Top 11 Marketing Conferences for Fall 2018

Larry Kim

Published in

Marketing and Entrepreneurship

4 min readAug 31, 2018

It’s back-to-school season, and not just for students.

There’s an impressive lineup of digital marketing conferences this fall, and I’m attending 11 of them.

Digital marketing conferences provide a unique opportunity to learn cutting-edge strategies from industry leaders, network with industry peers and even gain clients along the way.

Here, my must-attend digital marketing conference list for fall.

1. INBOUND: Sept. 4–7 in Boston

More than 20,000 people are expected to attend this annual conference hosted by HubSpot. Among them, you’ll find marketers, salespeople and customer services pros all looking for new ways to market, sell and delight customers.

You’ll walk away inspired by their unique, powerful speakers — not only will renowned CEOs and CMOs take the stage, but also award-winning novelists, journalists and screenwriters, as well.

2. Facebook Messenger & Chatbot Marketing Summit: Sept. 20

In over a decade of digital marketing, this is the first conference that I’m hosting. I couldn’t be more excited.

I’ve recruited top marketing leaders in Facebook marketing and advertising to share actionable strategies and tactics proven to accelerate lead funnels using engaging Facebook Messenger chatbots.

Sessions will be streaming live so you can attend this conference no matter where you’re located — and it’s free to all!

I’ll be joined by social media marketing experts including Mari Smith, the Queen of Facebook engagement, and we’ll be talking about strategies for:

Getting 7–50X ROAs from Facebook ads
Growing your Facebook Messenger contacts
Mass messaging your contacts to see 80% open rate and 20% CTR
And engaging Messenger funnels that convert

3. Insight Marketing Conference: Sept. 26 in Lancaster, PA

Join marketers, agencies and businesses for a day of networking and growth. Sessions will focus on keeping up with constantly changing technology and industry trends, as well as digital marketing best practices you can rely on now and forever.

4. Swivel: October 8–9 in Bend, OR

Swivel is a conference that brings digital marketers and creatives together to get inspired, get recharged, and get connected. Industry experts like Google’s John Mueller, Bing’s Christi Olson, and AKvertise’s Akvile Harlow are part of their stellar speaker lineup and I can’t wait to hear their insights and compare notes.

5. Pubcon: Oct. 16–18 in Las Vegas

In this case, what happens in Vegas comes home from Vegas, in the form of copious notes and the latest SEO, SEM and SMM strategies. Pubcon Las Vegas is also the home of the U.S. Search Awards, where digital marketing luminaries come together to honor the best and brightest in our field.

6. Digital Growth Unleashed: Oct. 17–18 in London

Digital Growth Unleashed takes on the customer journey from start to finish, with sessions focused on attracting the right audience, optimizing for conversions, creating valuable relationships with leads and clients, and exploring marketing technology to amplify growth.

7. Digitalzone: Oct. 18 in Istanbul

Hot topics include leveraging human bias for marketing success, experiential technologies, small marketing changes that make a big difference, streamlining social media processes, marketing lessons from podcast interviews, and much more.

8. Search Marketing Expo (SMX) East: Oct. 24–25 in New York

Brought to you by Search Engine Land, SMX is one of the exciting digital marketing conferences you’ll attend all year — you’ll hear insider tips directly from leaders at Google and Bing, as well as can’t-miss sessions and roundtable discussions with experts from around the world. With multiple tracks, you can pick and choose SEM or SEO sessions that are highly relevant to you.

9. Web Summit: Nov. 5–8 in Lisbon

Hailed as “the best tech conference on the planet” by Forbes Magazine, this European conference has a star-studded speaker lineup brimming with founders and CEOs of the world’s top companies: Eval Williams (Medium and Twitter), Alexis Ohanian (Initialized and Reddit), Ben Silbermann (Pinterest), Devin Wenig (eBay), Elie Seidman (Tinder) and Emmett Shear (Twitch).

10. MarketingProfs’ B2B Marketing Forum: Nov. 13–16 in San Francisco

Leaders and innovators to share their best tips and tricks for B2B marketing. It’s three days of learning, fun and networking. The agenda is chock full of worthwhile sessions, including presetnations on buildin gcustomer loyalty using big data, rockstar writing tips, the ROI of community leadership, keys to engagement-driven webinars and much more.

11. MobileMonkey Growth Marketing Summit: Nov. 8

At my company MobileMonkey, we’re extremely passionate about growth and education, and we dive into everything headfirst, including conferences. In that vein, we’re not only bringing you one digital marketing conference this fall, but two! We’ll bring industry leaders to you for another all-access deep dive into growth marketing in our second-ever virtual digital marketing conference.