IronVest is a cybersecurity company focused on biometric security and privacy and has built proprietary security and privacy-first fraud prevention technology. It offers both a consumer app, called Ivy by IronVest, as well as a B2B cybersecurity offering aimed at financial services companies and fintechs. Based out of New York, the company has raised $23m.
IronVest, a market leader in consumer digital life security and privacy, emerged from stealth mode and announced a $23 million seed funding round. After this announcement, it brought Wise Up PR on board to help build wider brand awareness targeted to B2C audiences for its highly unique super app offering.
Its product combines decentralized, biometric fraud prevention technology and a seamless cross-device user experience to continuously protect consumers’ most sensitive accounts. Wise Up PR’s challenge was to turn IronVest’s emerging, decentralized cybersecurity approach into media-ready stories that would reach less technically savvy audiences.
In the absence of any immediate news announcements, at the outset of this campaign Wise Up PR realized it had to tie IronVest to key dates in the diary to wedge the brand into issues that consumers care about, as well as build journalists’ awareness of the brand’s spokespeople and areas of commentary expertise. Instead of solely relying on a steady cadence of corporate news or product announcements, this meant creating a rapid response PR press office. By devising this strategy, all tactical execution was then shaped around it and as a first step, our team crafted a deep calendar of events we knew the media would be covering, including Black Friday, the repayment of student loans, the holiday booking season in January, and leveraging these as genuine opportunities for IronVest spokespeople to contribute their expertise.
After mapping these media moments out as the core of the outreach strategy, an essential approach was then to leverage and segment IronVest’s bench of cybersecurity experts to offer ongoing insights and, crucially, top tips to consumers on how they can spot and deal with the latest scams and tricks used by online fraudsters. The team offered a mix of prepackaged expert commentary as well as experts for interview to secure a steady stream of high-profile media opportunities. The idea here was to provide media with “drop-in” quotes for their articles, that we knew they would be writing about to maximize chances of securing media coverage for time-poor journalists.
Its product combines decentralized, biometric fraud prevention technology and a seamless cross-device user experience to continuously protect consumers’ most sensitive accounts. Wise Up PR’s challenge was to turn IronVest’s emerging, decentralized cybersecurity approach into media-ready stories that would reach less technically savvy audiences.
67 Articles
Coverage secured in top cybersecurity, consumer and business publications.
5.7 Million
Estimated audience that viewed the coverage generated.
68
Aggregate Domain Authority (DA) score of the publications which published.
428.9 Million
Combined audience that are unique monthly visitors (UMVs) to the media outlets that covered bitsensing stories.
97,800
Coverage that was viewed via social posts accompanying media articles.
1,600
Organic social posts prompted by the launch media placements.
Wise Up PR formulated a rapid response media campaign, without any news announcements, that in six months secured 67 pieces of coverage. Mixing both quality and quantity, including articles published on ConsumerAffairs, Forbes and The Daily Mail, the coverage was estimated to have 5.7 million views in total, marking a 1,500% increase in earned placements from the previous six-month period.
“Wise Up PR has really delivered for IronVest. It nailed our brief by building a highly successful strategy that took our brand into some of the biggest media outlets in the world. The team is also filled with PR experts and offers its clients an excellent level of care and support.”
If you don’t have a robust news pipeline of announcements, you need to get creative and you need your spokespeople to be discussing industry issues or topical conversations that media are covering. Your Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are the way to get around a weak news pipeline and at the outset, define topics they’d like to wade into and work back from there to see what seasonal events their expertise could be tied to. In the case of IronVest, we focused on the restarting of student loans as a topic area and generated high-quality media coverage with this issue.
Some seasonal events are known well ahead of time, like Black Friday and even on a less defined date in the diary, such as January, typically being the month when people book their holidays for the new year. Using a mix of actual calendar dates as well as some more fluid ones gives you a clear idea of when you can create and issue expert commentary to media.
Some companies appeal to both consumer and B2B audiences. This poses a challenge for any communications program - how best do you reach both? An audience-defined message is fundamental to any success; however, PR tactics also matter deeply. For example, consumer media quite often conducts product reviews, which then presents an obvious tactic to explore if relevant to your brand. Think extensively about what type of media coverage could be generated for a brand like yours and this will then inform the tactics you should execute against.
Some media stories tend to rumble on and on. If your first pitch to a journalist doesn’t elicit any response and this story reappears a few weeks later, it is a smart approach to check in once more with your media contact. This is, of course, a case-by-case basis and also depends highly on the relevancy of your commentary and spokesperson, but it can be a simple way to unlock media opportunities that you might not have expected to convert.
