TNW Conference 2017 is the platform we decided to officially launch Brandvertisor on the international startup scene. A year after our Founder Institute Sofia, Bulgaria pre-accelerator graduation, year spent in website and self-development, building initial case studies and clients and gaining confidence in what we do, we released it’s never a good time to jump in the ocean.
So TNW Conference 2017 was a great boost for us to polish the design of the marketplace engine, to finish the integration of 5000 premium publishers/websites/ profiles and 25 000 keywords in the database to search through based on your contextual needs, gather list of publishers to browse among their traffic statistics (Alexa, Moz, Semrush, Similarweb) details, ranked on medium formula among their traffic scores. We integrated a white label DSP in background to actually deliver the ads, build up premium marketing and advertising services packages.
You can see it in action: Search for “news” and browse CNN profile, then click on “Advertise on CNN”, register in ads panel and set up your display and native ads. Mail me at: nedkov@brandvertisor.com with feedback and get a free advertising $30 credit.
> https://brandvertisor.com
>> https://brandvertisor.com/websites/News
>>> https://brandvertisor.com/website/cnn.com
>>>> https://ads.brandvertisor.com
So the system works from A to Z.. “Nobody Knows, Nobody Cares”, but the few hundreds friends and supporters ahaha. So we had to explain and expand the startup awareness properly? Last but not least we emerged the blog publicity of articles we have been building for months into days timeframe:). Also working on a PR campaign on Brandvertisor vision for the future of Adtech, but will leave that as a surprise when it happens.
After all development of the startup, blog, social and startup profiles is ready, even we got approved in Betalist :). So how we are supposed to gain maximum publicity and ROI for our Brandvertisor bootstrap booth and travel expenses investment? Well, after figuring out PR strategies to overtake the Adtech world, we could finally be back in reality and get some work done by the only working infrastructure we had so far: to use TNW Conference existing infrastructure and its Index startups matchmaking engine and take our time on learning and mastering every module. I will separate the process we did (or understood we should after few mistakes on every step) into simple steps:
If you are not a startup with Bootstrap, Boost or Scale booth, but as a startup/entrepreneur attendee, most of those are basic networking steps you can twist into your strategy.. After all, there are 15 000 attendees, so you need to prepare as well :).
-
-
- Take your time on reading in details each email of the organizers. Their guidance will save you a lot of time and mistakes in the process as usually it is pretty clear and simple explained.
- Do your homework to research on the speakers, local startup scene, and even the attendees before you jump in investments. As a bootstrap you/I probably won’t have the ability to appear on every startup conference & event. But once you decided, GO All IN (time & some money) with the winner conferences. This way you can gain maximum publicity, interest and attention, instead of spreading power all over the place with minimum success rate.
For the last year what I’ve constantly seen, is the successful startups focus and funnel all attention at the same period: being a week of PR articles campaign or few events. It’s a proven marketing model that if you focus on funneling everyone at the same time you gain the maximum publicity with minimum resource.
I have researched and this Amsterdam conference is our chance to earn maximum publicity to “targeted” accelerators, angels and seeds.We can be “luckily” noticed by people I have talked whole year with and now I can meet them in face finally with ready product working from A to Z, at the conference in their region, just before they open their new batches.
- Once you are approved, make a plan based on the results you want to achieve. I simple wrote the tasks I have to get done by the priorities I thought back then (just 3 weeks ago lol). Now priorities, tasks have changed and evolved into new lists with tasks for each one there, but I am not losing any of them and have no excuses to get most of them done.
- Fill up your profiles in details: both in TNW Conference & into Index.co. I’ve seen many startups profiles with lack of info, probably because they are wondering what to write to look the best. Well it looks better to have filled up profile, rather than an empty one, that’s for sure.
- Make sure to check your email on daily basis. I won’t admit I’ve missed few side meetups :):
There are tens of side events during the main stage presentations.
Schedule your program according to TNW Schedule stage program. Visit what is more targeted instead of everything, because there are extras aside main stage, where you can meet mentors and industry experts face2face.
Launchpad Meetups: Philips, Bridgestone, Vodafone Ziggo, Houthoff Buruma, Springer Nature.
If you answer smart on those, you have chance to meet with those brand leaders decision makers. No comment here.
Engage Sessions: “The whole setup of Engage round-table sessions is focused on connecting brands with attendees.”
Workshops: “Workshops accommodate larger groups than Engage and Afterhours, and are focused on providing attendees with a masterclass on any given topic.”
T500: “Talent sessions for talented people. Initially, T500 sessions are only open to T500 Members, but we’ll email you when they open up to all ticket holders!”
