Discover new leads and sales during two days of action-packed sessions.
From basic to advanced, the B2B Marketing Forum has sessions just for you. New to a marketing discipline, or need to get back to the basics? Our Explorer sessions will get your marketing programs on the right course. Need to discover new ways to improve your current campaigns? Our Adventurer sessions will go beyond the basics to help you find new opportunities for success. Have your campaigns already crossed the Atlantic Ocean and back? Our Globetrotter sessions are perfect for you—the advanced marketer. Explorer: Essential, easy-to-navigate sessions full of ideas that will get your programs on the right course. |
 Adventurer: A little more complex, these sessions go beyond the basics to help you discover new opportunities. |
 Globetrotter: For the world travelers, these sessions cover the nuances that'll take your programs to new heights (or continents, for that matter). |
Day 1—Tuesday, June 14
| 7:30am–8:30am | Continental Breakfast |
| 8:30am–8:50am | Opening General Session—Setting the Stage |
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9:00am–10:15am |
Speaker: The customer has seized control of the marketing dialogue and now engages on their terms. To be successful, marketers must learn to listen and automate their campaigns accordingly – based on contact behavior, position in the sales cycle and preferred communication channels. This session will demystify the lead management process and take you step by step through capturing, communicating with, and nurturing contacts – in order to provide higher quality leads to sales and drive revenue. You'll learn:
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Speakers: Email marketing is an excellent communication channel to engage and nurture customers but there's an art to doing it well. In this session, our email marketing experts will reveal how to achieve 5 things every email marketer wants: more audience, more delivery, more opens, more actions and more/better metrics. They'll share what you should be testing, easy ways to measure ROI, and new ideas for content. You'll see a rich case study example of how one B2B marketer has driven leads and sales through email marketing, and where email fits in their marketing mix. You'll leave the session with a thorough understanding of how to improve email marketing performance in the 21st century. You'll learn:
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Speakers: Facebook may grab all the headlines, but LinkedIn delivers the professional audiences B2B marketers crave. And with over 100 million members and roughly a million people joining every week, LinkedIn just keeps getting more attractive. But how can B2B marketers take advantage of LinkedIn in 2011? What are the best opportunities to engage targets there and drive real results? Who's doing interesting things you can learn from? This session will cover real-world success stories, reveal evolving opportunities you need to know about, and share best practices you can use to make LinkedIn a high-performing element of your integrated campaigns. You'll learn:
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Speakers: Where is your company in its social media adoption? Are you deliberating, taking baby steps or have you jumped in feet first? If you've started or are getting started, how will you know if your efforts are successful? For any organization large or small, the keys to success in social media are the same: build awareness, build a framework and build a strategy. In this interactive discussion group, we'll talk about companies who have built an internal structure for social media, created successful social media guidelines, integrated social media across the organization and set up monitoring and measurement to track the ROI of their social media activities. This session is designed to promote interaction, dialog and debate, so bring your questions, bring your success stories, learn from Mike and Dave and learn from each other. You'll discover:
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| 10:15am–10:45am | Morning Break |
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10:45am–12:00pm |
Speakers: In this session, you'll walk through a five-step process to align sales and marketing to help position your company, and its individuals, for success. Our experts will discuss why it's critical for sales and marketing to: 1) share a common understanding of goals and expectations; 2) collaborate; 3) be visible and transparent; 4) share information on leads; and 5) communicate successes. You'll see real-life examples of customers that were able to better align sales and marketing strategies. The session will highlight one global high-tech company who wanted to better understand why the volume of marketing-sourced leads stayed constant or increased while forward funnel movement stalled. Finally, you'll see the solution this high-tech company implemented that supported the use of real-time, personalized dialogue interactions and automated, integrated sales assignments. You'll discover:
