Background
An experienced developer of secure cable, satellite, terrestrial, and IP media related applications, Tolka offers broadcast channel owners and online service providers the software tools they need to expand and develop their markets.
Since it was established in 2015, Tolka did most of their marketing in person at the industry’s major trade shows. “We would meet people at trade shows and occasionally put out some press releases about products or working with new people,” recalls Alex Day, Tolka’s Vice President of Business Development. “That was about it. It was very in-person marketing.”
The Challenge
By 2022, Alex and his team at Tolka knew they needed to do more to increase brand awareness and reach within their market. “We’re a small to medium-sized company and we’re focused on engineering,” says Alex. “So we have a small team with limited resources to devote to marketing.”
“I’ve seen how other people do email marketing and got their marketing emails and thought that they were pretty effective.” Alex continues, “I wanted to do something similar, but I didn’t really know how to go about it.”
After talking with colleagues in the broadcasting industry, the one name that kept coming up was Cindy Zuelsdorf, Founding Partner of Kokoro Marketing. “I didn’t expect to be able to find a marketing company that was specialized within our industry for broadcasting-related technology,” Alex says. “It’s a very niche industry. I think it’s pretty special and great.”
“We were hoping that Kokoro could help us by taking that role of an outside marketing department,” Alex adds, “and help us strategize and bring all of Cindy’s experience and background and best practices to help us along.”
The Opportunity
When they started working together, Cindy and Alex devised a 2-pronged strategy. They would focus on email and social media marketing before and after trade shows, and in between, produce and distribute informative guides on topics Tolka specializes in.
Messaging leading up to trade shows drives contacts to book meetings with Alex so that Tolka is already on prospects’ schedules before they arrive at the exhibit hall. “That’s been extremely helpful,” says Alex. “It’s been a way more efficient use of our time at the trade shows, prompting prospects about things that we can talk about. That’s really helped to fill our calendars before we get to the trade show so that we’re making the most out of our time there.”
After shows conclude, visitors to the Tolka booth receive follow up messaging to keep the sales conversation flowing. The response to follow up emails has been overwhelming, and a real departure from before working with Kokoro, when little follow up took place after shows.
Combined with the informative guides, Alex says, “We’ve had consistent messaging about datacasting, advertising, broadcast software stacks, like ATSC 3.0, and things like that.”
The goal for the content produced is to be helpful, in addition to highlighting Tolka’s product offerings. For example, because Tolka offers an ATSC 3.0 software stack, Kokoro has worked with them to produce 2 guides related to ATSC 3.0 – one about datacasting, and another about NEXTGEN TV certification. “People tell me that they see our emails or our guides that we put together,” Alex mentions, “and that it’s been very helpful for them.”
The Results
The informative guides and emails have improved 3 key aspects of Tolka’s marketing efforts: list growth, partnership development, and consistency. “I get a lot of responses from people that I wouldn’t have had the thought to keep up with myself,” says Alex. “It’s helped to expand our reach and also keep up a consistent outreach.”
“Since we started,” Alex continues, “we’ve added to our existing mailing list the people that receive these reports and guides that we’ve written, and everyone that we met at trade shows since then as well.” In 18 months, Tolka’s list has grown by 95%.
The results of that growth have surprised Alex. “There are a lot of people who we’re not familiar with or we’re not really focusing on their particular region,
but they get added to our list,” he notices. “And then, often, we get feedback from them expressing interest, and we wouldn’t have followed up with them normally. But they reached out to us, showing that an untapped market actually exists.”
It has not only led to customers in new regions for Tolka, but also pinpointing and developing new partners. Some of “the people who read our guides, they’re not the direct customers, but they’re partners that work with us to get the direct customers because our software is B2B2C,” says Alex. “We need to have a really good ecosystem of partners to work with in order to reach that end consumer.”
Going back to the example of the ATSC 3.0 guides, broadcasters who are interested in datacasting and NEXTGEN TV read the guides, and then reached out to their manufacturers on Tolka’s behalf.
The guides’ success is not limited to partners though. “A lot of manufacturers have read the guides too,” Alex adds, “and they find our guides helpful. Those have converted pretty well.”
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