Ep. #2, Developing Your Influencer Marketing Strategy

I had the pleasure of speaking with Cameron Peron following his Heavybit Speaker Series presentation on Creating Killer Trend Stories.

Cameron recently served as VP Marketing at Redis Labs where he led their post Series A marketing activities to accelerate SaaS based customer acquisition fivefold within 24 months. Previously as VP Marketing at Newvem he led their developer marketing team to generate 2.5K users in 14 months from Series A to acquisition.

Listen in as we discuss how to make your organization a source for news, the art of media relations and tactics for effective influencer marketing.

In the age of continuous delivery, there are more frequent software releases than ever before. This decoupling of ‘code’ from ‘product’ creates challenges for marketing teams that are planning dates to announce new features.

In this episode of The Pitch Room, Cameron offers advice for smaller companies on how to overcome this challenge.

• Avoid assumptions: Once a feature update is live, it is rare for your end users and external community to know about it unless you tell them. Do not assume that end users are aware of updates and be sure to communicate changes in a timely manner.
• Latch onto a trend: Small feature updates are not as attractive for bloggers and influencers to write about unless it latches onto a trend or controversial topic. For example, for a data monitoring product, one tactic is to align your company with big data trend stories and provide insight into how a particular monitoring feature is solving a big data challenge.
• Do not get discouraged: Continue to announce feature updates because it keeps your company on the radar. If the announcement does not yield press coverage, continue to post to your blog and share the news with end users. Feature updates are an easy opportunity to connect with your community and establish loyalty.
• Have your customers tell the story: A feature that solves a specific challenge for your customer makes for great content. Track customer feedback and ask customers if they would be willing to speak with the media or contribute to a byline on your behalf.

As the software development market continues to evolve, expect to see traditional communications strategies evolve with it.