Moving marketing into the future

Marketing is at a crossroads. The rise of digital and mobile is providing the ability to get even closer to customers and deliver experiences that meet their needs. But like every change, it can be daunting. The discipline of marketing is moving fast and that means learning new skills and techniques to reach customers. Today’s marketer has to combine being a (big) data scientist and a technologist that can create and run web, mobile and social media campaigns with the more traditional skills of understanding customers and creating compelling propositions to reach them.

Luckily of course, being marketing, there are no shortage of gurus and conferences available to advise on how marketers can make the move to embrace digital. Unfortunately many of them may be well-marketed but are short on actionable content for the majority of businesses. After all it is no point seeing what someone achieved with a multi-million pound budget when you are scrabbling around down the back of the marketing sofa for loose change to pay for your new Facebook campaign.

That’s where the forthcoming Another Marketing Conference (25 June 2013 at the Junction in Cambridge) comes in. Designed to help marketers innovate, it features inspiring speakers and a chance to network with peers in great surroundings. I attended last year’s and found it a refreshing mix of interesting presentations and discussion of the pressing issues affecting marketers at all levels. Most importantly, I’ve used lots of what I learnt last year since then – and not just as content for blog posts. I’m not alone – according to the organisers 91% of last year’s delegates would recommend it to a colleague.

This year’s speakers include:

• Rory Sutherland, Ogilvy, on multiple models of human behaviour
• Richard Murphy, Nokia, talking about reinventing the company in the digital era
• Paul Berney, Mobile Marketing Association, on reaching mobile consumers through content and context
• Peter Waggett, IBM, discussing big data
• Julie Roberts, TMW, on making marketing effective
• Dave Trott, The Gate, talking about unleashing the creative spark
• Jon Dodd, Bunnyfoot, discussing tapping into human behaviour
• Julie Strawson, Monotype, on delivering a seamless consumer experience across multiple touchpoints

There are a lot of marketing conferences looking to advise people on what to do next. From my experience last year, Another Marketing Conference is well worth checking out, whatever sector or size of business you are in.