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Speaker: With 5 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide, 72% of the U.S. workforce already mobile, and a 200% growth rate forecast for tablet computers, mobile signifies the most sweeping media of our time. Far more than a communications channel, this anytime-anywhere, always-on media is creating a sea of change across the way we live and work, and driving permanent shifts across our habits, preferences, expectations and thresholds. Marketers in particular must align their efforts with these dramatic changes. Yet B2Bs are slow to move into mobile and are missing out on prime ROI opportunities, as well as risking their relevance in the one set of media that is most used by their target audiences. Don't miss this eye opening session where you'll discover how to start using mobile within your company and start reaping the benefits of this new media frontier. You'll learn:
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Speakers: The decision to exhibit at a tradeshow is a big one. The expenses involved are huge so it's essential to make sure you are doing everything you can to gather as many highly qualified leads as possible—and that takes an integrated strategy. In this session, the speakers will reveal the essential steps you need to take before, during and after exhibiting to make the most of your investment. They'll also talk about ways to integrate mobile and social media strategies to create a greater impact at the event and allow you to stay connected to new leads and prospects long after the tradeshow takes place. You'll walk away energized with creative suggestions for improving your event initiatives, and a better understanding of how you can evaluate program success. You'll learn:
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Speaker: Join us for this makeover session where you'll learn best practices for optimizing your website in ways that will not only achieve higher visibility among your target audience but also do a better job delivering bottom-line results. You'll witness several live website reviews and learn actionable tips for improving how your website can be a magnet for "relevant" site traffic and a spark to speed the conversion process. If you've been tasked with making sure your site is a visible and effective part of your marketing mix—then this session is for you! If you would like to be one of the makeover volunteers please email events@marketingprofs.com. We'll let you know in May if you’ve been chosen. You'll learn:
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| Luncheon Roundtables and Keynote Presentation | |
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12:00pm–1:30pm |
How Your Unhappiest Customers Can (Paradoxically!) Help You Foster Fans Speaker: Even in the B2B space, the customer is always right, right? But the stakes are higher in the B2B world: Business-to-business marketers who deal with customer complaints 24/7 have to deal with complaints efficiently and effectively. That's no easy task—especially because research shows that customers frequently voice some complaints but not always the ones that bother them the most; and (uniquely) because B2B customers are inherently more valuable. Knowing how to actively elicit feedback from customers (and doing so correctly) is the only way to make sure you hear the kinds of complaints that can cause actual attrition. In this lively keynote address, Guy Winch shares why and how marketers have to get out in front of customer complaints—eliciting them instead of waiting for them, using tricks and tools rooted in psychology to listen and respond to the real problems behind the pain, and (finally) responding correctly and efficiently, even when you wish the customer didn't always happen to be right! |
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1:45pm–3:00pm |
Moderator: Panelists: Video works, but most people are struggling with how to use it effectively and which types of video to create. In this exciting panel discussion, you'll discover which types of video successfully educate and engage potential customers. Drawing on actual case examples from an expert panel of B2B marketers with first-hand experience, we'll show you different ways that marketers are using video through all parts of the marketing and sales funnel. We'll discuss how to use video as part of email campaigns, on websites and landing pages and within the sales process, as well as for thought leadership. Additionally, you'll learn where to use video to increase key business metrics. The panelists will also give you simple tips on getting started and how to affordably create good quality video that can easily fit into most marketing budgets. You'll learn:
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Speakers: Landing pages bridge the campaigns you use to win clicks—via advertising, search, social, email—with the large number of ways your products and services can be presented to different audiences. While a website is usually "one size fits all," landing pages let you authentically tailor content and offers to prospects in highly targeted contexts. We'll examine a wide range of landing page examples and best practices to maximize your post-click performance. You'll learn how to:
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Speaker: Social media is growing up. When combined with blogging and email marketing, social media marketing becomes a powerful and cost effective source for lead generation. For businesses looking to lower their cost of customer acquisition and attract leads that are better educated on the industry and their business, social media offers advantages over many traditional marketing efforts. In this session, you'll see case study examples of how B2B marketers are using social media to generate leads. You'll also discover best practices for generating leads through social media, and learn how to integrate those leads with your CRM and sales process. You'll learn how to:
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Speakers: From social media to sales enablement, new marketing technologies are abundant, often replacing established tools in the marketing operations toolbox. Xerox Services adopted a variety of new technologies with a mix of successes and shortfalls. In this session, the presenters will talk frankly about the lessons they learned rolling out social media, lead management automation, and guided selling tools in an organization where sales coverage runs the gamut from geography to industry. Then, they'll open up the conversation to attendees who can voice their own challenges and problems with new technology adoption. The presenters and other attendees will help to provide advice and support with the pitfalls you may be facing. This session will be a lively discussion group, designed help you with your technology implementation challenges. You'll discover:
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One-on-One Therapy Twitter/Blogging/Search Engine Marketing/Website Conversions/Email Strategy/Mobile Marketing/Video Marketing/Lead Management |
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| 3:00pm–3:30pm | Afternoon Break |
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3:30pm–4:45pm |
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Speakers: Want marketing to be viewed as a driver of revenue and not just a cost center? Then you'll need to know how to measure and communicate the value of what you do and marketing's contribution to the company in a language that resonates with your CMO and CEO. Metrics like website visitor growth, page ranks and email opens are all important to understand, but they are not the language of the board of directors. Marketers must filter the data and add context to communicate at the highest levels. Those who do this well see more recognition, more compensation, and ultimately, more power. In this session, you'll learn how to "speak CMO" in order to deliver metrics and messages that resonate with the people that sign the checks. You'll also hear a "state of the union" from a marketing vice president on the changing role of marketing and how to be successful as the tide shifts. You'll learn:
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Speaker: Facebook has over 600 million users and 50% of them log in every day and it's not just for consumer marketing anymore. Plenty of B2B marketers have successfully incorporated Facebook into their marketing programs. The first challenge for B2B marketers is getting customers and prospects to like your business page, but it is a bigger challenge to get them to engage with your page content. You'll discover best practices of top B2B Facebook pages, including creating engaging content, getting that content seen, and encouraging customers and prospects to take further action. With the help of experienced Facebook page managers, our speakers will review how to handle ongoing Facebook platform changes and negative attacks on a B2B page. You'll learn how to:
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Speakers: Many B2B companies use customer communities for technical support, but the real payoff comes when members become extensions of the company's sales, marketing, product development, and even strategy arms. Successful communities become woven into the fabric of organizations, serving as guides and sounding boards for every important decision and performing the kind of peer-to-peer, street-level marketing money can't buy. Getting to that promised land isn't easy. Building an active and engaged community takes time, patience and tolerance for frustration. It also means knowing how to nurture engaged members, reward loyalty, stimulate discussion and head off trouble. This session will look at five critical success factors for online B2B customer communities and examine how one business has been transformed by their online community. You'll learn:
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Speaker: Want to drive better, more customer centric results on the web and social channels? Then you don't want to miss this MarketingProfs Makeover where three lucky attendees will receive an on-the-spot digital footprint review by a digital media and customer experience expert. Learn from the successes and missteps of others, and get ideas that will improve your voice, provide value to your audience, capture more leads and better integrate your efforts! You'll leave the session with actionable ideas for making your digital presence more meaningful and helping your audience take desired next steps. If you would like to be one of the makeover volunteers please email events@marketingprofs.com. We'll let you know in May if you’ve been chosen. |
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One-on-One Therapy Twitter/Blogging/Search Engine Marketing/Website Conversions/Email Strategy/Mobile Marketing/Video Marketing/Lead Management |
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| Grand Reception | |
| 4:45pm–7:15pm | Dinner Reception |
Day 2—Wednesday, June 15
| 7:30am–8:15am | Continental Breakfast |
| Featured Presentation | |
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8:15am–9:00am |
