Getting Your Startup Ready for CES

If you’re planning for a crowdfunding campaign in 2016 and are attending CES, this blog post is for you.

CES is a great opportunity for anyone with an upcoming crowdfunding campaign – it’s an easy place to debut your product, interact with the media and hopefully secure both leads and coverage before your campaign even begins. However, before you board your flight for Las Vegas, make sure you’re properly prepared so that you can get the most from your time there!

Prepare Your Messaging

As you prepare for CES, one of your first tasks should be to get all your messaging in order. Decide how you’re planning to position your business or product, what the key benefits are, what features you will highlight and who your target audience is. Once you’ve nailed down the basics of your messaging, you can begin to prepare your outreach materials.

First, you’ll need to put together a digital media kit. This should include product specs and information, company information, images, logos, contact information and anything else a journalist or blogger may need to write about your product or business. You’ll meet many journalists at CES, so you’ll want to be sure you can easily give them any information they need. Consider putting together a press release for the event as well.

Once the media kit is complete, you’ll want to take the most important information (product info, images and contact details) and put it on a one-page handout you can give to journalists you meet. This handout should also include the URL for the media kit, so that any journalist you give it to can find whatever additional information they need.

For the consumer-based side of things, make sure your landing page is ready to go. You’re sure to meet many people interested in your product, and your landing page is how you can collect leads. This way, you’ll have a pool of warm leads well before you launch your project!

Begin PR Outreach

Once your outreach materials are ready, you can begin your public relations efforts. Start by creating a media list of journalists and bloggers who are attending CES and will be interested in your product. If you’ll have a booth, you can log into your exhibitor dashboard and download a list of all journalists attending the event. Twitter is also an an easy way to identify some of these journalists – make sure you’re monitoring the CES hashtag (#CES2016) both before and during the event. Additionally, try to pick out media outlets that your target audience would be interested in. Identify the journalists from those outlets who are attending CES and try to arrange an opportunity to meet with them.

Once you have a solid media list, you can take advantage of paid and unpaid opportunities to get in front of journalists, make connections and secure coverage. As you’re meeting with journalists at the event, remember to always keep things fun and engaging, whether you’re doing a product demo at your booth or meeting a journalist for coffee.