The Northern Conference is to be held in Durham on Tuesday 15 May.
The CIM Northern Conference is now in its eighth year and offers exceptional learning and networking opportunities. This years’ theme is ‘Marketing horizons’, and will be looking at current marketing best practice and what is around the corner. There will be two keynotes, a choice of nine workshops and it will once again be hosted by Andy Crane.
The workshops will be streamed into three: Explore, for those with little marketing experience; Evolve, for practicing marketers; and Excel, for those who are more senior, with three workshops for each stream available.
International marketing
Stephen Lloyd, CIM North West Ambassador for Manufacturing, will host this workshop and will be joined by Richard Gay from nesma. Richard will talk about the theory of international marketing and John Bignall, an entrepreneur will share his experiences of launching a product overseas, Simon Crosby from the Department for International Trade (DiT) and Mark Sutherberry from the Manufacturing Technology Centre, will provide hints and tips for exporting. The session will conclude with an opportunity for the audience to quiz the experts.
Artificial Intelligence
Sara Simone, VP of Marketing and Blockchain at Wakelet, will show delegates how to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain to develop their own digital marketing strategy. Sara has over 10 years’ online marketing experience in creating both B2B and B2C digital marketing strategies for international brands. Her expertise lies in acquiring and retaining customers; selecting the right KPIs to maximise the ROI of selected online channels; educating Top Management on how and where they should allocate their budget in order to achieve the Company’s Business Goals and Objectives.
The journey to “THERE”
Ian Murray will deliver a session which will take the fear out of strategic planning. Ian has over 25 years’ experience in management and training gained from the military and commercial world and using The journey to “THERE” tool, his workshop will walk delegates through a process that everyone involved can participate in creating, making it ‘real’ and ultimately inspiring ownership.
Inbound marketing
Christina Hamilton, Chartered Marketer and Digital Transformation Lead at GJW Direct will deliver a session on inbound marketing. Christina, who describes herself as ‘part geek, part marketer’ has over 18 years’ experience in the marketing industry and will take delegates through ten easy steps to get them up and running their first inbound marketing campaign.
Increasing productivity with MS Office.
Chris Steele, founder of IQ-IT will talk about Increasing productivity with MS Office. Many students have often said that they would like to be able to do more effective presentations or reports or assignments and this session will cover what every user should know. Chris will demonstrate a wide range of simple skills and shortcuts that all MS Office users should be aware of to improve communication, automate everyday tasks, streamline processes, enhance collaboration, increase quality and save time.
Three Challenges for Marketing
Andrew Davis, Founder of Just3things, will deliver a session on how Marketing can work more closely with Sales. Andrew has spent his 20+ years in sales working closely with marketing teams and knows how to maximise the return for organisations. In this session, he will spend time working with delegates discussing three things that executives responsible for marketing strategy are wrestling with and how working with sales directors and their teams really works.
Those three challenges are:
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- Who owns marketing?
- How is marketing automation changing behaviours?
- How to get Sales to open up and work with marketing.
Tanya Hemphill, (who got 100% satisfaction for her workshop at a previous Northern Conference), is to talk about Instagram. It’s going to be a popular session. Tanya’s session is titled ‘Instagram: Making your Brand Instafamous’ and she will be looking at Instagram strategies of different brands and examples of best practice. It will also cover finding and engaging the right audience for your organisation, how to convert followers into business leads and Instagram tools to save money, measure results and optimize your campaigns.
Identifying your target audience
David Edmundson-Bird, Principal Lecturer in Digital Marketing & Enterprise at Manchester Metropolitan University, is to deliver a session on ways to identify target audiences. David will cover the different kinds of behavioural targeting, how to use geolocation as a way to understand a situation and how to explore psychographic qualities to understand the context of potential audiences.
Don’t forget to book your place at the pre-conference social too!
A relaxed networking opportunity the night before sponsored by us! It’s a free event, titled ‘Meet with drinks’, to be held at the conference venue, Ramside Hall. It is open to CIM members and non-members, but places are limited so early booking is advised.
Please be aware the current low prices for the conference will change on Monday 16 April, so early booking is recommended.
For more information about the conference or workshops go to http://regions.cim.co.uk/events or call +44 (0)1628 427340 during office hours and follow #cimnorthernconf
