Many companies feel they are losing customers to the digital/ecomm space. The reason is often for convenience and price. But, what the digital space cannot implement and execute is the customer experience and service levels that many legacy businesses have been built on. How should companies use these competitive advantages to stay relevant in the digital revolution? Key Takeaways: Understanding marketing fundamentals is still key to being successful in customer understanding. Digital marketing is a tool, not the foundation of marketing. Understanding the ideal customer experience will truly separate you from the pack. Customer experience and helping them solve problems is more important than digital access and data capturing, and builds stickiness and loyalty.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused global social and economic shutdowns that will impact everyone for years to come. During this crisis, organizations have to be lead through the chaos and uncertainty with clear & impactful messaging to positively influence their audiences. As a nonprofit, the Y pivoted from its normal health and wellness to primarily focusing on serving the community. Communications, messaging and 12 Rules for Success in Crisis Communications helped change people's perception as well as increase support and contributions. See the YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas's response and how it helped galvanized communities.

Over the last 10-15 years, as Digital Marketing and Ecommerce have grown, so have the silos in our organization and channels we trade in. Quite often it is hard to navigate these silos. But consumers don't know that. They only believe what they see as they hop from one channel to the other. And if our Brand does not look cohesive, it is hard to say what our consumers may think of us. As a practitioner, I will share some frameworks that outline the omnichannel ecosystem from an internal & external perspective while sharing some tangible strategies to deliver high consumer engagement.

No longer are the days of print, mail and pray. Sales and marketing tools are nothing if they are not digitized, innovative, customizable and trackable. Discover how Varsity Spirit created a ground-breaking tool that is both a fully integrated, personalized front-end shopping tool for their customers while simultaneously working as an innovative back end selling tool for their reps., taking their marketing from old school to trend-setting over the last few years.

Beyond products, services and price, companies today are competing on delivering a memorable and predictable customer experience. Competing on CX involves investments in technology, systems integration, and channel harmonization and it requires investments and proper allocation of resources.

We all know that high-performing teams are critical to driving growth, innovation and long-term value of a company. But why do some teams perform better than others? It all comes down to leadership. With the rapid pace of change in business and technology, alongside a range of generational differences in the workplace, the old paradigms of leadership simply won’t work anymore. Never before have transparency, empathy and collaboration mattered more in leadership roles. In this session, we’ll explore the future of marketing leadership by unlocking the qualities and techniques that drive outstanding culture, performance and results. Key Takeaways: While technology and process matter, people are always the most important part of the performance equation. Trust, transparency and cooperation are the cornerstones of high-performing teams. Trust, transparency and cooperation are the cornerstones of high-performing teams. When building out a high-performance team, you really can’t communicate or celebrate too much

Can I have 15 min of your time? This is a thoughtful discussion on navigating the ad tech industry, deciphering the right media to utilize, and drilling down to finding the right keys to audience segmentation.

Through this thoughtful short video series, I share what makes a marketer indispensable or a startup stand out in a meaningful way. These tips & tricks are curated from over 15 years of experience in a B2B & B2C capacity across different verticals and will allow you to launch something new or redirect your existing strategy with improvements and a fresh perspective. This holistic approach should have every CMO excited about achieving and optimizing KPI’s while thinking creatively.

Is it ever incredibly clear to you that your stakeholders don’t quite understand the entirety of your role? It’s a daily struggle we face as marketing professionals to change this perception. Credibility often eludes us, while perception is a dangerous foe in our business. Learning how to combat it with a few, simple techniques can help win the battle by quantifying the value and presenting it in terms those outside our world will understand and appreciate.

Recent Gartner research showed marketing budgets were expected to decline in 2020 for the third year in a row. But as marketers know all too well, that doesn’t let us off the hook. We’ll still be expected to deliver even more pipeline despite our budget realities. So how can marketers do more with less? Most already know that Account-Based Marketing improves the effectiveness of marketing plans. In this session, B2B marketers will learn how to use ABM to be even more efficient with your marketing investment; the 5 core ABM best practices that deliver better results for less money; and how to allocate budget for new MarTech and AdTech innovations.

