I’ve been involved with Government Marketing University (GMarkU) for many years. It’s proven a great vehicle to collaborate with the broader B2G marketing community and share best practices. That’s never been more true than right now. Kudos to GMarkU founder Lou Anne Brossman for not letting COVID-19 and stay-at-home orders get in the way.
As soon as it became clear physical meetings were no longer possible, Lou Anne organized a daily 9AM Ideation video call using Zoom. It’s popularity took off in April and it’s become a must-attend for B2G marketers. Our community is a fairly tight knit one and I know many of the attendees personally. I’m finding it therapeutic to connect with 50 or so fellow professionals as we all work to figure out the “new normal” of government marketing.
True to the raison d’etre of GMarkU, each call also delivers useful information drawn from all the elements that make up government marketing. There is a presenter each day who shares information and trends they are seeing during the pandemic – publishers, market researchers and agencies. The community benefits from the data and (of course) the presenters get the opportunity to demonstrate their expertise.
I presented last month on the Paid/Earned/Shared/Owned (PESO) model for content marketing. My good friend Matt Langan of L&R Communications gave a talk on Influencer marketing. Troy Schneider, Editor-in-Chief of Public Sector 360 (formerly 1105 Group), provided a very interesting slide showing the results of a survey they did of 600 government IT decision makers and the technology directives they think most important (click to enlarge). This is valuable information for when we develop thought-leadership content for clients:
Troy is an old colleague – I worked with him years ago at the National Journal. Other noteworthy presentations IMHO:
- Doug Mashkuri of GovLoop talking about privacy legislation.
- Aaron Heffron of Market Connections sharing poll data on how clients should be contacted during the pandemic.
- Liz Carmo of the agency ReFuel with very detailed demographic information on the military buyer.
- Erica Pyatt of LinkedIn talking about how best to use its organic and paid tools.
All of these presentations and audio files can be found on the GMarkU Ideation page. So the Ideation call series not only fosters community while we all shelter in place, it has also created a valuable repository of marketing information that is available to anyone who visits the site.
Registration information for the Zoom call is also on the Ideation page. Take a video break from quarantine some morning and join us.
[…] has created an opportunity for me to deepen my relationships in the GovCon community. Early in 2020 the Ideation call was set up by Government Marketing University. As many as 70 government marketers would Zoom in and share tips and best practices as we all […]