Scouring marketing conferences both near and far, we have compiled a list of the top 10 Midwest marketing conferences taking place during the remainder of the year. Finding marketing conferences that don’t blow your budget is important, so we’ve focused on conference destinations that are road-trip friendly.

Has your marketing and communication team identified the role content marketing plays in your public relations strategy? Producing relevant content that positions your business and its leaders and industry experts, along with collaborating with influential partners, can have a profound effect on your ability to expand reach, expand relationships and strengthen your brand. Part one ofNotable Ways Content Marketing is Making an Impression on PR focused on collaborative content – specifically guest blogs, influencer outreach and establishing partnerships. In part two, the focus shifts to four additional key areas that can improve your brand’s PR evolution and content marketing integration.

By now you’ve likely seen all of the data touting the importance and value of business blogs, statistics like: blogs on company websites result in 55 percent more visitors and blogs result in 434 percent more indexed pages. But if you find yourself struggling to find the time and resources to create exceptional blog content, you are certainly not alone.

Content creation has been cited as one of the most relevant digital marketing trends for 2015 with one third of marketers citing this strategy as a key focus in the year ahead. Widely known as the foundation of a strong inbound marketing campaign, it’s not surprising that even B2B companies are producing more content today than they were a year ago. Strong content producers understand the value this tactic brings to improving customer relationships and loyalty, boosting engagement and raising brand awareness.

In August 2014, our good friend, Paul Roetzer, CEO of PR 20/20, released his latest book, The Marketing Performance Blueprint: Strategies and Technologies to Build and Measure Business Success. Paul’s book focuses on processes, technologies, and strategies needed to fill marketing gaps and build performance-driven organizations. Written to be an essential and accessible guide for marketers, executives, and entrepreneurs, The Marketing Performance Blueprint includes key principles focusing on performance goals, digital transformation, creating a modern team and more. As a deeper-dive into the core concepts discussed in his book, Paul is offering a live online event: The Marketing Blueprint Webinar Series beginning February 10 at 1pm.

We recently chatted with Paul about some of the key takeaways participants will obtain through this series:

While some marketers may have not yet recognized the profound effect content marketing is having on public relations, others are noticing the natural extension both functions form in relationship with one another. Acontent marketing strategy should be representative of your brand and voice, convey your business’ main principles, all while being entertaining, useful and relevant. If you are a PR professional, do these objectives sound much different from the work you are doing to communicate how your business is making an impact on your industry? The bottom line is, both functions of content creation and PR are built on the foundation of establishing relationships and motivating others to become ambassadors for your brand. Check out these key impressions that content marketing has made, and will continue to make on PR:

With the start of the New Year, you’ve likely seen more 2015 marketing predictions than you can process. To save you some valuable reading time, we’ve collected the leading predictions by marketing category to provide you with a glimpse of the most important considerations for this calendar year.

We certainly don’t live in the North Pole or drive a reindeer sleigh to work, but there are three key similarities between inbound marketers and jolly ol’ Saint Nicholas.

Here’s a short list that will convince you that inbound marketers and Santa Claus operate in similar ways.

1. You’ve Got to Believe.
   
   The spirit of Santa Claus exists in the excitement and anticipation of children at Christmas time. The rosy cheeks, the round belly and magic of Santa’s annual visit spark curiosity, wonder and merriment for the kid in all of us. Whether or not he really lives in the North Pole is moot; his spirit and the joy of the season are ingrained in all who believe.
   
   In a similar light, you have to believe in the principles of inbound marketing to be successful. Inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that draws customers toward your business and encourages them to buy your product or service. Inbound marketing helps you build a relationship with each customer so they keep coming back.
   
   If you believe in building a loyal customer base, you have to put in the work to build the content they want to read. Believe in the power of blogs, social media, ebooks and free resource downloads that help customers understand your product or service or solve a problem. To connect with the right customers, you just have to be an inbound believer.
   
   
2. Ask, And We Shall Deliver.
   
   In the month of December, Santa’s inbox is inundated with letters: children requesting their favorite things to be wrapped in ribbons and bows and delivered under the Christmas tree. We have all heard about Santa’s famous list and hope our names fall into the ‘nice’ column.
   
   Similarly, inbound marketers focus on attracting visitors and providing them with the content they are looking for. When potential customers search for a topic in their search browser, as inbound marketers, we want to deliver that perfect blog, ebook or guide to meet their needs. We believe in the importance of delivering the right information to the right people so they become leads and eventually, customers.
   
   Using keywords in your website content, blog and social media posts is a great way to reach the right customers. Think about focusing on the main points of your target customer, what they may ask for, and deliver exactly what they need. If your customer asks a specific question about your product or service, answer that question in a blog or free ebook and promote it within all of your online channels. When your customers ask a question be sure you are top of mind and provide the appropriate answers. The best way to build a relationship with your audience is to fulfill their wish list.
   
   
3. Our Goal is To Delight You.
   
   Unless you see a screaming toddler on Santa’s lap, everything Santa touches seems to have Christmas magic. Bringing joy to children and adults, Santa Claus is associated with everything jolly and delightful.
   
   Inbound marketing, too, focuses on delighting customers. Providing quality, and at times, unexpected content to visitors, leads and customers alike; our goal it to provide a continual stream of valuable resources to keep people engaged. If we can provide the information our customer base is looking for and offer a product or service that exceeds their expectations, we too, are sure to delight.

Over the past 8 years, inbound marketing has become a movement adopted by a large majority of professionals in various industries from B2C to B2B. It wasn’t until recent years that this wildly successful way of attracting and nurturing prospects and customers has extended beyond the marketing department. Organization leaders in all department areas including HR, business development, training, IT and more, continue to lean on inbound philosophies to achieve goals. While these areas of business have been influential, one department that has likely made the strongest impact by using inbound marketing strategy is sales.

