Forrester’s B2B Marketing Forum Happens Next Week – See You There?

The Zika virus.

The National Doral in light of Donald Trump's presidential candidacy.

Hurricane Matthew.

Who knew Miami would have so much to offer a year and a half ago!??!

Well, here are three MUCH better reasons to come to Miami with us for Forrester's B2B Marketing 2016 forum next week: great content, expert analysts, and the chance to hear from and network with top business-to-business marketers about the topics that matter most to you.

Bug (and political pundit) repellent in hand, I'm looking forward to connecting with many of you about the issues that facing the modern B2B marketer. Planned topics will show how marketing must:

1) lead the way to becoming customer obsessed company-wide,

2) build deeper relationships between coveted buyers and your company,

3) engage with more digitally "entitled" customers on the issues they care about, and

4) enable sales to tell a more human, helpful, and consistent story through account-specific collaboration and more customer-centered organizational structures.  

Looking ahead (and after seeing a preview of some of the content), highlights you won't want to miss include:

• Molly Murphy, SVP, Sales and Marketing at Eaton, sharing how they are moving to multi-generational messaging to encompass the needs and issues of business relationships that extend across lifetimes.
• Forrester's James McQuivey showing how firms that make the move to higher value customer experience and digital transformation can outdistance the competition (subscription required) and why the lessons learned by B2C marketers can apply as well to B2B when it comes to leading the charge to customer.
• Erica Benton, head of customer marketing for LinkedIn Sales Solutions explaining how to turn uncertainty from a risk to an advantage by using it to solidify your approach to customer engagement.
• Forrester's Ryan Skinner demonstrating how to get more out of less (but better) content and turn content marketing into a strategic effort, not just filler for the next campaign.
• Social Selling evangelist Jill Rowley moderating a practitioner's panel on how to ensure everyone, and every channel, gets and stays on message in today's rapidly changing, always on world of business communiation.
• Forrester's Mary Shea describing how to leave past tensions between marketing and sales behind and – instead – create new organizational constructs, use new tools, and formalize collaborative initiatives that empower sellers to succeed.
• And our own Andy Hoar tracking how ecommerce and sales force organizations are changing in light of the provocative predictions he made last year about the "Death of A (B2B) Salesman" (subscription required) with panelists from 3M, EY and NETGEAR.

One key issue you will hear explored throughout the day and a half next week is how Forrester is wiping aside the hype around account-specific marketing and selling to demonstrate why ABM (account-based marketing) is a key approach that can help B2B marketers make the pivot to customer obsession.  Lori Wizdo, Mary Shea, and I have new findings and insights on this topic to share with you during the conference.

Hey, I hear tickets to Miami are cheap these days.  Grab one and meet me next week for a great opportunity to gear up your B2B marketing efforts ahead of 2017.