Featured Speaker: Social media has come a long way from the early days of Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. With over 574 million people worldwide on Facebook, 106 million with Twitter accounts, and over 2 billion YouTube videos, we have all seen and felt the impact of social media in our lives and businesses. But what are the hottest trends in social business and media right now and how can you capitalize on them to drive revenue? In this important session, social media and business expert Sandy Carter answers those questions and more. She'll discuss such topics as crowdsourcing, engagement, disaster recovery and analytics. Through her unique case study examples you'll discover how you can leverage social business for greater results in the coming months. You'll learn:
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9:15am–10:30am |
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Speaker: With everyone being bombarded with email these days, direct mail is getting more attention from recipients and marketers. But you can have a great offer, dazzling creative and a targeted message and your mailing may still be ignored. Why? When people encounter direct marketing communications, they often behave in ways that has less to do with what's in front of them and more to do with basic human behavior. Social scientists have proven that human beings have developed certain automatic, instinctive, and reflexive actions. These actions can be prompted or triggered. With an understanding of how to trigger a reader response, marketers can increase the likelihood that prospects and customers will engage with their marketing messages. Combine that with 13 techniques to embed in your mailings and other direct marketing efforts to make people actually choose to open, read and respond. You can't lose! You'll discover:
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Speakers: There's no doubt about the benefits of lead nurturing in the world of B2B marketers. Small, mid-size and enterprise organizations that adopt lead nurturing technology and processes consistently outperform their peers in sales productivity and revenue. In this session, you'll learn about the results of a Q3 2010 lead nurturing survey by Gleanster, that shows how a well thought out lead nurturing process can increase revenue (84%), sales productivity (71%) and the number of sales-ready leads. Most importantly, you'll discover how you can develop a lead nurturing strategy, implement it in your own organization and measure the results. Additionally, you'll see how one B2B marketer has increased conversions by 40% with their robust lead nurturing process. You'll learn:
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Moderator: Panelists: B2B companies are embracing the idea that publishing good content has to be a cornerstone of their marketing. So you're blogging, and publishing white papers, and maybe you've hosted a webinar or two. But to invoke the words of Peggy Lee: Is that all there is, my friends? What can you talk about when there's nothing to say? What kind of content will engage your audience? What else can B2B companies do to create a sustainable content circle of life, and to break through the clutter with some fun, interesting, remarkable, useful, enjoyable and ... well, different ideas? Come to this informative and entertaining session to hear how other B2B companies are creating content that rocks (and that also delivers in spades). You will learn:
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Speakers: By now, many companies have gotten their feet wet with blogging either by giving interested employees the leeway to get something started or by convincing a senior executive that his or her thought leadership moment had arrived. Of course, these companies have also learned that blogging is a long-term commitment for which the benefits are not always clear and even the immediate returns (in terms of comments, "Likes" and Tweets) can be few and far between. As frustrating or thankless as it may at times seem, however, blogging can serve as a powerful tool for lead generation, demand generation, search engine optimization and community building. In this interactive session, you'll discover practical steps that you can take to maximize the benefits of blogging and quickly realize a return on the effort that effective blogging requires. Come share your blog challenges and successes and learn from both the session leaders and other attendees who have walked in your shoes. You will learn how to:
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One-on-One Therapy Twitter/Blogging/Search Engine Marketing/Website Conversions/Email Strategy/Mobile Marketing/Video Marketing/Lead Management |
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| 10:30am–11:00am | Morning Break |
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11:00am–12:15pm |