Afterhours: “Meet leading tech scene influencers in the fields of marketing, entrepreneurship, investment and product management during the Afterhours.”
Side events: You gotta apply on time for those.
Depends on your custom needs you might want to travel among the Amsterdam startup scene with StartupCity Summit on 19th, or participate in the Hack Battle.
Music Summit, Opening Party & The Afterparty! Networking over a drink is always an easy ice melter :).
And don’t forget the 200 startups in Exhibitor area.
Brandvertisor will showcase on May 19th in Exhibitor Area 2.
- Next a must use FAST tool is the Index.co matchmaking platform which is TNW self startup.
Play Fast: Apply early, but
don’t act too fast and under emotion.. 🙂
Take your time to research on Investors, Corporate brands and Mentors
Play Smart: Apply to the most targeted, then most desired. If you are looking for Angel, don’t bother with Series A ones applications. Read the BIOs, check their websites, Google & Linkedin research them, make sure to watch at their Tags.
My target was: Adtech, Advertising, Angel, Seed, London and accelerators where I have applied.
Accelerators where I have applied already, Mentors I have same interests with and Brands that I could think of some solution for their marketing and advertising needs.
Leave few open spots: As we do 3832 things at the same time, investors do 309307320372 things at the same time.
There are some big names and interesting people you could match with, who have missed to sign up at first, and the list constantly is growing.
Add Index.co requested meetings on Linkedin. That one depends on the person on the other side if they like it or not.
In this case I Google/Linkedin James and add him with a nice message to get in touch at the conference.
- Now. Let’s move to the most precious, the gold and the core of every conference: Networking.
I cannot help you becoming a better networker in real life, as I still learn that myself 🙂
But here is our marketing strategy and tools we use to gain maximum networking connections and meetings scheduled:
Tools: Google Docs, Linkedin account, Google search, PipeDrive – startups sales affordable CRM,
Conference Tools: TNW Conference website attendees list, Earlybird attendees list, Index.co browse list
The conference tools send you directly to the person Linkedin account…
So what I did was:
Search in Earlybird and TNW Conference attendees lists for my interests (Adtech, accelerator names, Advertising, b2b, advertising agencies names etc.) and of course I browsed manually for hours….
Build template messages for each type of contact: investor message, client message, startup message.
If you can invest 2 hours per day to write a custom line over the template message for the contacts you actually want to meet with, I tell you IT WORKS!
Add people. Stay late. Add people.
Then keep constantly replying, answering and engaging with the ones who add you back, and even more with the ones who reply you back :).
Add responses and active ones into PipeDrive funnel, this way you can easily read the messages and follow-up any time in the future.
Sample for conferences funnel is :
Linkedin/Twitter Add > Responded > Scheduled > Follow up After Conference > Scheduled call > Closed > Upsell
Keep checking your Linkedin messages as well as My Network > Connections section > (sort by) Recently added.
Make Google Docs Sheet file/pipelines lists with Investors / Angels / Startups / Company name etc.
I just figured out this one so twist it for your specific needs, but you need accounting of your networking :):
Write a nice valuable and helpful article like this one eventually will become….
(mail me at nedkov@brandvertisor.com with any suggestions and feedback on how to improve it.
Then export your Linkedin and Google+ takeout contacts. Twitter and Facebook make it very hard to do that, if you merge them with yahoo email account, it might work, but I won’t guarantee as I haven’t tested it yet. Collect all the emails in a single excel and remove the duplicates.
Build Facebook custom audience with the collected emails: Create Audience > Custom Audience > Customer File
Start advertising > keep tracking what’s going on > constantly improve
Start targeting other conferences interests, visitors who checked locally in Amsterdam, people who liked your page and their friends obviously. Keep changing, keep playing.
I will tell you my next steps & mistakes when they happen to me 🙂
- Take your time on reading in details each email of the organizers. Their guidance will save you a lot of time and mistakes in the process as usually it is pretty clear and simple explained.
- As you can see, there is no magic, but a lot of small steps and tools involved. Well, every company should build his own funnel and put some Brain & Time, not so much AI is needed:), into twisting it for its needs. At least for the starters who do not have access or marketed with CRM solutions. If you don’t have the time and have the money, just buy our time and our B2B Brand Awareness Package ;). It is perfect for startups, software companies, SaaS solutions and B2B services companies. We build your b2b networking and sales infrastructure according to your company custom needs. Then we actually manually add connections and write them by hand to build up your Linkedin and rest B2B channels. Take a look, most of those steps you can manage by yourself as an entrepreneur. Build that infrastructure for TNW Conference 2017 and use it for every conference you visit after.
I leave the networking skills mastering to you 🙂
-
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.