We just got back from attending Inbound in Boston and I am amazed and overloaded with so many great takeaways from the speakers. One of my favorites was sitting in a session with Paul Roetzer whose topic was on Metrics that Matter. Lots of great takeaways here and one stat really stood out. According to Capgemini Consulting, 90 percent of companies lack the necessary skills to capitalize on the digital world of social media, mobile, internal social networks, automation, and analytics. That means a majority of companies run the risk of falling behind as the digital world surges forward and continues to adapt to customer behavior and consumer demands. Customers are online, and that is where successful companies must go.

The digital world continues to change, and the marketing mix has just gotten impressively bigger, but it is also better. Every business can leverage digital marketing to grow. Here are the tools you need to bring your customers to your website, engage them, convert them, and keep them happy.

Bring More People to Your Website

Digital Ads:
Digital ads are easy and effective ways to attract people to your website, and there are a number of different types of digital media options. Pre-roll video ads play before the growing amount of video content online, you can run ads on social media sites, through Google and other search engines, and mobile ads to capture those customers who use their phone like a computer. Ad networks allow you to effectively pinpoint your audience, based on interests, job titles, market or niche. When using these ads to compliment an inbound marketing campaign, you will drive more customers back to your website, offer or product.

Search:
Organic search is a great way to bring new customers to your website and introduce them to your company. Most of the people who discover your site through search are going to be more interested in learning information and researching the problems they are facing than actually buying. This is who you want to begin to build a relationship with, so they will turn to you when they are ready to buy. These people are going to be doing searches based upon particular keywords, and the more you are able to work in those keywords through your blog and website content, the easier it will be for visitors to find you. Adword campaigns are also easy to incorporate into your marketing campaign to help drive traffic towards your site by improving your visibility in searches.

Engage Your Visitors As They arrive and Convert Them to Customers

Automation:
Building a successful digital marketing strategy is about building a relationship with your site visitors. You want to reach out to them at key points in their buyer’s journey and encourage them to continue on towards becoming a paying customer. Marketing automation makes this significantly easier for you. Now you generate automatic, personalized emails based on what page visitors have viewed on your website. You can automatically welcome people to your site and thank them for subscribing to feeds. Those who have viewed your pricing page can receive another email that has been crafted specifically for those who are reaching the decision stage of the buyers’ journey. By compiling information about what your clients are doing on the site, you can create workflows to automatically engage the visitor and convert them easier into new clients. Companies like HubSpot make it easy to set up these automatic workflows and improve engagement.

Email:
There are more than 3.2 billion email accounts today and 95 percent of online consumers use email. It is also worth noting that 77 percent of people prefer email when it comes to marketing communications. Email lets you cultivate your relationship with your customers by sending personalized emails. You can contact them when they reach specific points in the buyer’s journey, as indicated by certain actions on your website. These emails are perfect for opening up lines of communication. Most marketing automation software have this tool built in and make it easy to set up email workflows. Other platforms, such as mailchimp and constant contact also can help you track your leads and reach them with emails at that perfect moment. Emails make it easy for customers to ask questions and get in contact with someone at the company when they are ready to make a purchase. They can also be good reminders to customers about the value of the brand.

Mobile:
Mobile internet usage continues to grow. About 1/2 of all local searches are performed on mobile devices and 73 percent of mobile users search on their phones. If your digital marketing campaign does not take into account visitors who are finding your site on mobile devices, you are potentially losing countless customers. A mobile optimized site will take into account information that mobile users are more likely to want, such as phone numbers or addresses while also offering responsive design.

Websites:
All of these efforts to drive traffic towards your site will not make a difference unless your website is user friendly. When you bring prospects to the site, they are going to decide in about 1/20th of a second whether or not your site is helpful. This is your business' first impression. They will decide if this is a company with whom they are interested in doing business. If they have trouble finding the information or navigating the site, they are just going to leave. You want your design to be fully responsive to your user, so they can view the site easily and with minimal scrolling, no matter what type of device they are on.

Keep Your Existing Customers Happy

PR:
The digital world has changed what customers expect from companies. Customers now want to develop relationships with those behind the business and feel as though their individual needs and questions are being met and answered. Those responsible for engaging with the public must now work to harness this desire for a personal connection and take it to digital media. Customers do not call customer complaint hotlines, they take their problems to Twitter or they post a story about a bad interaction on Facebook. It is up to PR managers to monitor the brand and reach out to customers who have had a bad experience. Correct the problem and show this customer, and everyone who is watching the interaction, that this is a brand who cares.

Analyze Your Campaign, Refine, and Improve It

Analytics:
Analytics tells you what is working, and what is not. Without analytics, you run the risk of just spinning your wheels: wasting time and energy on a marketing campaign that is not producing results. Although 76 percent of marketers realize the importance of analytics, few believe they are doing it well. If you are not analyzing your campaigns, you are missing a huge piece of digital success. The beauty of digital marketing is that you do not even need to wait until the end of your campaign to see how it is going. By measuring the success of your various strategies through Google analytics or other marketing software analytics, A/B testing, and measuring lead conversions, you can monitor your campaigns and adapt and refine them for success as you go.

With these tools, you have the power to build a successful marketing campaign. They will help you drive traffic towards your site while also engaging your visitors and converting them into leads. If you are struggling to get your marketing campaign off the ground, partnering with the right marketing agency can give you the boost you need to start bringing in customers.

What digital tools are you using to achieve marketing success?