Competitive Marketing, Influence, and an Upcoming Conference
IMC members can get $100 off at the first Competitive Marketing Summit held in Denver on Oct 23–24. Kat and I will be there speaking about a new Influence Program Canvas that we’ve developed.
We come in all sorts of flavors here at the IMC, but we’re all interested in the network of relationships in the professional communities surrounding our industries. There’s no one term that collectively describes us or our varied roles: managing programs around influencers, advocates, developer advocates, customer advocates, communities as we deal with content creation, events and user groups, lead generation, product ideation, support, customer experience, brand experience and awareness, references and reviews, and more.
That’s a long rant of a paragraph to introduce this announcement that Kathleen and I will be speaking this fall at the first ever Competitive Marketing Summit on Oct 23–24 in Denver. From what I gather, traditionally companies have been full of people doing competitive intelligence, and thus doing lots of Thinking and Strategizing in tasteful conference rooms with blonde wood tables and whiteboards. The concept of a competitive marketing professional going out in the world and Performing Acts of Marketing and Helping Sell Products is relatively new. So that’s that’s what this conference is about: How do companies (mostly tech companies) help proactively drive business by using their knowledge of the competition? (My words, not theirs, but I think I’ve got it.)
Where Kat and I come in: we’re speaking on how to jump right in to the pool of your industry ecosystem, both to learn things and to influence opinions. The water’s fine! The kind of swimming we here all do — influence through relationships — is one of the best ways that exists to change conventional wisdom, and that’s the best competitive marketing of all.
One of the conference goals is that the attendees should leave with actionable tool, so we’ve created an Influence Program Canvas. This canvas helps people define a program that leverages relationships and influence to further their business goals.
The same principles can be used for any influence program, small or large — from developing close long-term relationships with five key people in your industry to leveraging existing corporate communities to creating a large program where you’re training thousands of customers to be better advocates and influencers. We’ll walk through this canvas and use it as the template for our talk.
So, if you’re interested in this conference — or maybe it’s one of your colleagues with “competitive” in his or her title — you should definitely put this one on your short list. Think about if for about a day or so, and then come join us!
It’s in Denver and there’s a tour of the Coors Brewery, so it’s going to be both beautiful and interesting. And of course we’re there speaking, which is also going to be beautiful and interesting.🔥 The organizers have organized several days of very carefully curated topics and speakers in intelligence, sales support, and more. It’s practically a graduate-level course at this point.🤓
The discount code for $100 off is available to IMC members. The current pricing is $899 for this 2-day event, which is really well-priced event.
Mahalo, friends — hope to see you there!
John & Kat
