About once a year I try to take a break from day-to-day marketing and escape for a few days to a conference on marketing. Whether it is on search engine marketing, marketing metrics, or ROI, it's always interesting to hear someone tell us what we should be doing...then I can go back to the office with wonderful intentions for projects that will never be accomplished. Ah well.
Last year my conference of choice did far more than disappoint me. I sat at a seminar with hundreds of people and I don't think any of us were meant to be there. With an audience with an average business size of 100-200 employees, the entire conference was designed to talk to us as if we were all managing marketing departments for GE, Johnson and Johnson or Toyota. Just once, I'd love to go to a seminar that was speaking to me. Marketing a mid-sized business, with a growing department, and several product lines. Where I don't have a budget to spend hundreds of thousands on a piece of software that will optimize my landing page for me. That will tell me how I get those damn search engine marketers to stop calling. That will let me listen to other people in my position. I don't care what the CMO of Toyota does, I want to know what is working for other people in a business with 50-250 employees.
I know we're out there - the 2004 census listed over 400,000 businesses with 100-250 employees. That's a pretty large number, yet it feels like every conference is designed for either small business or big business, and I'm feeling left out here. Call it an emotional issue, but I'm just curious. Am I missing something? Are there conferences out there that I should be attending that I haven't seen?
