14,000 marketers, over 250 speakers, 4 days, Inbound 2015 was crazy. You can get a little taste of what I mean from the above picture. HubSpot, like their annual conference has grown exponentially every years. In 2013 there was a mere 5,000 marketers. This was my first time to Inbound, so it was all new to me.
Inbound 2015 is right around the corner. I’m planning to be in Boston for this global inbound marketing conference and it will be my first time attending. This is a pretty exciting timewhether you’re an INBOUND newbie like me, or you’ve been attending faithfully for years.With over 250 speakers, preparing can be overwhelming. For the past few days I’ve been going through the agonizing task of choosing which sessions to go to, and which ones I’ll have to let go of (It’s so hard!). The task is only made worse by HubSpot’s frustrating habit of shifting the speaking schedule around every day.
With all this in mind, I would like to put my painstaking planning ponderings to use and share with you…
I enjoy tweeting at conferences. As attendees share hash-tagged tweets, the stream grows into a real-time commentary on all the great observations, quotes, quips and tips. It grows into an historical document of 140-character morsels that can be snacked on or enjoyed en masse as a thorough recap through the eyes of individuals. The content sharing creates a connected community.
These days, it’s all about stretching a B2B marketing dollar and sponsoring an event is no different. Your company has paid good money to support an event you believe in, why stop at having your logo listed on some signs and the program? You can do more! Using MLT Creative’s recent sponsorship of the SocialSLAM VIP Party as an example, read about what we did to make the event a success, to inspire you to do the same!
Last month I had the privilege of judging the Georgia DECA Career Development Conference, a competition of high school marketing students. For two days, I and dozens of other volunteer marketing professionals, reviewed, critiqued and measured over 2,000 marketing competition entries of more than 1,300 high school students from all around the state. We were looking at the future marketers, co-workers or even competitors, and we were impressed! The event also inspired us to bring renewed enthusiasm to our own jobs.
After a busy week catching up at work, the long holiday weekend gave me the chance to slow down and reflect on the amazing experience I had at the HOW Design Conference in Chicago. Since this was my first design conference, as well as my first trip to Chicago, I had no idea what to expect. It was really an incredible thing to see such a diverse group of people from our industry gathered at this cool event in a city like Chicago. There were creatives of all ages and experience levels who shared a common goal to learn something new and get inspired.
When our dog Maggie, a frisky chow/golden, was younger, she loved to wriggle out of her collar and take off at incredible speeds. Her tail, torso and head were completely parallel; her ears back and her strides wide. She appeared to take flight as her fore and hind legs crossed beneath her. When we eventually caught her and put her leash back on, she had that panting dog smile that said, That was good! Let’s do it again!
The BMA Atlanta had the pleasure of having Ashley Kuhnmuench, account executive for B2B markets, of Google at our April 14 luncheon at Maggiano’s Little Italy in Buckhead. Ashley presented to a rapt audience The Business Buyer of the Future: Engaging Your Audience at the Zero Moment of Truth. She shared, to a capacity crowd, Google’s perspective on Procter & Gambles First Moment of Truth, which describes the first few seconds in a store aisle, when a marketer has the most influence to convince a customer to choose their brand. But B2B buyers are different; they don’t walk in the wind turbine store to compare solutions off the shelf. Online research has forever changed the B2B sales game.
One of the most gripping segments of the presentation, in this blogger’s opinion, was the display of four industries impacted by the amount of online research customers do before a purchase: Auto, Travel, Real Estate, and B2B.
As an account executive at the B2B marketing agency MLT Creative, I know good strategies when I see them. One in particular that currently stands out to me is the race for queen and king of Baconfest here in Atlanta. I also appreciate the power of social media, and that along with my love for all things bacon leads me to apply what we do for our clients day-in and day-out to achieve victory in this contest. With that, Ive been granted approval by the powers-that-be here at MLT to conduct this experiment, so here we go!
Dan McDade, president and CEO of PointClear spoke at the BMA Atlanta luncheon on March 10 at Maggiano’s. The author of The Truth About Leads addressed the group of B2B marketers (ironically half sales, half marketing) about his philosophy for achieving marketing and sales alignment. He began by sharing some reasons the two entities may not be in sync:
