Past Speakers

Lead generation is top of mind for every business today, whether large or small. While there's no magic bullet for filling the pipeline, marrying your outbound marketing to a solid inbound marketing plan will help drive the right people to your organization and increase revenue. Join Widen as they share a step-by-step presentation on how to execute a 100% inbound marketing plan.

Download Jake's presentation: Create and Inbound Marketing Program That Works (pdf)

Jake Athey, Marketing Manager at Widen, and Nina Brakel-Schutt, Brand Strategist at Widen, guided us through the "core four" - search marketing, content generation, PR, and social media - that allows Widen, and any marketing organizations with any size budget, to build an empire.

LinkedIn: Jake Athey | Twitter: @DrDAM

As a marketer, you may assume that you are engaged in a direct war against your competition. In reality, there is another enemy – the status quo, otherwise known as "no decision."

Download Tim's Presentation or view his presentation video.

To grow your business, you need to understand the root causes of the status quo barrier and learn how to defeat those causes. You must create visually engaging positioning and messaging for your marketing campaigns to help distinguish yourself from the competition, to create more opportunities and ultimately, to win more business.

In this "Power Lunch" presentation, Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer for Corporate Visions, Inc., showed us how to

• Identify the four causes of the status quo barrier
• Defeat those causes with differentiated messaging that sets you apart from the competition
• Leverage visual storytelling techniques to deliver your campaigns and ultimately the measurable ROI you need

We all know that the #1 and #2 search engines (Google and Google's YouTube, respectively) are key to establishing and maintaining your brand / product / service these days.

Download Carl's Presentation and his AdWord Tips (both in PDF).

In this presentation, Carl Damerow, Senior Account Executive with Google, updated attendees with the latest information on best practices, and tips and ideas for an effective search engine marketing campaign.

Moving your organization forward requires two things: purpose and people.

During the November AMA "Second Tuesday Lunch Series," Melanie Schmidt, owner of Timpano Group, shared her ideas on the critical issue of aligning marketing communication with organizational strategy.

Download Melanie's presentation here (PDF)

Achieving your desirable impact, whether it be with businesses, consumers or nonprofit stakeholders, requires an attention to who you are, what you want and why the other person should care. After all, a story told with purpose and for a purpose has a far better chance of having the intended impact with the target audience.

Amie Bressers and Libby Schmeisser worked with Shopbop’s marketing team to launch the company’s Pinterest account, and they continue to strategize about innovative ways to approach this rapidly growing social platform.

Download the presentation here (PDF).

In this presentation, Bressers and Schmeisser shared their expertise, including best practices, industry examples, and a few tricks they’ve picked up over the last six months of being "live" on Pinterest.

About our Speakers

Shopbop, the online arm of Madison clothing retailer Bop, has been an arm of the Amazon.com empire since 2006.

Amie Bressers

Product Editorial Manager / Blog Editor, Shopbop.com

Amie has worked as an editor and copywriter for Shopbop.com for the past seven years. She has overseen the development and implementation of the product editorial process, written marketing materials, and in her latest endeavor, worked closely with the marketing team to build new social media initiatives. Bressers has a degree in English Literature and French from Valparaiso University in Indiana, and taught English in France’s Lorraine Region before joining Shopbop in 2005.

Libby Schmeisser

Assistant Editor, Shopbop.com

After graduating from UW-Madison with a political science degree, Libby spent two years immersed in the excitement of PR at Lands’ End. She now enjoys the shorter commute to Shopbop where she splits her time between copywriting and social media. When not absorbed in the world of online marketing, expect to find her experimenting with new flavors in the kitchen or reading the latest in non-fiction.

This month's "Second Tuesday Lunch Series" from the American Marketing Association presents Dana Arnold, PR and Social Media Director of local agency superstar Hiebing.

Download: Dana's presentation

What we learned:

• Avoid murky goals or strategies
• Strike the right balance between broadcasting and connecting
• Discover why your audience cares
• CYA: Cover your assets
• Surprise and delight your audience
• Harness the power of metrics

About Dana...

Dana’s contagious energy and passion feeds every client project she touches. A seasoned and accredited public relations professional, she has successfully developed and implemented strategic public relations campaigns including media relations, product launches, social media, community relations, event management and crisis communications.

With a signature laugh, Dana has spent her career at agencies, even developing two boutique practices of her own. Her work has stretched across a variety of consumer and B-to-B brands including McCormick & Schmick’s, Hilton’s Home2 Suites, Culver’s, Schneider National, Kerry Ingredients, AnchorBank, Fiskars and more. When she’s not in the office, Dana and her husband can be found herding their two active boys or trying the latest dining hotspot in town.

Many of us never thought we would ever make public presentations. But now, more than ever, employees at all organization levels are being asked to present information to co-workers, managers and clients. For many this causes high levels of anxiety, but it doesn’t have to.

Download: Pat's Presentation Worksheet

This session takes you back to the basics of presentation skills and presents a common sense approach for organizing presentation content. It does not address presentation software, but instead offers techniques for anyone wanting to bolster confidence and/or refresh their current presentation skills.

We learned to

• Use a simple system to prepare
• Develop realistic objectives
• Determine how much content to deliver

View: Original Meeting Info