Marketing is absolutely critical to technology transfer success. Without it, you are guaranteed to have technology assets sit in your portfolio without ever realizing their public and economic benefit. Marketing takes many forms, so a robust marketing plan should account for all the different ways that new technologies can be promoted. Pull marketing can be established through good relationships with industry, entrepreneurs, and investors. Push marketing ensures that you are putting the right information in front of the right people at the right time. Here I am going to present a structure for implementing a dynamic and scalable push marketing program.

The 6 steps in this marketing program are:

1. Technology Assessment

2. Preparing Marketing Collateral

3. Identifying Marketing Leads

4. Outreach

5. Follow Up

6. Summary & Close Out

Let’s dig in and take them one at a time.

1. Technology Assessment
This step is necessary to get a basic understanding of the technology in order to market it effectively. You don’t need to be an expert in the technology in order to sell it, but you do need to understand what it is and who is going to care about, but more importantly why they are going to care about it. I have a very simple template technology assessment form you can use for this step which is available here: Technology Assessment

2. Preparing Marketing Collateral
Marketing collateral can be just about anything, the key here is knowing your audience and how they like to receive information. Sometimes this should be a simple one page flyer, other times is should be a more technical white paper. Some companies aren’t interested unless you have an issued patent, so that may be all they want to see. Other companies might need finesse, so videos and webinars might be necessary. Here, I’m going to provide you with a very basic technology flyer that can be a good first step: Technology Flyer

3. Identifying Marketing Leads
There is an art to identifying good marketing leads, but for those less experienced, the shotgun approach will work for now, i.e. TRY EVERYTHING. Google searches, trade publications, extended network, LinkedIn, conferences, and make sure you involve the inventors. Unless you understand the market well, you will probably miss the mark on your first round, so be prepared to iterate. I address this in the HOLISTIC TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER™ process, but for now you can start with brute force. Use this spreadsheet to help you track your leads: Lead Identification and Outreach

4. Outreach
This is the easy part, click send or pick up the phone and call. You can use the same Lead Identification and Outreach spreadsheet to track the interactions. Weed out the bad contacts and track the good ones.

5. Follow Up
Once you have been through a round of marketing, you need to review what you have learned. Silence is informative and sometimes may be the only clue you have to go on. Iterate and find out what works and what doesn’t. If you sent emails, follow up with a phone call. If you called, send an email.

6. Summary & Close Out
Hopefully by now you are cultivating your leads, but either way make sure you summarize what you have learned and suggest what the appropriate next steps are for the technology.