Government marketing leaders are tasked with a dizzying variety of indispensable responsibilities. From leading industry strategy, formalizing refined actions to driving innovation—all to prove the value of marketing to the client.

It all comes together in a smart, detailed integrated marketing plan. But how does one start?!

Episode 1: It starts with Strategic Marketing. The right plan will unlock some of the best ways to ensure that your next government marketing strategy is the most effective one yet. The best strategic marketing plan leverages marketing’s expanded role while supporting career growth and accelerating government marketers’ foundational contribution to the inevitable evolution of any organization.

Build a Lasting Career with a Seat at the Table:
Kid’s Table No More

KEYNOTE SESSION

Russ Klein, CEO, American Marketing Association 

Russ Klein, CEO of the American Marketing Association has leveraged his illustrious career to always secure not just a seat at the table, but at the head of it. Having held top marketing and advertising posts at Dr Pepper/7UP Companies, Gatorade, 7-Eleven Corporation, Arby’s Restaurant Group, and Burger King where he was President, Russ will share what it takes to get there. Russ has also held leadership positions at Leo Burnett and FC&B advertising agencies, overseeing the strategic marketing for various brands.

• Leverage Your Personal Brand
• Prove Your Marketing Value
• Lead Strategic Initiatives

Key Considerations for B2G Marketing

FIRESIDE CHAT

Amber Hart, Co-Owner/Founder, The Pulse of GovCon

Lisa Shea Mundt, Co-Owner/Founder, The Pulse of GovCon

What You Need to Know Now
Sit down, grab your notebook & get comfortable…In this fireside chat, our team of experts describe the key differences of doing business in B2G and how to effectively leverage these nuances in your marketing strategy. As an advisory firm dedicated to the empowerment of Government Contractors, The Pulse shares what you need know about the government contracting ecosystem and bridges the fundamental gaps surrounding federal procurement. This is exactly the kind of know-how that will help you build your business, and rest easy.

• Learn the Top 5 Considerations for B2G Marketing Strategy
• Understand the Elements of the GovCon Ecosystem
• Fill the Gaps in Federal Procurement

Market Intelligence

PANEL

Frank Konkel, GovExec

Nate Nash, GovTribe

Troy Schneider, FCW

Moderator: Brian Chidester, OpenText

Don’t miss out on the public sector market! Get expert advice from industry leaders who provide different perspectives on which market dynamics shape this market—from policies and initiatives to procurement and technology trends. And, of course, with an ever-evolving marketing, you’ll also learn ways to stay on top of this intel for your own marketing strategy.

• Manage Changing Market Dynamics
• Benefit from Inside Intel on Evolving Markets
• Get Multiple Expert Perspectives on a Key Market

Rethinking Your Playbook: Setting a Cohesive Annual Strategy

Moderator: Lou Anne Brossman

Panelists: Stacy Outlaw, WAEPA

How to Achieve Your Goals
Now that you’re armed with knowledge of the B2G Market and the latest market intelligence, as well as set with well-defined objectives and goals aligned to your organization, you’re ready to develop your strategy!

In this roundtable, Public Sector marketing experts provide a government marketer’s POV as they discuss strategies that have achieved real results using the building blocks of holistic government marketing strategy including: brand & product marketing, competitive environment intel, creating demand with pipeline generating activities, working with industry partners, analytics and more.

• Winning Content Strategy
• Tools for Enabling Sales
• Event & Community-building Through PR

Gone are the days of front-loading your budget on blasting a generic message across channels and hoping for results. Customers today expect their marketing to know exactly who they are, what they want and delivered when they want it.

So how do you craft meaningful, useful, and valuable campaign messaging that people will respond to?

Episode 2: Government Personas help you immediately understand your audience: who they are, the challenges they face, and – most importantly – how you can help them solve their problems. Fortunately, government marketers have many resources and tools available to drive greater precision and more cost-effectiveness in campaigns. We share these with so you can build the best strategic plan for your business.

