Last week Tim Hartman and Frank Salatto were guest speakers on our Ideation group govcon call. Tim is Chief Executive Officer of GovExec, and Frank is SVP and Head of Growth Initiatives. They gave us a compelling overview of GovExec’s string of acquisitions over the past two years, arguably the most important development for B2G marketing in recent years. Disclosure – StoryTech Consulting has worked for GovExec as a subcontractor in the past.
Tim laid out how GovExec is building a market intelligence platform to replace the “old” model of B2G marketing. (GovExec is the new brand name of the parent company, while Government Executive lives on as the flagship publication.) The old model of B2G marketing was dominated by incumbent defense contractors and management firms staff with employees with deep personal relationships with government decision-makers. This model worked for many years, and Tim noted it still can work today. B2G success is still driven by personal relationships and face-to-face marketing.
The new B2G model emerged about 10 years ago and focuses far more on intelligence-driven marketing that directly targets identified opportunities. This new model was used by Silicon Vally companies as they entered the B2G market in a big way. Almost a decade ago then underdog AWS beat out IBM for a CIA cloud computing contract, which Tim called the wake-up moment for this new model. Since being purchased by private equity firm Growth Catalyst Partners in 2020, GovExec has made a string of acquisitions to better support this new B2G model.
Since then GovExec has made 11 acquisitions, consolidating the B2G media and marketing world to an unprecedented degree. The graphic above shows the three GovExec solution areas – Data Intelligence, Campaign Platform/Content and Marketing/Full Funnel services. All the acquisitions in the past two years bolster one of these solution areas.
Tim mentioned the purchases of GovTribe, The Atlas for Cities and research firm Market Connections for business intelligence. City and State New York deepened GovExec’s reach into state and local audiences. The huge splash was last summer when GovExec purchased 1105 Media’s Public Sector 360, combining Federal Computer News, Government Computer News, Washington Technology, Defense Systems, and the Fed 100 with existing brands Government Executive, NextGov, Defense One, Route 50 and City and State. Never before have so many media brands focused on government been controlled by the same company.
Tim and Frank spent less time on the marketing services side. Some of those services derive from GovExec’s database of contacts, built up constantly through traffic that exceeds 1.5 million unique monthly visitors to their online brands. The acquisitions of Government Contracting Institute and Government Marketing University should also play roles down the road in additional offerings.
GovExec is building a one-stop shop for government marketers. They will identify the opportunities, connect a client’s content with the right decision-makers, then help nurture and convert the leads. So what’s the next acquisition? Tim wasn’t sharing any secrets on that front, but he did allow that GovExec is only in the “third inning” of its evolution.
As a long-time B2G content marketer I’m fascinated by what GovExec is building. A few years ago a hot topic in B2G circles was the debate around who offered more to B2G clients – legacy publishers or marketing firms that built publishing organizations? By consolidating the market to such a degree GovExec seems to have answered that question.
As a fan of quality content that informs and enlightens I’m also glad that GovExec seems to have found the right private equity owner. To many PE firms purchase media companies and then strip them down and sell them for parts. Since engaging with decision-makers is so central to the vision being built I’d expect editorial excellence will be protected.
Partisan combat and Congressional approval ratings aside, government has never been more essential to address our nation’s challenges. Many private companies need help understanding the nuances of selling to government. If GovExec’s vision for B2G marketing puts the right solutions to work for government clients to achieve the mission, then GovExec will do well by doing good.