In this presentation, you’ll learn that good companies hijack trends, while great ones define them. Cam will teach you: -How to source customer data and stories; -How to craft trends and pitch journalists during slow news cycles; -How to reuse your coverage for top-of-funnel, sales and relationship-building.

1. Creating Killer Trend
Stories
Distributing Your Customer Stories and Data

2. About Me / Cameron Peron
$28M Funding (Series B) $4M Funding (Acquired 2013)

3. 1,000+
Unique Visitors in 72
Hours
10%
All unique visitors for
30 days
1 Trend Story =

4. Objective: surround the IT organization with content about the problem
that you solve
● 67% of IT buying journey is from research alone
● You’ll never be Oracle in traditional marketing
● Funding and product launches aren’t scalable
● Become a news channel
● Consistently delivers value over time
Why Trend Stories?
Your Ideal
Developer Customer >

5. 2 Approaches:
● Hijacking
● Curating
3 Forms
● Customer Data
● Customer Stories
● User Behavior
Why Trend Stories?

6. Why?
● Establishes expertise in a narrow domain
● Builds rapport with analysts and writers
● Concise and easy to understand
Steps to Get Customer Data
= $ + ?

7. Case Study
● Topic: AWS Reserved
Instances
● Positioning: Expert in
reserved instance cost
and utilization
● Promotion: Massive
social, press, and analyst
pickup
Steps to Get Customer Data

8. Steps to Get Customer Data
How???
● Dive deep into user usage
statistics
● Anonymize the statistics
● Create report with 3 main
conclusions via 5-10 data
points
● Share report with Tier 1
influencers and bloggers
● Blast: social, press,
analysts
● Blog post
● Repeat (quarterly,
semiannually, annually)

9. Why?
● Your customers tell the best
stories
● No one gives a sh** about your
company after funding
● Solving a customer’s end
challenge is gold
● Your customer’s R&D team is
more than likely poor in PR
currency
Steps to Get Customer Stories

10. Case Study
● Customer: Hotel Tonight
● Timeliness: Black Friday
‘14
● Story: “High profile travel
brands use cloud
technologies to win Black
Friday and Holiday
demand.”
Steps to Get Customer Stories
Result: Featured
placement on “Fast
Company”

11. How?
● Find celebrity customers
● Find timeliness in the industry
● Create a dead simple story
● Pitch to the #1 R&D team challenges
● Promote
● Circulate
Steps to Get Customer Stories

12. Why?
● Easy and fun to collect
● Builds great rapport with customers
● Generates deeper customer understanding
Steps to Get User Behavior
How valuable is their
experience to you?

13. Case Study
● Timing: Holidays ‘14
● Wider Topic: Databases
● Positioning: Expert in
general database usage
on AWS
Result:
● Venturebeat Feature
● Repeat Coverage
Steps to Get User Behavior

14. Steps to Get User Behavior?
Process: Quality + Quantity
Survey Data:
● Find a wider topic
● Create your own data via survey
● 10 questions max
● Test questions
● Design: Nothing fancy
● One page
● Irresistible incentive
● Tight 72 hour window
● “Become” the news
● Promote and share results!

15. Great Placements… Now What?
Cascade Your Coverage to:
● Sales collateral, scripts,
● Nurturing campaigns, drip email, retarget
● Community newsletter, blog, and external channels
● Social profiles and signatures
● Recruiting tool

16. Cameron Peron
@cameronperon
cameronperon@gmail.com
Thank You!