NoiseNet are an innovative hardware and software startup working in the Smart City space, founded by Stuart Clough and Jonathan South, who aim to reduce the amount of noise pollution affecting modern cities. To those ends, they’ve developed the NoiseNet Smart Noise Monitoring Device – a durable, portable, and discrete directional microphone array backed up by a powerful machine learning algorithm that identifies noise sources in a local area and provides users with a reliable assessment of the severity of nuisance noise in that area, providing the type of noise and, depending on the service, the likely location of the noise source. These are all available to users on a clear and readable dashboard or via legal quality reports suitable for governmental enforcement purposes.
NoiseNet is a cost saving and quality enhancing service for local and state governments charged with managing noise pollution across the world. Before implementing NoiseNet, many of their clients were spending valuable staff-hours performing in-person noise monitoring – which often meant one environmental health officer sitting in a car with a handheld monitoring device for hours at a time, hoping to catch the noise source in the act. This led to a huge backlog of cases and poor staff morale and retention. With a NoiseNet device, however, departments are free to devote those hours to more productive means. By working directly with local councils, cities, and towns, NoiseNet are empowering cities to tackle the real issues of nuisance noise and noise pollution in an efficient and cost effective manner.
The Problem:
When NoiseNet first launched, they positioned themselves as a new tool for the real estate sector that would give prospective home buyers an idea of the noise levels in their area. That quickly proved unsustainable, but NoiseNet was able to pivot their target market swiftly towards supporting the local government departments who were responsible for enforcing noise standards.
We quickly learned that going through procurement departments was a no-go: if they don’t know that the technology exists, they won’t even look at it. So we needed to target the end users, the environmental health officers who would be installing and monitoring NoiseNet devices in the field. But attempting to get in front of those eyes digitally proved very, very tough for Fractal. Most government workers don’t have LinkedIn profiles (or anonymize their LinkedIn usage), and if they do, their job titles are too inconsistent to effectively target. We could have targeted interests like ‘noise pollution’ on Meta, but that net was far too wide to catch any quality leads. So we devised a different tack. If we couldn’t get in front of them digitally, we’d get in front of them physically – and then use that physicality to target them digitally. This is a strategy we call Event Takeovers.
The Solution:
Event Takeovers work like this: NoiseNet attends any conference of employees who work in environmental health, animal control, noise pollution, or smart city technology. Often they’ll have a stall, but they may also present a speech or sit on a panel discussion. This is great marketing by itself – but the magic happens behind the scenes. While the NoiseNet crew are busy networking at the event, Fractal is back in the (home) office geotargeting that conference with advertising across as many social media platforms as possible. This means that whenever someone checks their phone while grabbing lunch, or heads back to their hotel at night, they’ll be seeing NoiseNet ads, which will jog their memories of seeing NoiseNet on the show floor, and build NoiseNet’s authority within the noise pollution space.
Of course, there’s a secret to Event Takeovers: that geotargeting has to be extremely tight to properly hit the attendees, which makes running those ads comparatively cheap. For example, one of our most successful Event Takeover campaigns (in terms of post engagements) for NoiseNet was the 2021 Arizona Animal Control Association Conference. There, we spent $50 on advertising that grabbed 378 engagements from 2,053 impressions. At $0.13 CPC in what had previously been a tough audience to crack, Event Takeovers were looking to be very effective at building an audience for NoiseNet.
But digital marketing metrics aren’t really the reason to run an Event Takeover campaign. The goal is to have people who’ve seen the ads on social media approach our client at the event and say “Why do I recognise your business?”. That starts a real conversation, which is the best way to build a real, deep relationship with your audience. NoiseNet is a business that values quality over quantity in their leads – one solid client can cover months of expenses with the right service package.
“Conferences have always been our most productive means of finding new customers,” Stuart says.
“That 30 second spiel as people walk past the stand really helps break down the barrier and lets us start asking questions like ‘how do you do your work’ and ‘is there a different way’. We don’t have any competition in our niche – the challenge is to get customers to, A, consider there is a better way, and B, cross that trust barrier to sign up for a trial.
Because conferences are short and intense, and often just happen once a year, there is often no chance to follow up in person with a customer. And as we are presenting something innovative, people need a bit of time to think it through. We have found with the digital event takeovers that people often come to our stand having ‘heard of [us]’, even in a place we have just visited for the first time, such as with our current USA expansion.”
Event Takeovers are a digital marketing strategy that’s uniquely suited to startups. Between the low cost and the ability to reinforce the digital awareness with a face-to-face conversation in a welcoming environment, Event Takeovers cover a lot of the bases that early startups need. They make every dollar work overtime and deliver high-quality leads that already trust your brand. A common pain point for early-stage startups is not knowing how to maximise their marketing budget – with creative strategies like Event Takeovers, you can do not only that, but still generate high-quality leads, reinforce your position with existing leads and build stronger client relationships.