The Joy of Finding the Right Person(alization)

Andrea Mohamed, Vice President of Strategy, Innovation, Marketing and Communications, RTI International

Blake Eckert, Director of Marketing & Communications, Geocent

The foundation for any successful marketing campaign is knowing your audience. Identifying and defining a target audience is crucial as it is impossible to reach everyone at once (remember, those days are gone!). Marketing to the right people at the right time ensures personalized messaging that speaks to a particular consumer’s current buying situation.

Personalization not only grows your sales and helps you plan resources more efficiently, but it will also quickly position you as an authority in your niche, be it crowded or sparsely populated.

• Understand how and when customers like to receive information
• Learn how to mine and use public data to develop personas
• Craft personalized messaging for effective use of resources

Public Sector Persona: Drill Down to Your Target Audience

Aaron Heffron, Market Connections

Aaron Heffron, president of market research firm, Market Connections, shares how data can help government marketers refine their strategies and maximize ROI. Knowing that the more you refine—such as modifying commercial marketing messages for mission-focused government audiences to further differentiating between Federal, SLED, Civilian and Defense markets—the more you need to know.

Aaron will highlight key findings and insights that help B2G marketers identify their target, learn what motivates them, their preferred content, and where they go to get information from recent annual and biennial studies of the public sector market, including the Federal IT Personas Study, Federal Media & Marketing Study and Content Marketing Study. These studies serve as the tools you need to drill down to the audience you want to reach.

• Gain Insight from Respected Market Studies
• Leverage Study Insights for Your Advantage
• Identify and Customize for Your Target Audience

Customer Segments + Personas: A Match Made in (Marketing) Heaven

Customer segments are used to help marketers identify groups that have certain likely interests in your product or service whether categorized as broadly as public sector or commercial clients or more refined with a focus on certain domains (e.g., defense or health), accounts, geographies, or other meaningful categories.

Within these segments, personas help marketers “get to know” what motivates individuals in a particular segment. These semi-fictional illustrations help marketers understand emotions, experiences, pain points, goals and other factors that influence important buying behaviors.

Customer segments together with Personas will improve customer targeting and making your campaigns more impactful.

• Understand Segmentation Strategies
• Learn the Difference Between a Great Persona and Persona Pitfalls
• Get Tips on How to Pair Segments and Personas

Expedition: Engage Your Target Audience

Moderator: Steve Vito

The B2G buyer’s journey can be quite complex—from appropriations funding to agency budgeting to procurement solicitations and RFP responses to recompetes. It’s enough to have you going in circles! In the public sector marketing world, it is critical to understand the complexities and nuances of each step along the way to ensure a successful campaign.

THE question for B2G buyers is how to engage targeted audiences with the right messages based on where they are in their journey?

Steve Vito, an influential Senior Communications Executive with 26 years of experience building innovative programming, business development and sales solutions for the media and public sector, leads a diverse panel of experts exploring solutions to this crucial question.

• Influence the critical moments in the buyer journey
• Understand the Typical Government Procurement Cycle
• Get Informed About Personas in Journey Mapping

Level Up: A Bootstrapped Playbook to Validating Your Personas

Case Study: Shayna Williams, Qumolo

Audience research can be challenging, and costly. The hardest part of audience research? Plan validation based on data, not hunches. As much as marketers can make presumptions when it comes to audience insight, it can’t compare to data-supported planning.

Oh, you don’t have a million-dollar budget dedicated to market research? Not to worry! Our case provide several ways to “bootstrap” the substantiation of your audience presumptions. Different perspectives teach you how to use your strengths, tenacity, and guile to ensure you’re targeting the right audience, all without a fancy budget.

• Find out Where to Get insights from Third-party Data
• Learn How to Leverage Your Own First-party Data
• Translate Real-life Examples to Suit Your Needs

Now that you have established your strategic perspectives and understand your buyer personas, let’s talk about execution.

Building an effective campaign strategy is one of the most important things you can do to make your campaign successful. A good strategy provides a strong foundation and guides your campaign tactics as you work toward achieving the established campaign goals.

Episode 3: Campaign Strategy takes you in the trenches as you learn from the best to brush up your skills with specific campaign examples and best practices. 

• Marketing campaign components
• The tools, techniques and tactics that’ll help you build better experiences
• How to create content experiences 
• What government marketers are doing today to engage audiences – real life case studies!
• And more!