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Join us for this rapid-fire session to hear four back-to-back, innovative B2B case studies. You'll get inspired by these creative marketing programs that broke new ground in terms of boosting their brands in the eyes of their customers and ultimately increasing revenue. Case Study 1: 11:00–11:15am Speaker: Can you really generate sales with social media in a B2B atmosphere? Of course you can! By combining elements of guerilla marketing, music and free social media sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, Nathan will show you how he was able to create a profitable B2B social media campaign with little to no budget! If you enjoy humor, creativity, fun and music you won't want to miss this case study that incorporates them all! Case Study 2: 11:20–11:35am Speaker: In this session, you'll see how a leading B2B marketer turned what might have been a routine business trip into a vibrant video blog campaign that scored a bulls-eye in the target market. The award-winning campaign integrated social and traditional media, sparking strong coverage in national, local and vertical news outlets. You'll discover how innovation and a committed team effort yielded long-term results that are still paying off. Case Study 3: 11:40–11:55am Speaker: Introducing a new model of an existing product might not be the most exciting launch or one that warrants a great deal of customer attention. Putting aside traditional thinking, Citrix created awareness and generated demand for a new model of its flagship networking product by using a multi-touch program that included a premium offer for taking a meeting. Results showed a 50 percent conversion rate as well as a substantial opportunity pipeline and closed revenue. Attend this session and you'll learn how to put some of these techniques to work in your next B2B campaign. Case Study 4: 12:00–12:15pm Speaker: Challenged with a small budget and a highly niche customer group, Open Kernel Labs turned to conversation starters, video, blogging and more in order appeal to and connect with their community. A stuffed mascot, fun and unique t-shirts that their target audience related to and company employees featured on video, all served to humanize the brand and generate viral conversations creating more company awareness. Through this case study, you’ll learn why creativity and understanding your community is often more important than budget when it comes to generating awareness and highly qualified leads |
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Speakers: Through a network of dealers, Volvo Construction Equipment North America sells a variety of multi-purpose machines that are used by companies in many industries including road construction, forestry, mining, building, demolition, and more. To engage customers and provide useful content that aids the product evaluation and purchase process, Volvo uses highly personalized email communications that deliver relevant product information with links to comprehensive product details and video on Volvo websites. Volvo uses its CRM system to track customer details, email activities, social interaction, online form submissions, web links and more. This method helps Volvo Construction nurture leads through the long sales process. You'll learn how Volvo Construction Equipment:
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Speakers: Every B2B company wants to get the greatest ROI out of Google AdWords possible, but if you've exhausted traditional PPC management tactics, what's left? Google AdWords Ad Extensions! Ad extensions are a way advertisers can include additional information in Google text ads. In this session, you'll learn the three main types of ad extensions that offer the greatest potential for click through and conversion for B2B companies: sitelink extensions, product extensions, and phone extensions. Plus, you'll discover a case study from ScienceLogic, who will share how they have used ad extensions to increase the ROI of their Google AdWords campaigns. You'll learn how to:
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Speaker: Join us for this hands-on workshop where you'll get a chance to work with your peers to develop effective social video concepts that engage customers, though humor and other elements. Plus, you'll get expert advice tailored to your company. First, you'll walk through the elements of a successful social video and see how several examples were developed and approved by senior management. Then, we'll huddle into small teams to develop a video concept for a case company. The facilitator will meet with each group to brainstorm, answer questions and provide suggestions. Each group will select a presenter, and will be given 2 minutes to pitch the concept. Finally, volunteers will present an idea for their own company, and the facilitator will discuss and suggest a storyline/concept, plus a few ideas for the script. This is a great opportunity to roll up your sleeves and jump into learning with your peers. You'll walk away with a video concept you can bring back to the office and use! |
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One-on-One Therapy Twitter/Blogging/Search Engine Marketing/Website Conversions/Email Strategy/Mobile Marketing/Video Marketing/Lead Management |
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| Luncheon Roundtables and Keynote Presentation | |
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12:15pm–1:45pm |
