the future. When a vendor does a stand-alone event (say, a software developer doing a session on its new security product), even if it is going to offer unbiased information, a large percentage of the potential attenders will assume it will be largely a sales pitch.

Through the early 1990s, Oracle used the multi-city “breakfast briefing” to successfully maximize its presence and dominate its niche. They would buy one-third column strip ads on facing pages in publications. On one side they would have the agenda, on the facing page they would have dates and venues. They would also have a "continental breakfast" for attenders. This was a different time, though, and the time for vendors doing solo events is past.

Producing events like this successfully requires lots of planning, multiple promotions, and when you can, the sponsorship of another organization. Special interest groups, analysts, publications or event producers like the Federal Business Council (www.FBCinc.com) come to mind, as they have the snail mail and opt-in email lists necessary for promotion. It seems that e-promotion (instant gratification) is the preferred method, but doing so successfully and in a CAN-Spam compliant manner is not easy, especially for a company attempting to establish itself.

Doing events is like launching an e-newsletter. It is an incremental process. You cannot do it once, have a few people show up and assume it does not work. It builds slowly, over time.

**

As always, your comments, questions and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks
Mark Amtower

The Amtower B2G Market Report is published and copyrighted by Amtower & Company. It combines our former newsletters into a single, bi-weekly newsletter for companies targeting the government marketplace. Contact us at Amtower & Company, PO Box 339, Ashton, MD 20861-0339 (301-924-0058). This material is copyrighted and may not be duplicated, reprinted or otherwise replicated without written permission of the publisher. EMAIL subscriptions are free by request: sign up at www.FederalDirect.net.


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