MarketingProfs Business-to-Business Forum June 8-9

Marketing 2.0: Integrating Social Media into Your Marketing Mix

Speaker:
Sandy Carter, Vice President, SOA, BPM and WebSphere, IBM Corporation

When marketing with social media, what sets you apart is how effectively you use the technology to complement and enhance your marketing activities to drive greater results. We’ll show you the critical success factors in adding social media to your marketing mix. Examples will cover blogs and microblogs like Twitter, viral videos with YouTube, social networking, serious games, and more. You will come away with a step-by-step framework to develop a plan that you can act on today.

You will learn:

• Key strategies for building your Marketing 2.0 plan
• Where social media tools and technology fit in your marketing mix
• How to drive results that impact leads and revenue

The Q2 Factor (Quality and Quantity): Eight Secrets to Delivering Top B2B Demand Generation Results

Speakers:
Russell M. Kern, President, The Kern Organization
Tara Verner, Senior Marketing Manager, VeriSign

Managing highly effective B2B demand generation campaigns requires the insight to balance lead quantity and quality. While your sales force is screaming for many “hot leads,” sophisticated marketers know that fewer well-cultivated leads can be a better choice. So what is the best way to drive demand? What are effective methods to nurture leads? You’ll leave this session knowing what is working in B2B demand generation today.

You learn:

• Why balancing online marketing with postal mail-based campaigns improves lead quality and speeds sales conversions

• How to drive leads into your sales funnel with an effective demand generation campaign
• To drive revenue by taking offline-generated leads and re-marketing online

Bringing SEO In-house Without Missing a Beat

Speakers:
Jessica Bowman, In-house SEO Advocate, Founder of SEOinhouse.com & SEMPO Board of Directors, JessicaBowmanSEO.com
Bill Scully, Director E-Marketing, Siemens Water Technologies Corp.

Many companies are considering bringing SEO in-house to save money, but doing so is challenging. It’s usually done with a lot of trial-and-error and often has a detrimental impact on the program. In this session, we’ll show you how companies are bringing their SEO programs in-house without missing a beat. You’ll discover real-life examples about how companies are implementing SEO in-house across the globe.

You’ll learn:

• How to mitigate the obstacles
• What works, what doesn’t work
• When it still makes sense to use an outside agency, and how to make the most of your spend

The 2009 Economic Impact on B2B Marketing Budgets and Practices

Moderator:
Roy Young, President, MarketingProfs

Panelists:
Laura Ramos, Vice President, Forrester Research
Sandy Carter, Vice President, SOA, BPM and WebSphere, IBM Corporation

We’ll continue the conversation started at the MarketingProfs Digital Marketing World Spring virtual conference and further discuss to what degree the current worldwide recession has affected marketing budgets and spending plans for 2009 and beyond. In conjunction with MarketingProfs, Forrester Research surveyed over 300 marketers to study budgets trends between 2007 and 2008, expected changes in 2009, and whether the transition from outbound traditional to inbound digital marketing will accelerate. This lively panel discussion will provide you feedback on which tactics marketers find most effective for generating leads and building awareness. We’ll also get some expert opinions on whether online tactics have become more effective over time. Attending this session will help you evaluate your marketing plans going forward.

Create a Winning Targeted Accounts Strategy to Reach Senior Decision-Makers

Speakers:
Lauren Goldstein, VP of Strategic Planning, Babcock & Jenkins                         
Bill Rozier, VP of Marketing, Ciena

When you’re targeting senior level executives – It’s noisy out there. You need to be smart, targeted and a little bold to get noticed. Multiple, integrated touches to a highly targeted list is a tried and true trend in the B2B space. In this session, you’ll learn the four critical steps required to effectively engage with this audience. We’ll highlight targeted account campaigns from Ciena and Babcock & Jenkins – including a campaign that generated a 43% engagement rate and has resulted in several qualified opportunities. Additionally, we will provide you with a step-by-step guide to employ these practices in your organization.

You will learn how to:

• Define the objectives and correlating strategies to support a successful program
• Develop a list of targeted accounts
• Integrate sales into a successful multi-touch engagement and conversion program

Developing Robust Online Content to Keep Prospects and Customers Engaged

Moderator:
Matthew T. Grant, PhD, Thought Ronin

Speakers:
Mike O'Toole, President and Partner, PJA Advertising and Marketing
Christopher S. Penn, CTO, Student Loan Network
Phil Juliano, VP of Marketing, Novell
Valeria Maltoni, Director, Marketing Communications, SunGard Availability Services

Providing relevant, information-pack and entertaining content is critical to getting the attention of your prospects and customers and keeping them coming back to YOUR site rather than your competitors. It takes a lot of thought and effort to provide valuable content that speaks to your target audience’s needs. This session will provide you with actionable ideas on how to provide the kind of content that will keep people engaged with your company. We’ll discuss different types of content including, whitepapers, videos, podcasts, blogs and more, and how to use them on your site. Plus, what you need to do to manage and keep the content fresh and relevant for your audience.

The New Models of Innovation

Steven Berlin Johnson, Author

Drawing on concepts from his influential bestsellers Emergence and The Invention of Air, Steven will address the new models of innovation and idea-sharing that are beginning to appear in social network services like Facebook and Twitter. He'll look at how these new systems relate to historical hubs of innovation -- coffeeshops and urban neighborhoods -- and explain how businesses are starting to exploit the power of social software to generate breakthrough ideas, using new tools to tap the wisdom of their employees *and* their customers.

Make Every Investment Count: The Measure of Marketing

Speaker:
Laura Patterson, Co-founder and President, VisionEdge Marketing, Inc.

As a marketer, you are expected to communicate to senior management the impact of your marketing programs on the business. Now more than ever, skills in marketing metrics, measurement tools and analytics are essential to your survival. Can you measure the impact your strategy is having on the organization? Are you finding yourself in a position where you have to defend your marketing budget from getting cut and are you struggling to get the resources you need to be successful? If you answered yes to these questions, then don’t miss this session. We’ll discuss how to better align your marketing with the business and clarify the business’ expectations.

You’ll learn how to:

• Craft quantifiable measurable marketing objectives
• Frame your reporting to demonstrate how marketing is contributing to the business
• Establish metrics that demonstrate marketing effectiveness, efficiency, and value

Developing Online Communities that Increase Customer Loyalty

Moderator:
Diane Hessan, President & CEO, Communispace

Speakers:
Gretchen Harding, Senior Marketing Manager, Intuit
Joanne Del Toro, Director, Online Communities, Network Solutions
Nathan Beverly, Marketing Strategy and Insights Manager, WellPoint Corporate Marketing

Need a new way to engage customers and keep them loyal to your products or services? Need another means for attracting new customers? Online communities are a great way to keep customers involved with your brand while providing them a valuable resource. In this session, several experts on online communities will first discuss “why” you should develop an online community and then show several examples of successful communities. We’ll talk about the elements that should be included in your community and how, once it’s established, to take it to the next level.

You will learn:

• What kind of resources it takes to develop and maintain an online community
• How to promote the community to your target audience
• The benefits and ROI you’ll gain

Part 1: Website Development & Analytics: Building the Optimal Website that Delivers Business Results

Speakers:
Karen Breen Vogel, CEO/President, ClearGauge
Mike Tittel, Director of Interactive, GyroHSR

B2B companies need their websites to be their first sales call and their lead nurturing system. In part one of this two-part session, we will show you how to get your brand positioning front and center on your site, while also creating a navigation and content structure that moves buyers and influencers through their decision process and become qualified leads. We’ll show you examples of several website renovation projects with different challenges where all necessary components of a new website were built in from the beginning – search engine optimization, analytics customized to the business’ context of financial value – and set-up to guide continuous improvement of customer experience and engagement. 

You will learn:

• About templates for defining your visitors needs and motivations more clearly
• Techniques to architect navigation structures, content, interactive tools and conversion offers to support the buying cycle
• Considerations for choosing CMS, search platforms, and social media tools

Putting Measurements into Action to Improve Leads, Conversions, and ROI

Speakers:
Jim Lenskold, President, Lenskold Group
Karin McEwen, Director World Wide Marketing Programs, Mathworks

There is a clear need for B2B marketers to better understand the impact of multiple touch points contributing to lead generation and incremental sales revenue. But it is just as important to establish an approach to best interpret and apply the insights gained to improve performance and profitability. This session will focus on key opportunities to put measurements and metrics into action. We’ll show you how to put practical measurements in place to guide more effective strategies and tactical plans. Plus, we’ll share a success story for improving the measurement discipline and marketing effectiveness for a global software company.

You will learn:

• How to implement actionable measurement techniques
• Critical success factors for acting on measurement insights
• To identify and prioritize lead generation improvement opportunities

Gain Revenue Growth and Reduce Costs Through Increased Customer Loyalty

Speaker:
Vic Hunter, President, Hunter Business Group

What would you do differently if you knew that three (3) drivers of loyalty accounted for over 80% of your customers’ change in buying behavior? How loyal are your largest and most important customers? What are the specific activities that customers value most in moving the loyalty driver? In today’s economic downturn, no company can afford to lose their profitable customers. Customer defect from pain and neglect! Each customer pain point has an expected annual revenue loss. In this session, you’ll learn how to measure that loss and understand what is putting your customers at risk. Loyal customers buy more over a longer period of time and are more profitable.  Knowing the very limited drivers of loyalty and supporting activities lets you lower sales and marketing costs while cultivating a measurable economic return.

Part 2: Website Development & Analytics: Using Web Analytics to Evaluate Your Lead Generation Efforts

Speakers:
Karen Breen Vogel, CEO/President, ClearGauge
Rob Helmke, Marketing Director, Plastic Ingenuity

Creating or renovating a website properly is the first step (see part 1 above.) Optimizing for better engagement, conversions and leads is where a company can really separate itself from its competition. In the second part of this two-part session, we’ll talk about creating a testing and optimization framework based on a tailored web analytics approach. We’ll show you how this approach will allow you to create metrics and key performance indicators that are easily understood and communicate to sponsoring executives. You’ll also learn how to integrate web analytics and leads into CRM or lead management systems in order to close the loop and report the level of success after the web lead is generated. 

You will learn:

• How to make your website a continually improving and contributing asset to your lead generation
• Tips on how to choose a web analytics tool/system that’s right for your business
• About case studies on Google Analytics and other user experience, lead management and nurturing tools

Tales from the Trenches, How Organizations are Measuring Value in Social Media

Speaker:
Katie Delahaye Paine, CEO, KDPaine & Partners

This is a continuation of Katie Paine’s session from our Digital Marketing World Spring virtual conference. She’ll discuss theory and present real-life case histories of how businesses are actually making data-driven decisions about blogs, social communities, Twitter, YouTube, aggregators and all things digital. Social Media is all the rage, but until organizations can measure the impact it’s having on their businesses, it's just a fad. The reality is that many are already measuring solid ROI and establishing benchmarks for their social media program. When you leave this session, you’ll have a solid understanding of how to set benchmarks and establish ROI in social media.

Designing Relevant Marketing Dashboards

Speakers:
Guy R. Powell, Founder, DemandROMI
Sue Padalkar, Global Marketing Metrics and Measurement, Avaya

Wouldn’t it be great to have a reporting system that answers C-level questions about the past and that provides the right insights to make the best strategic and tactical marketing decisions for the future?  Marketing dashboards are a great first step in that direction. In this session, we’ll show you how to design marketing dashboards that demonstrate not just any measurement results, but the most pertinent information need by senior management. This talk will focus on a framework of marketing infrastructure and then present a live case study illustrating the successes and challenges faced by a global marketing team to manage and drive their marketing to the next level.

You will learn how to:

• Compile and present key marketing metrics in your dashboard
• Redesign top metrics based on a new strategy
• Tie your top C-level metrics to metrics further down the marketing organization

INTERACTIVE SESSION: Email Creative Workshop

Speaker:
Tim Siukola, Senior Email Marketing Designer, ExactTarget

Join us for this hands-on interactive session where an expert in email creative will lead marketers though a process for evaluating and improving email marketing content and design. We’ll spend the first half of the session reviewing design best practices and highlighting strategies for different email types, including: newsletters, transactional messages, and event notifications. Then we’ll break up into teams where you’ll meet other attendees and work together to critique each other’s email design and content. Please bring hard copies of your email samples for this exercise. Session limited to 30 attendees in order to encourage conversation and team work. Sign-up on site when you pick up your badge.

Marketing and IT: Forging a Unique Partnership

Speakers:
Maria Villar, Managing Partner, Business Data Leadership and Former, Vice President, Enterprise Business Information, IBM
Theresa Kushner, Director of Customer Intelligence, Cisco Systems - Formerly worked with Maria at IBM. She brings the same years of experience from a marketing perspective.

In today’s economy, marketing has to work harder than ever before. The objective is not only effectiveness (What have you done for me today?) but also efficiency (Can’t you do more with less?). Making the marketing machine run smoothly takes a unique partnership with the information technology function in most businesses. But that partnership has to be forged against all odds. Marketing is creative. IT is numbers. Marketing abhors process. IT is process. Join us for a point-counterpoint discussion that should help you gain a better appreciation for the teams that support your marketing organization. 

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• Why marketing needs IT and vice versa
• What roles each play in the process
• How to speak each other’s language
• How to evaluate your Marketing-IT relationship

Using a Multi-Touch Approach to Engaging and Nurturing Sales Prospects

Speakers:
Loren McDonald, VP of Industry Relations, Silverpop
Joan Babinski, VP of Marketing, Brainshark

It’s essential for B2B marketers to focus their lead generation efforts on nurturing and qualifying existing leads, not just acquiring new leads. But with prospects being inundated with offers and information, how can a company engage with a prospect and move them from being a warm or cold lead to a sales-qualified lead? In this session, you will learn new ways to reach out to prospects and gather the types of information necessary to better engage with them and greatly increase the percentage of truly sales-ready leads you send through the pipeline. Combining best practices and examples, this session will demonstrate the actual progression and interaction with a real prospect, from interest to conversion, and the strategies and tactics behind each step.

INTERACTIVE SESSION: What Will Social Media Do for My Business? An Interactive Q&A with Attendees.

