Wayne Lockwood: Summit or Bust: 5 Reasons You Can’t Miss Marketing Nation Summit

Author: Rick Siegfried

Attending Marketing Nation Summit is almost a rite of passage. Have you really experienced digital marketing if you haven’t attended Summit? I’m not going to say you haven’t, but there really is only one industry event for anyone that’s marketing in this transformational age. This will be my 5^th Summit, and I’ve never felt a stronger desire to spread the good word as I do now.

As I’m sure you’re aware, Marketo is at a turning point in its journey—one that aligns perfectly with where marketing, as an industry, is headed. We’ve been talking about the Engagement Economy for more than a few weeks now, and it probably sounds to you as it did to me at first. A new way to brand your marketing. Human to human, connecting one-on-one, brands and customers should be BFF, you get the gist.

Yeah, it isn’t anything new… or is it?

I’ve been in the Summit game since 2012, and it’s always revolved around forward-thinking, edgy ideas that I could wrap my head around and encapsulate into the concept of a Marketo User Conference; a ton of marketers getting together and rapping about how they’ve been using Marketo to drive revenue at their company. Though, this year, that isn’t the case at all.

Sure, we’re still bringing together the best and brightest minds in marketing, but this year’s Summit will be so much more than that. We’ve wrangled the best and brightest in marketing, advertising, IT, services, and beyond. This isn’t your mother’s Marketo Summit. This is truly THE marketing event of the year. The Marketing Nation Summit is no longer just for Marketo customers to learn more about Marketo, it’s become a space and time for business professionals of all shapes and sizes to completely rethink the way their organization interacts with customers to drive results that matter in the Engagement Economy.

So, if you’re curious whether the Marketing Nation Summit has something to offer you, here are the top five reasons you need to be in San Francisco on April 23rd-26th:

1. The Unveiling of the Engagement Economy

I believe Aladdin said it best, “I can show you the world.” In this new world, the “Engagement Economy,” everyone and everything is connected through more channels and touchpoints than ever before.

Because of this, organizations must be able to listen to and engage people personally in a multitude of ways and places. This concept, as well as how to be successful designing strategies, programs, and campaigns around this concept, will be the cornerstone of the Marketing Nation Summit 2017.

Discover how the Engagement Economy changes marketing across the board—from Chief Marketing Officers evolving into Chief Experience Officers where executives own the customer experience throughout the entire lifecycle, to marketers building personalized, authentic relationships across every part of an organization (sales to support and beyond).

2. Insights from Notable Brands, Thought Leaders, and Subject-Matter Experts

Whether it’s cool brands like Gartner, Amazon, Google, Gogo Business Aviation, Cisco, SiriusDecisions, GE Healthcare, amazing influencers like Michael Brenner, Jeff Bullas or Megan Heuer, or maybe even one of our own esteemed Marketo employees chatting up Marketo@Marketo best practices, you’ll be able to build an agenda with session after session of invaluable content. There will be more than 100 sessions from a vast array of brands, industries, agencies, and just downright clever marketing brains.

Here are a few that I’m particularly excited about:

Embrace Customer-Centric Measurement To Optimize Business Performance—Rusty Warner, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Need some tips for embedding metrics within a performance management strategy? This one’s for you! Rusty Warner will provide you with a framework for defining customer-centric KPIs and some case studies for measuring contextual interactions.

Frustrated by Your Marketing Dashboard? Hear Gartner’s 8 Commandments for Strategic Dashboard Design—Martin Kihn, Research VP, Gartner for Marketing Leaders, Gartner

A dashboard is not to inform or educate, but instead to drive action. Using best practices derived from decades of experience and client input, Gartner’s digital marketing expert Marty Kihn will walk attendees through the fundamentals of building a marketing dashboard that works.

What Your Mom Never Told You About MOPs—Joe Reitz, Strategist, Nurture Marketing, Fathom & Rachel Egan, Growth and Marketing Operations, TubeMogul

When it comes to marketing operations, there are definitely a few things your momma never told you. In this session, Joe Reitz and Rachel Egan will reveal how to build lead scoring and grading models that sales believes in, architect revenue models that map to your strategy, drive accountability and alignment between sales and marketing, and, the frosting on the cake, set up advanced reporting to prove it all!

3. The Future of AdTech

Businesses are increasingly competing on customer experience, so it’s critical to stay connected with your buyers. At its base, a strategic marketing technology (MarTech) stack is how you can efficiently and effectively do this. For the first time ever, Marketo is partnering with Adweek to address MarTech’s collision with advertising technology (AdTech). In a half-day of programming moderated by Adweek’s Editorial Director James Cooper, attendees will hear from some of today’s leading marketers on how they are leveraging the latest technology to rethink how they interact with customers.

4. Train

While you can partake in some great training during University Day, perhaps even more exciting is that San Francisco natives, Train, will be performing in a private concert just for registered conference attendees. Whether it’s the Grammy Award-winning Drops of Jupiter (Best Rock Song of 2002), the RIAA 6x Platinum-certified international hit Hey, Soul Sister, or any of the other jams from their 8 full-length albums spanning a 24-year career, you’ve probably heard a Train song. You may not realize it, but you know the lyrics and you WILL be bobbing your head and singing along (Not convinced? Brush up on their music here). If you’re not, I may walk up behind you and sing directly in your ear…very loudly.

5. Keynotes That Are Key to Your Success

This year’s Summit theme revolves around “Leading in the Engagement Economy,” and Marketo’s CEO Steve Lucas and CMO Chandar Pattabhiram will be bringing the conference full circle in their keynote presentations by explaining how organizations can lead in this new era. They’ll explain how digital transformation is core to being able to deliver meaningful experiences that feel real and human and are built on trust.

This means a shift away from traditional marketing and that brands will be required to learn how to build lasting relationships with their customers. One piece of the puzzle? Telling the story of your brand. Being a marketer is about being a storyteller, and both James Corden and Queen Latifah have spent their careers telling stories across a variety of channels. As the award-winning host of “The Late Late Show” on CBS and the First Lady of Hip Hop, respectively, they’ll deliver keynotes centered around how they’ve built their brands and paved their way through storytelling.

This year’s Summit will be one for the books. Are you as excited as I am? Prove it by saving $300 off registration with this super exclusive code: RICKRULES300. See you in San Francisco, April 23-26 for Marketing Nation Summit 2017!