The Top B2B Marketing Events to Attend in 2017

6 minute read

Upland Admin

When it comes to connecting with customers, potential marketing partners, like minds and upcoming trends, B2B marketing events in 2017 provide an all-access pass.

Events serve up the perfect blend of what organizations need to shape content messages and learn about the latest tech and marketing insights with a little fun, food, and socialization thrown into the mix. In-person events are also a great way for industry newbies and veterans to cross paths and share ideas, knowledge and maybe even build relationships that last long past the event itself.

To maximize time and prioritize focus at events, set a strategy to meet informational, relationship and sales goals.

A few things to consider when shaping a B2B event attendance strategy:

  • Does your organization have a presence beyond basic attendance, such as speaker, booth or event sponsorship?
  • How will you pass along insights to customers via a social media strategy, video, customer interactions or relationship building?
  • Can you take insider tips like upcoming trends and turn them into three months of content ideas for social media or a blog?
  • Is there more than one person from your organization attending that will enable you to split focus and cover more ground?

No matter how you decide to leverage time at in-person B2B events, remember to have fun hanging with your peers – the people who truly get what you do every day because they live it, too!

Make 2017 the Year to Hit Top B2B Marketing Events

Here’s a list of some of the top B2B Marketing Events in 2017 to get creativity flowing and lay groundwork for overall marketing and content strategy. Choose diverse events that cover a variety of key content marketing topics, including mobile, user experience and technology trends as they deeply impact customer behaviors, and in turn, the way you do business.

Marketo Marketing Nation Summit

April 23rd – 26th, 2017

The Marketing Nation Summit is a pretty big event for B2B organizations who want to get better at digital marketing and engaging with customers. Every year they cover how the latest in digital innovations are set to transform marketing, advertising, IT, services, and invite in experts to share insights on leadership, industry best-practices. With an event this high profile, you also get fantastic networking opportunities. They even have a University Day before the conference with workshops, demos, and presentations. Marketing visionaries.

Sirius Decisions 2017 Summit

May 16 – 19th

The Sirius Decisions 2017 summit is four full days of insights on data-driven best practices about research, innovations in B2B plus lots of opportunities to network with sales, marketing, and product leaders. This event is focused on hands-on practical learning and goes into details on frameworks, courses, proven research and other important insights that are essential to the B2B marketer in 2017. Using a blend of general and niche topics, the goal of the conference is to help organizations find ways to implement growth strategies into day-to-day operations in a way that has a real impact.

Confab Central

June 7 – 9th

Confab Central is interesting in that it’s a top B2B marketing event to attend in 2017 that is super focused on content strategy. It covers insights on the user experience, editorial, marketing, internal and external content management team building, data insights, how to gaining fans through content and more. They also have more hands-on intensives scheduled later in the year at different locations.

Content Marketing World Conference and Expo

September 5 – 8th, 2017

You read and share content-related stories written by their featured content marketing experts all the time, so now step it up a notch and meet them in person. Professionals and industry speakers plus over 80 sessions and workshops on a variety of content-related topics ranging from integration, measurement, and new trends make it kind of a big deal. Add in the fact that attendance includes over 60 countries and averages about 4000 in crowd numbers, so it’s impossible not to learn something or find great connections. The best part is that you get to learn a ton you can take back to your team and turn into actionable, brand-specific content that inspires your audience and grows your business.

Inbound 2017

September 25 -28th

This conference is a bit different in that it’s focused on the human aspect of marketing and sales, helping provide people with inspiration, education, and connections. With over 19,000 attendees from around the world, this B2B marketing event in 2017 will help teams build better relationships with each other and get a better understanding of how to connect with the needs of customers through more well-rounded content.

Marketing Profs B2B Marketing Event

October 3-6th

There is an art to B2B marketing, so why not learn from the best? Here you can connect with top industry experts and innovators to learn their insights and secrets and what doesn’t work. To improve every aspect of how you approach your content strategy and marketing and get the jump on industry secrets, check out this B2B marketing event in 2017.

LavaCon Conference 2017

Portland November 5th – 8th

If you want something that focuses a bit more on the nuances of content, check out LavaCon 2017. The event is geared towards content strategists, documentation managers, and content professionals discussing best practices and lessons learned. There are different events throughout the year throughout the US, so check the site for more information.

Social Media Strategies Summit

If you are looking to improve social media strategy specifically, check out the Social Media Strategies Summit. It’s focused on connecting professionals who work with social media, digital marketing and communications and leveraging trends. Experts will share insights on the customer experience, how to get better at brand storytelling, ways to improve social selling and content creation and more. The unique thing about this conference is that it’s held on four dates at different locations, with Chicago, New York, and Boston coming up in 2017.

Dreamforce

November 6 – 9th
This conference has over 200,000 attendees from 83 countries, that’s a lot! It’s focused on how to increase ROI and create better brand experiences for customers. Run by Salesforce, the conference has over 2000 sessions that cater to SMB’s and large Fortune 500 companies, making it a great way to connect with a wide range of professional contacts. With a conference this big, make the most of it by checking out the schedule first to see what may work for what you want to develop in 2017.

AdvoCamp

December 6 – 8, 2017

Although it’s at the tail end of 2017, it’s definitely worth a look because it focuses on how to turn customers into advocates for your business. It also offers models of customer engagement and shares tools for using customer insights as a bigger, more powerful part of your business and content strategy.

There you have it, the top B2B marketing events to attend in 2017. Enjoy!

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