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Marketers and the Conference Conundrum

“It is about time, or should I say, the lack of time,” the marketer explained during a phone call last week.  “I run demand generation, digital campaigns, the Web site and content.  How can I break away to attend a conference?  My CMO would laugh if I raised the possibility.”

This conundrum is common place for corporate, field and product marketers.  As responsibilities grow, time for professional development and skill enhancement wanes.  Yet, it is critical to stay sharp and current on the latest methodologies, tools and techniques in areas related to content, digital, analytics and social media.

Here are three easy-to-implement ideas:

  1. Attend the event…virtually. Most organizers publish keynotes, speaker presentations and panel discussions on their Web site. Block out 90 minutes on a Friday afternoon to engage with this content.  Watch what is most relevant to your job and then pick at least one presentation that is outside your purview.  You may be surprised by how the best practices potentially apply.
  2. Connect and interact socially with attendees. They are on Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media platforms sharing content from the event. This presents the opportunity to deepen your knowledge, while expanding your professional network.
  3. Subscribe to industry sites that will push you news. In 2017, Strategic Communications Group’s (Strategic) Modern Marketing Today published exclusive recaps of industry events hosted by Salesforce, Marketo and SiriusDecisions. You can review the content here at this link.

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Oh It’s On…No Chorus of Echo Chamber Dribble at Tomorrow’s Summit

Tomorrow morning I’ll drag myself out of bed at an uncomfortably early hour and slog through Washington, DC traffic for what I anticipate will be a day well spent at the Government IT Sales Summit.

The agenda is rock solid and the speakers are compelling. Yet, my excitement centers around the panel I will be a part of that will explore how content marketing, social media participation and engagement, and digital communications influence how companies sell to public sector customers.

Rest assured, this is definitely not going to be one of those useless conference presentations where the panelists waste the audience’s time by complimenting each other in a chorus of echo chamber dribble.

Rather, we’ll present a diverse (and divergent) set of views and best practices in an engaging and entertaining style. That’s a nice way of writing the panelists will most likely disagree with one another, based on our own unique set of experiences.

In fact, you can check out exclusive Q&A interviews with the other panelists and our moderators in this special editorial section on Modern Marketing Today.

My goal as part of the panel is to get the audience thinking and to help them make decisions to the benefit of their company.

I’ll publish a recap of the Summit and (hopefully) video of the panel discussion in the next few days.

 

Who is the man in black? It’s the opinionated and informed government marketing expert Mark Amtower. He will join me as a panelist at the Government IT Sales Summit.

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Taking the Stage at Digital East

How relevant are industry conferences in this age of social and search?

It’s a fair question and one that marketers typically ask themselves when planning their resource investment for the year.

While the knowledge gained and peer interactions via online and digital channels are high value, they should be viewed as complimentary to the good, old-fashioned conference. There is simply no way to truly replicate the intimacy that can be achieved via in-person dialogue.

This is why Strategic Communications Group (Strategic) devotes significant time and money to participate in and sponsor events that gather marketers, technologists and influencers.

Last year our relationship with the Inbound Marketing Summit brought us to San Francisco and Boston. In April, we were part of the Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit, where I gave a keynote presentation and hosted a panel of three exceptional corporate marketers (see video below).

This week finds Strategic at Digital East, to be held at the Sheraton Tysons Corner in Northern Virginia. The organizers anticipate hosting nearly 800 attendees for comprehensive and timely discussions about content creation, digital communications, social media and related technologies.

Strategic is a sponsor and our online magazine (Modern Marketing Today) is a media partner. Plus, I’ll be back on-stage for a talk and panel themed “Web2Sales: How Marketers Can Drive Customer Demand.” Joining me as panelists are Meredith Lawrence of Polycom and Jessica DeCianno from CrowdStrike.

Please message me if you’ll be at the conference and would like to meet up. That’s how relationships are created.

 

 

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Confessions of a Conference Goer: What Hit (and Missed) at IMS San Francisco

The blogger and his wife at the Golden Gate Bridge.

 

After a wonderfully productive week in San Francisco to play tourist, visit with a couple of corporate marketers, and attend and speak at the Inbound Marketing Summit (IMS), the five hour flight east presented an opportunity to recharge and reflect.

Here’s my unabashed view of the conference:

Content is the Core

Profile industry speakers and panelists to address timely and meaningful topics attract high quality attendees.  This, in turn, sells exhibitors and sponsors which then creates a well rounded community at the event.

IMS did well to recruit speakers with diverse perspectives.  Analysts typically draw because of their focus on market defining trends and experience speaking to groups.

Digital Clarity Group’s Robert Rose delivered on that expectation with an insightful presentation entitled “Transforming B2B Marketing.”  Rose emphasized three issues that are very much top of mind with chief marketing officers:

-Content and its role as a centralizing force for an organization’s external communications

-Context and the need to craft messaging based on industry trends

-Chaos and the requirement to invest a percentage of budget on innovative endeavors

Panel discussions with a healthy dash of tension also prove to be constructive.  A few of the IMS sessions were merely a hollow chorus of consensus, which left much of the audience thumbing their smart phones.

An exception was the “State of Inbound Marketing” that featured an attention grabbing debate between Patrick Cahill from Beep! Directed Voice Mail and Kelly Jo Horton of Marketo about the return on investment from marketing programs.  Kelly Jo stands in the brand court with a commitment to story telling, and fostering emotional bonds with customers and prospects.

In comparison, Patrick shares my more pragmatic opinion that the majority of marketing initiatives must be evaluated by their contribution to lead generation, lead nurturing and/or deal capture.

The incorporation of video into a presentation by Jason Thiebault of Limelight Networks also proved to be a winner.  Appropriately called “Why Video is the Future of Marketing Content,” Thiebault highlighted each best practice with a real-world example pulled off the servers of YouTube.

 

Networking at Events, On-Premise and Online

Like most industry conferences, IMS effectively extended the relationship building return for attendees from solely the venue to a myriad of online environments.  During the keynotes and panel presentations, there was a healthy Twitter exchange, followed by a flurry of new LinkedIn connections.

Plus, there was ample time allocated in the agenda for informal discussions and chatter among participants.  Personally, it afforded me the opportunity to seek out a group of executive level business developers who I had an interest in speaking with about potential teaming.

 

 

Venue and Food Fall Flat

While San Francisco is a magnificent city with an extensive portfolio of top-drawer hotels and meeting facilities, IMS was inexcusably housed in the drab and hard to find Fort Mason Center.  My late afternoon ritual was a time consuming search for a cab to shuttle me back to my hotel, which was situated in a more central part of the city.

The food and drink offerings at the conference were equally deplorable with a limited supply of beverages and snacks during the sessions.  This disappointment was topped off by the arrival of a single food truck for lunch each day, producing a 30 minute long line of guests salivating for mediocre taco.

Perhaps I have grown spoiled by the royal accommodations at GetWellNetwork’s GetConnected conference and Polycom’s global partner summit, yet jetting 3,000 miles for a lukewarm bottle of water and cereal bar (yes…that was all that was offered in the afternoon) is unacceptable.

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