Inbound Marketing Summit Roundup

April 28th was the first day of the Inbound Marketing Summit, co-located with the Society for New Communications Research’s NewComm Forum in San Francisco, and the event got off to a great start. The panels and presentations featured insight from vendors, practitioners and industry thought leaders on a variety of topics including email marketing, search engine optimization as well as social media monitoring and engagement.

Though the topics of conversation at the event were varied, the key takeaway from the day was singular: that marketers, no matter what industry, need to focus and tailor their energy towards their target audience. Brian Solis, founder and Principal of FutureWorks, made a great point during his panel presentation on using the web to drive exposure and results. He argued any message crafted by a company and delivered to an audience needs to be reverse engineered from a customer’s perspective in order to be effective. The same also goes for brands looking to engage in a social setting; all messages need to be crafted and delivered from the audience’s perspective. The good news is that social media gives companies more direct access to the audience than ever before.

Some other nuggets of wisdom from the conference speakers:

• Darren Guarnaccia, vp product marketing, SiteCore: “Traditional market segmentation isn’t enough anymore. Marketers should now use community as a magnet and microscope.”
• Jay Krall, manager, Internet Media Research, Cision: “When you start to see more online conversation around your brand, you need to automate your brand monitoring.”
• Kelly Shibari, CEO, PrivateXXXStudios: “Marketers need to use social tools to humanize the relationship.”
• Loic Le Meur, CEO, Seesmic: “If your brand isn’t being talked about online, it’s dead.”
• Jason Falls, author, SocialMediaExplorer.com: “Marketers have to treat their corporate website like it’s a magazine.”

That’s the Inbound Marketing Summit in a nutshell. Be sure to check back soon for some one-on-one interviews with Brian Solis, Charlene Li, Jeremiah Owyang, and many other industry greats.

Blake Cahill
Visible Technologies

Thanks to Jordan for compiling with me.