FreeMarkets.com Beats Richer Competitors with a Carefully Planned Event at Anne Rice’s House

COMPANY: While self-admittedly, FreeMarkets.com has a
smaller marketing budget than some of its competitors,
this “pure-play” B-to-B marketplace continues beat them by
attracting major new clients such as International
Specialty Products. How do they do it? Jim Zuffoletti
FreeMarketers.com’s VP of Market Making told us about
one of their most successful recent campaigns.

CAMPAIGN
After having great success as B-to-B conference
speakers, FreeMarkets.com decided to host a party during
the premier conference for their target audience -- the
National Association of Purchasing Managers (NAPM)
Annual Convention in New Orleans. Zuffoletti explains,
“For a sense of ‘fun’ we picked a house near the
convention center that Anne Rice had owned. Then we did
a direct mail campaign to all pre-registered conference
attendees, followed up by hundreds of phone calls.”

To make sure party attendees paid as much attention to
FreeMarkets.com as they did to their drinks,
FreeMarkets.com posted signage throughout the house and
flew down more than 20 staffers to mingle with
attendees. Plus, “in one of the rooms we ran a
continuous demo so guests could see the excitement and
dynamics of a multimillion dollar contract being up for
bid and the suppliers bidding against it at
FreeMarkets.com.”

RESULTS
More than 400 of the Convention’s 1,200
attendees attended, making this an unusually successful
off-site party. Sales reps were “more than pleased”
with results.

OTHER CAMPAIGNS: FreeMarkets.com has also successfully
reached traveling executives through ads on in-flight
television “ads at the very beginning of the flight work
best” and big posters, featuring client case studies, in
key airports such as Chicago, Atlanta, San Jose and
Brussels. “When you get off an international flight in
Brussels there’s a significant line at the passport
check point; people are bored and they can’t use their
cell phones. That’s where our visually striking poster
is.”

THE FUTURE: Zuffoletti agrees with other B-to-B marketers
that “You’ll see that shift from 80% offline marketing
to 80% online marketing in the future.”