CASE STUDY
STONESOFT
crowd members at black hat tech conference looking at laptops during presentation

INDUSTRY

Network security

EXPERTISE

Lead generation

Event marketing

Digital marketing

Public relations

STONESOFT FINDS SWEET SUCCESS AT BLACK HAT CONFERENCE

It can be challenging to stand out in a crowd of 6,000 people attending a Las Vegas event. Network security provider Stonesoft, which helps IT departments simplify complex security environments, wanted to do just that.

During the Black Hat conference in the city that never sleeps, Stonesoft planned to interact with qualified new leads, while further engaging in the network security community. But how, specifically, could it attract attention and get leads?

For various reasons, Stonesoft got a late start planning for Black Hat, so it needed a quickly developed marketing strategy to take full advantage of the conference. Stonesoft turned to Arketi Group to help drive booth traffic and generate leads.

HOW WE DID IT

GENERATING FUN IDEAS TO ATTRACT PROSPECTS

Since the conference was being held in Las Vegas, activities to drive traffic needed to break through a lot of noise. As the initial step, we came up with the theme Simplified, which played off Stonesoft’s tagline, Network Security Simplified.

Arketi then brainstormed giveaways that complemented the theme and would draw attention, including:

  • free limo rides between the airport and conference venue to make attendees’ trips easier and more enjoyable.
  • raffles for the much-anticipated, latest iPad, casino coins and a one-year subscription to Stonesoft’s Virtual IPS solution.
  • sponsoring the Black Hat “pub crawl” and two “Hack the Lab” sessions.

Stonesoft’s bar had a fiesta theme, complete with a blue margarita specialty drink, a black hat piñata full of mints, plastic bottles of tequila, festive lights and music. The two, three-hour “Hack the Lab” events allowed qualified attendees to try their hand at hacking into a simulated environment using the latest attacker techniques.

GETTING THE MESSAGE OUT

To promote these activities, we combined on-site and email marketing. We included security information in Black Hat’s Crawl email and sent emails to its database to drive prospects to a fiesta-themed landing page. This page highlighted the “pub crawl,” free limo rides, “Hack the Lab” sessions and the IPS software giveaway.

We used a marketing cloud tool to manage and track these online promotions, which provided visibility into opens, clicks and landing page form completions.

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SALES PIPELINE GENERATED

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NEW PROSPECTS IDENTIFIED

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WEEKS TO LAUNCH

IMPACT
Arketi is developing marketing programs that drive our sales opportunities which makes them a critical extension of the Stonesoft marketing team.

HEATHER PRITCHETT

Director of Marketing

Stonesoft

The results of Black Hat exceeded Stonesoft’s expectations. The landing page received nearly 1,400 total views, and more than 380 unique leads were scanned into Stonesoft’s lead retrieval device during the conference. From this event, Stonesoft representatives made more than 500 unique contacts and sales opportunities totaling approximately $750,000.

Additionally, this campaign earned the Public Relations Society of America Phoenix Award for Business-to-Business Technology Marketing.

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