Vertical or Horizontal Marketing? Six Ways to Leverage Both to Build Your Private Wireless Brand

As a marketer in the rapidly growing private wireless networks market, you have a lot of decisions to make every day. One of the biggest, of course, is “where should I be spending my marketing dollars to get the ROI I am looking for?” That might immediately be followed by “should I concentrate on vertical markets (and if so, which ones?) or spend my time on a horizontal marketing approach and touch the broader private wireless networks industry?”

The answer is actually both, and unfortunately, it’s also a classic chicken and egg situation in terms of which to tackle first. Many companies are formed because they see a specific need in a particular market and know they can help solve it. (By the way, Calysto got its start the very same way!) That need may be vertical (the mining industry really needs THIS), or it may be horizontal (IT departments and CIOs would really benefit from THIS). Either way, where you started is not necessarily where you’ll end up.

But this article would end here if we didn’t give you some guidance on how to best make that decision for your company. So let’s get to that.

One of the biggest mistakes our clients make is trying to do too much at once instead of taking things one step at a time. Keep it simple. Start one initiative, find success, and build on it.

That’s actually great advice for any company, but so often ignored when our eyes get bigger than our stomachs, as can happen in an industry as exciting as private wireless networks. As much as you need to make a strong business case before rolling out any new initiative, in marketing, it’s important to understand what efforts are going to have the most impact for your company short term, but also how those short-term gains help you achieve long-term success. So, should you be spending your efforts on reaching a wide swath of media and analysts across the breadth of the industry or laser-focused on one or more verticals?

The answer is still both, but it does mean you need to focus a little harder on making sure you’re reaching out to the right influencers in every market. Unless you have a huge marketing budget and can afford to respond to every potential opportunity, you’re going to have to say no to some things. And that’s OK.

Your PR firm can help you focus on what makes sense and what will get you the most bang for your buck in terms of programs and outreach. Don’t try to tackle them all at once; there may be some good short-term wins, but it’s harder to see long-term success. Here are six ways you can use horizontal and vertical marketing effectively, and in tandem, to market your private wireless networks company:

1. Prioritize your key verticals to one or two per month, or one per quarter if it’s a large audience like healthcare. Themes also help vertical audiences remember you. A value proposition and your current messaging should be reflected to each vertical. And stick with it for at least a year! You can’t expect real results if you are bouncing from market to market or campaign topic to campaign topic. There’s already a lot of noise in the market; a steady message will get you further than a bunch of hype. Plan out your activities quarter by quarter and you’ll get stronger results than if you tackle things one at a time.
2. Treat your approach to each audience differently. Don’t just mix some vertical terms into your website and product brochures and expect that strategy to deliver results. Vertical marketing may mean getting comfortable with working with other companies (and acronyms!) as part of an overall solution rather than acting as a stand-alone offering. Put in the time to develop vertical-specific materials that tells companies you know their market and understand their needs. Every vertical in private wireless networks has its own special class of needs, certifications, partnerships and sometimes regulations.
3. Use industry events as a guide, but don’t let trade shows drive your initiatives. Your overall marketing goals and messages should instead drive what you’ll be talking about at the show. (One alternative is to follow the theme of the show.)
4. Have the key ingredients for success for any vertical or horizontal market you tackle. These include:
   • A Landing page on your website where you can direct potential customers to that vertical segment. Use this main page to tell the visitor WHY your company is uniquely positioned to help them in that specific market segment.
   • A video that succinctly explains your role in that vertical industry to your potential customers. This can be a high-level overview, a short tutorial or a video case study, but it should be content that reinforces your overall message for that particular market and event.
   • Blind case studies can be good examples of use cases, but if you have a named customer, this is even better, even if they can’t talk directly to the media or analyst community.
   • Customer Success Program – A customer case study can be one of the tools of a full-fledged “Customer Success Program,” where you know what level of participation each customer is willing to participate in. The press are always looking for a press release with any client quote in the release and interest in doing more from a partnership perspective.
   • One or more white papers that tackle key issues in the vertical you are targeting, and clear solutions develop a very clear Value Statement for each vertical.
5. A Thought Leadership Program builds awareness for a key executive with your audiences in private wireless networks, wireless, telecom and the vertical markets you target. It positions the executive to be a resource for the media and analysts and to eventually have the Trade Show and event coordinators call them with invitations to speak. The Thought Leadership program is comprehensive of a variety of PR campaigns and tactics. It involves everything from creating specific media relationships (designated), to social media collaboration to traditional articles and speaking.
6. Repurpose every piece of content you develop. All marketing and sales campaigns require content marketing programs that help build value in the company, drive sales through lead generation and build brand recognition. Get creative about how you can repurpose one piece of content into 20+. Many pieces can be used in both horizontal and vertical publications – and often more than one. It takes special writing to be able to place the same article in multiple publications. By establishing a PR and content strategy for each small or large piece of content, you will quickly realize the ROI. Your marketing and PR team can help analyze which pieces of content, the cadence, the audiences and more to determine what’s working and what needs to be tweaked for both vertical and horizontal.

By establishing a strategy that adequately covers your needs for both vertical and horizontal marketing, you’ll find your limited marketing dollars are more wisely spent in the days where marketing budgets are shrinking, but new trends like private wireless networks are emerging.

Download Calysto’s Vertical Marketing White Paper HERE.