Last week we collaborated with Weidert Group of Appleton, WI to host an amazing 2-day conference called Experience Inbound. The event was held at two of the states most iconic sports venues including Wednesday at Miller Park in Milwaukee and Thursday at Lambeau Field in Green Bay. Over the course of the two days, 240 attendees came together to meet, share expertise and throw down some serious sales and inbound marketing knowledge. We can’t thank these dynamic speakers enough for their time and participation in our event.

•  Mark Roberge, HubSpot CRO and author of The Sales Acceleration Formula
• Chad Pollitt, VP of Audience, Relevance.com, #5 on Top 100 Content Marketers
• Ryan Panzer, Google Adwords Strategist
• Elise Ramsay, Wistia Community Manager
• Caitlin Moyer, Director New Media, Milwaukee Brewers
• Jeff Coon, Partner, Stream Creative
• Greg Linnemanstons, President, Weidert Group
• Steve James, Partner, Stream Creative
• Frank Isca, Partner, Weidert Group

Additionally, we’d like to extend a big thank you to our event sponsors:

• Gordon Flesh Company
• SalesSmith
• OnMilwaukee.com
• Insight
• Big Shoes Network
• Wayne Breitbarth: Power Formula For LinkedIn Success

Take a look at what our attendees and speakers had to say about the event throughout the day!

Personalization and engagement does not come naturally for every business or brand in regard to communication across various social channels. Developing meaningful and relevant conversations with customers, followers and fans drives deeper interaction and long-term loyalty. In addition to truly listening to your network, it takes a dedicated team, time and commitment to establish a high level of personalization across social channels.

More and more businesses are discovering the value of using visual content and video as an inbound marketing tool to help generate leads and create loyalty. It is now apparent that marketers do not need to be turned off by the common misconception that video should be produced in a costly way. The reality is, video has an important place in your marketing workflows and it can be quite easy to do – not to mention fun. By far, it is one of the easiest tools you can use to build an emotional connection with your website visitors, prospects and customers.

Most marketers understand the link between content marketing and branding, and the power it holds in regard to staying competitive and boosting your product or service. With the right mix of content marketing strategies, businesses will experience more traffic, engagement, lead generation and sales. Nobody understands this more than Chad Pollitt, VP of Audience and Co-founder of Relevance.com, an online publication dedicated to helping marketing and communications executives solve their online content visibility challenges.

In August 2014, our good friend, Paul Roetzer, CEO of PR 20/20, released his latest book, The Marketing Performance Blueprint: Strategies and Technologies to Build and Measure Business Success. Paul’s book focuses on processes, technologies, and strategies needed to fill marketing gaps and build performance-driven organizations. Written to be an essential and accessible guide for marketers, executives, and entrepreneurs, The Marketing Performance Blueprint includes key principles focusing on performance goals, digital transformation, creating a modern team and more. As a deeper-dive into the core concepts discussed in his book, Paul is offering a live online event: The Marketing Blueprint Webinar Series beginning February 10 at 1pm.

We recently chatted with Paul about some of the key takeaways participants will obtain through this series:

Over the past 8 years, inbound marketing has become a movement adopted by a large majority of professionals in various industries from B2C to B2B. It wasn’t until recent years that this wildly successful way of attracting and nurturing prospects and customers has extended beyond the marketing department. Organization leaders in all department areas including HR, business development, training, IT and more, continue to lean on inbound philosophies to achieve goals. While these areas of business have been influential, one department that has likely made the strongest impact by using inbound marketing strategy is sales.

What do feel when you look out the window of your home and see someone walking up your doorstep with a clipboard? The first feeling may be fear, the second is likely anxiety, and the third is oftentimes annoyance. Gone are the days when people tolerated disruptive soliciting and selling.

Each year, our Stream Creative team heads to Boston for the annual Inbound conference hosted by HubSpot. The best part about attending the conference is the opportunity we have to meet and network with some of the most creative and talented individuals from around the world. This past November, we came away from the event inspired to bring a similar experience to the sales and marketing professionals of Southeastern Wisconsin. That was when Experience Inbound was born and to be honest, we weren’t sure if anyone would come. Thanks to our event speakers, sponsors and supporters, we were thrilled to have more than 150 attendees join us for the inaugural event. Here are a few of our favorite actionable takeaways our event speakers shared to help boost your inbound efforts in the year ahead.

1. “Traditional marketing is like renting space on someone else’s assets”

Brian Halligan, Co-Founder & CEO of HubSpot

Brian kicked off the morning with a dynamic talk about the future of inbound marketing and sales. He began his discussion by mentioning the brisk walk to the Harley-Davidson^® Museum from the Iron Horse Hotel – which in his compliments to the city of Milwaukee he mentioned was the “nicest place he has ever stayed.” He focused on many key inbound facts and areas of consideration including how to build your marketing assets.

Quick Tip: Marketing assets are thought of very differently today than they were 20 years ago, partly because of the way we now live and work. Instead of interrupting your way to get the attention of prospective buyers or clients through “renting space” on someone else’s assets (traditional advertising), how do you pull them in? That can be achieved through increasing webpages, links, keywords, followers, remarkable content, etc. Brian told us to think about building these assets as if you were building a moat around your business.

Watch a video of Brian Halligan’s Experience Inbound keynote presentation, view his slides and read his interview with Jeff Sherman of OnMilwaukee.com.

When our friends at Hubspot asked me to contribute as a guest “instructor” for their brand-new back-to-school e-book: “ABC’s of Inbound Marketing,” I jumped at the chance to cover “Y” – Youtube. I want to help marketing professionals understand how important and easy incorporating video into your marketing strategies can be and the success you will experience from increased lead generation and stronger customer loyalty.