Resonate: Presenting Ideas That Inspire Change Speaker: If you say "I have an idea for something", what you really mean is "I want to change the world in some way." You might not be able to change the entire world, but what is "the world" anyway? It is simply all of the ideas of all our ancestors. Look around you. Your clothes, language, furniture, house, city, and nation all began as visions in other minds. Presentations are the currency of business communications and those who master communicating with them rise faster than their peers, reach more customers than their competitors, and turn causes into a groundswell. Persuasion expert Nancy Duarte, CEO of Duarte Design, will demonstrate how to apply the methods in her book Resonate: Presenting Visual Stories That Transform Audiences, to build meaningful connections with audiences that compel them to action. Her groundbreaking work details a new way of structuring a presentation and connecting with an audience. Changing the world starts with transforming an audience and an audience will only change if you resonate with them. In this keynote presentation, you will learn how to:
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2:00pm–3:15pm |
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Speaker: Get on the path to becoming an accountable communicator. In this session, you'll learn how to define what brand engagement in social media means for your business, determine what impact engagement has and how to accurately measure the result. We'll discuss how to measure what really matters, from defining "success," to identifying key influencers, plus turning it into actionable information and how to make better decisions based on data. You'll discover B2B case studies in which organizations have demonstrated financial impact and ROI from their social media efforts. You will learn:
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Speakers: Are virtual events really the best way to deliver your content? Or just an overpriced, underperforming, over-complicated behemoth of a webinar platform? We'd all like to believe in the promise of virtual events, but let's be honest – this platform will never replace conferences with real people. If that's so, then how can you use virtual events to drive real revenue? Check out this session where we'll report the latest MarketingProfs research on virtual events and share what producers, attendees, presenters and sponsors think about using this ever-evolving technology. And we'll give you all the ammo you'll need to decide for yourself if virtual events make sense for your business. You'll learn:
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Speakers: Far too many B2B website development projects are embarked upon without taking the proper initial planning steps, which ultimately leads to an ineffective website. During this session, you'll walk through a nine-step planning process you can use to ensure that the next version of your website will attract the right people, guide them to the information they are most interested in, and engage them through lead-generating calls to action. You'll discover best practices in 5 critical areas of website development including: SEO, persona development, content strategy, lead generation, information architecture. Plus, you'll see a case study example of how one B2B marketer followed these steps and got great results. You'll discover:
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Speakers: When it comes to social media, one of the most commonly heard phrases by marketing pros in regulated industries is "we're not allowed to." A few bad experiences with regulatory agencies turns organizations known for their marketing prowess into paralyzed players. Meanwhile, customers continue to be active, thirsting for information, sharing experiences and dialoguing online. This session is designed as an open forum to discuss how to integrate social media marketing in highly regulated industries. The presenters will provide practical ways in which marketers can overcome the paralysis and move forward. Bring your questions and get ready to dive into this important discussion. You'll discover:
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One-on-One Therapy Twitter/Blogging/Search Engine Marketing/Website Conversions/Email Strategy/Mobile Marketing/Video Marketing/Lead Management |
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| 3:15pm–3:30pm | Afternoon Break |
| Closing General Session | |
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3:30pm–4:30pm |
Facilitator: Panelists: Don't go back to the office without attending this closing general session that will send you off on the path to success. B2B marketing specialist Christina "CK" Kerley will lead a lively panel discussion with 4 other B2B marketing superstars who will highlight 10 imperatives that every marketer should take away from the event ... and put to use all year long! Broken down into 5 core categories—across lead generation & automation, social-media integration, mobile marketing, metrics and measurement, and optimizing content—each panelist will provide 2 imperatives for audience members. You'll leave the B2B Forum with 10 key takeaways that will set you on a new course of gaining more qualified leads, engaging customers with killer content, improving social media programs, integrating mobile marketing, and increasing revenues. |
| Explorer: Essential, easy-to-navigate sessions full of ideas that will get your programs on the right course. |
Adventurer: A little more complex, these sessions go beyond the basics to help you discover new opportunities. |
Globetrotter: For the world travelers, these sessions cover the nuances that'll take your programs to new heights (or continents, for that matter). |
* Sessions and speakers are subject to change.
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