Who from Your Marketing Team Should Attend a Conference?

Conferences are known to be a great immersion experience for employees, and are (usually) worth the money and time people spend to attend them.

If you have attended many different conferences, you may already be aware of the benefits they have to offer. To start off, they are an easy opportunity to network with professionals in your industry while gaining additional skills and knowledge on a variety of topics.

If you are trying to get your brand out there and gain more awareness, conferences are great for that as well. Since conferences usually have high attendance, there will be plenty of chances to speak to others about what your company offers, so you may even gain some leads.

With all the different info sessions, workshops and networking opportunities going on, conference goers are absorbing huge amounts of information. And as a marketing team, you know how to make the most of this (through content creation, obviously)! Conferences are an easy way to capture and create pieces of content, whether it’s a social post, infographic, video, blog, etc. You may even decide to make a full campaign surrounding the conference. The opportunities really are endless.

If you haven’t attended a conference yet this year, you may be interested in a list of the top marketing conferences in 2019.

Who Should Attend the Conference?

With the Digital Summit Series right around the corner, you may be asking yourself who to send to the conference from your team. In an ideal world, sending your entire marketing team to a conference would be the move. There are quite a few benefits to sending your team to a conference, including team bonding, greater knowledge absorption and team growth, as well as the benefits mentioned above. But with busy work schedules, upcoming deadlines and tight budgets, sending everyone to a week-long conference isn’t always possible.

The Solution

There really isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer. Who you should be sending will require a little research and some thought prior to picking potentially the only attendee from your team. There are factors that play into this, including obvious factors like what the conference’s themes or topics are. You have to decide who would be the best fit based on what you’re looking to gain from the conference. And heck, maybe if you have the budget, you can even send two people from your team to create the ideal conference-accomplishing duo.

Need advice about attending a conference alone? HubSpot wrote a post about tips for attending an event by yourself (and actually enjoying it).

Potential employees to send to the next conference your company is attending:

1. The Networker

To be a networker, you have to be someone who is good at interacting with people. This is most likely the social media manager or a channel marketing manager from your team. This person lives for making connections with others. This person also enjoys participating and engaging on social platforms while attending the conference. You can count on this person to keep up with the event hashtags and maybe even make a few friends!

2. The Newbie

This persona describes anyone who is new to your team, new to the company or new to the industry. This is someone who has space to learn and grow their skills. This is also an awesome time for this person to develop knowledge in the industry and learn from other professionals who are in similar careers. The Newbie will be eager to attend because of the new knowledge they will gain and potential networking opportunities.

3. The Thought Leader

This person is someone who will represent your company well. This person is all about giving your brand a positive image. This may be your marketing manager or your director of marketing. This person is a seasoned professional, with years of experience and detailed knowledge on the company and its products/services. They are a good source of information and are able to answer other conference goers’ questions. They may even present or hold a spot on the panel.

4. The Absorber

The Absorber is someone who is very observant and a great note taker. This may be your content marketing manager, copywriter or vertical marketing manager. This person is able to thoroughly capture the different topics, speakers and informational sessions. This person is also great at relaying information to other people. So when they return back to work, they can inform the rest of their team about their findings. They also are very into content creation and will use this event as a way to create content for a campaign.

5. The No-Brainer

This person is clearly relevant to the conference. This may be your product marketing manager. Their job completely aligns with the theme of the conference, so it makes sense for them to go. This is a great time for this person to network with other individuals in the industry and develop their skills on a particular topic. For example, if the conference is on upcoming social media trends, you should probably send your social media specialist.

This list is a good starting point to figure out who from your marketing team should attend events or conferences.

Looking to attend a conference but not sure which one? Check out this link for a list of the top marketing conferences in 2019 and this link for takeaways from some of the top marketing conferences.