Moderator:
Greg Verdino, Chief Strategy Officer, crayon, LLC

Facilitator:
Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

Panelists:
Donna M. Tocci, Director, Web/New Media, Ingersoll Rand
Monique Trulson, Manager of Web and Ecommerce, Hello Direct
Aneta Hall, Manager, Emerging Media, Corporate Marketing, Pitney Bowes

Have you been asking yourself this question? Many B2B marketers want to get involved in social media but aren’t sure where to start or what the value really is. Join us for this interactive exchange of ideas between social media experts and attendees. This session promises to be a lively discussion about how you can use social media to enhance your marketing programs and achieve a higher ROI. You’ll learn not only from the panel of experts but from your peers facing similar challenges.

Session limited to 30 attendees to encourage conversation among the audience. Sign-up on site when you pick up your badge.

To submit questions for the experts in advance email: events@marketingprofs.com.

Practical Wisdom

Barry Schwartz, Author of "Practical Wisdom" and "The Paradox of Choice"

Barry Schwartz, will present on the topic of his book-in-progress "Practical Wisdom". People usually want to do the right thing, but it isn't always easy to know what the "right thing" is.  Practical wisdom is the virtue that is essential to solving problems that inevitably arise whenever character strengths must be translated into action in concrete situations. Barry will demonstrate how practical wisdom is becoming increasingly scarce in modern society, which relies on rules and incentives as substitutes for wisdom. Rules and incentives protect against disaster but they inhibit creativity and lead to mediocrity. He will show us how businesses and social institutions can combat this trend and encourage the use of practical wisdom rather than inhibiting it.

Barry Schwartz is also the author of /The Paradox of Choice, Why More is Less/ which was named one of the top business books of the year by both /Business Week and Forbes Magazine/. Currently, he is Professor of Social Theory and Social Action, Swarthmore College. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971 and has written 10 books.  His work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. He is a fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science, and was recently honored by being named a Phi Beta Kappa Distinguished Visiting Lecturer for 2006-07.

BOOST your Campaign: 5 Rules for Successful, Integrated Design

Speaker:
George Hague, Senior Marketing Strategist, J. Schmid & Assoc. Inc.

How do you know that you’ll get the most impact from your marketing campaigns? It’s easy when you follow the five-step BOOST plan. BOOST ensures that across multiple channels you will develop a fully integrated creative campaign that will position your brand, meet your objectives, make a compelling offer, engage more prospects and give you trackable results. In this session, we’ll show you examples of integrated creative campaigns that have made a more substantial impression on customers and prospects by following this plan.

You will learn:

• Five rules that  must be followed to achieve successfully integrated creative campaigns
• Key elements of brand identity to transfer from channel to channel
• How your strategy can direct each and every promotional campaign

Mobile Marketing: What are the Possibilities for B2B Marketers?

Speakers:
Mickey Alam Khan, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Mobile Marketer
Michael J. Becker, EVP, Business Development, iLoop Mobile, Inc.

The use of mobile marketing is not widespread among B2B marketers but yet they are many possibilities for mobile marketing to enhance your marketing programs. In this session, we’ll discuss mobile marketing options and how B2B marketers can take advantage of them. We’ll provide you with ideas on ways you can integrate mobile marketing into your current marketing programs and discuss a few case studies that show how B2B marketers are making good use of this important channel.

INTERACTIVE SESSION: Rapid-Fire 50 Ideas on Marketing Smarter in a Down Economy

Speaker:
Russell Kern, President, The Kern Organization

Here’s what we all need. Don’t miss this interactive forum of ideas on how to market smarter in a down economy. Moderator, Russell Kern, President of The Kern Organization, will provide actionable tips on how to market effectively and keep generating leads even in hard times. Then we’ll turn this into a groupthink and ask participates (if they want to) to add their own ideas into the discussion. You’ll walk away with at least 50 ideas on how to market smarter in a down economy and have a chance to learn from other attendees facing the same challenges you are.

Session limited to 30 attendees to encourage conversation among the audience. Sign-up on site when you pick up your badge.

Family Feud: The All Things Online Version

Speaker:
Amy Africa, President and Chief Imagin-8-tion Officer, Eight by Eight

Contestants:
Linda Thames, Ross-Simons
Terry Flynn, President, Gibraltar Direct
Terry O'Connell, formerly of Northern Safety
Ashok Prajapati, Stonewall Kitchen
Bud Reed, Founder, Timberline Interactive
Monique Trulson, Manager of Web and Ecommerce, Hello Direct

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND! Amy Africa leads this fun and informative game show like presentation. Join us for this “Family Feud” style session where two “families” compete and try to guess the most popular answers to questions about best practices on web usability, marketing smarter online and much more. But it’s not all fun and games. You’ll gain a better understanding about how to increase your online leads and conversions. This is an exciting way to end two days of intensive learning.