How do you attract, convert, and turn prospects into loyal advocates for your business? In this talk, Chandar will share why emotion is key to success in the B2B customer journey, from awareness in understanding how your prospect wants to feel, to engaging your buyer on an emotional level to drive acquisitions, scale the right advocacy program and create customers for life who feel an emotional connection and passion for their experience with your product and brand. Chandar will share examples from his experiences building the world’s best B2B brands, including a framework for building your own “Stairway to Heaven.” Key Take-Aways How to Drive Awareness: Marketing starts with an understanding of the customer persona. How to Drive Acquisitions: Innovative technologies are providing a window into businesses’ ideal customer profile, making it easier to better understand customer sentiment. Attendees will learn how the acquisition is broken up into three separate areas: plays, parlance, and programs. How to Drive Advocacy is key to brand authenticity. Attendees will learn how to identify the best advocates from their customer base

• Discuss new client and customer needs and pivoting the development of new products and marketing strategies • Discuss successful channels in reaching audiences • Review lessons learned and results • Team collaboration best practices and interactions during COVID-19 • Brand management and customer retention

Customer expectations for brand experience are rising. The age of technology has made instant gratification the norm – consumers want 24/7 convenience and availability, delivered when and how it fits their schedule and lifestyle. They also expect that the companies they do business with know them well enough to deliver a personalized experience. A winning strategy requires data and analytics as fuel to power the engine of a customer-driven organization.

Many marketers struggle to understand where to employ AI to improve their business. But waiting could be costly (71% of marketing executives plan to deploy AI in 2020). Don’t get left behind. Forward-thinking marketers are already using AI to gain visibility beyond marketing automation and into buyer activity and intent throughout the selling cycle With this insight, AI-powered marketing teams have an incredible competitive advantage.

The evolution of customer buying behavior, even more so now with COVID-19, from a “Me decision-making” mentality to “We decision-making” mentality, where star ratings from hundreds, if not thousands, of other consumers that have absolutely zero connection with a buyer, are influencing the buying decision in ways that go deeper than just the stars.

In this talk I will explore the ways in which my team uses digital technology such as interactive videos, 360-degree imagery, 3-D fly-throughs, virtual reality, and augmented reality to create immersive and interactive experiences that engage prospective clients, tell a great story, and ultimately drive sales. I will share a variety of examples. Key Takeaways: Digital advancement today means that prospective clients expect customization–and to be dazzled. In the digital world, if you’re not constantly trying something new, then you’re behind. Digital is only the medium. The core is always the story.

With marketing budgets tighter than perhaps ever before, and a strong need to drive awareness in an increasingly complex marketplace, organizations must adapt their approach to building their brand. Learn how one of the world’s largest enterprise software vendors is pivoting its strategy to focus on influencers as a cost-effective approach to brand development.

Your teams can work faster, analyze more data, and drive to insights more quickly with AI-powered marketing. We’ll take a tour of AI-powered marketing – from reporting on campaign metrics to identifying anomalous behavior and where customers struggle. Learn what AI-powered marketing is and what it can do for your teams.

Listening closely to your customers and understanding their journey as they interact with your products, solutions and teams are sure-fire ways to enhance your overall marketing. Jeff Schmitz, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Zebra Technologies, will talk about how digging into the insights that your customers share with you – good or bad – can lead to marketing breakthroughs, from fine-tuning your foundational messaging to developing personalized digital marketing campaigns to taking steps to enhance your customer experience at various touch points, and more. Jeff will talk about the importance of stepping up how you listen to your customers and adding to traditional marketing methods so you can gain more actionable insights.

Live Nation Special Events shares their digital road map for how their brand marketers adopt omnichannel marketing tactics to ensure their campaigns are engaging the right audience for increased sales and lead generation.