EVENT: Inbound Marketing UK 2012

As a former waitress I've been at conferences and events but not seen too much of the conceptual planning behind them until now. Today's blog is giving you a backstage pass - sneak peak if you will -into how this (one day) successful event was born!

Every year, Hubspot (our partner in the USA), holds Inbound - an anual inbound marketing summit in Boston. Top inbound marketing sessions are run as well as relevant big name industry speakers are organised in this 3 day event for their software users, VARs and potential new clients. As the UK gold certified partner agency, Richard thought it would be a good idea to host a UK version of Inbound. And we called it Inbound Marketing UK 2012 to distinguish it.

---

Marketing a marketing event

We debated between having a microsite vs a new domain name and chose the former so as to keep the SEO benefit for our site inboundmarketing.co.uk. Then we discussed how to market the event. Ellie and Emma researched Twitter and found a currently unused hashtag #InboundUK for us and attendees to use when referring to it. We decided to keep using our company accounts (as well as personal profiles) for the social media marketing rather than create new ones as already collectively we have a reach greater than 2000 people.

I created a new pinboard on Pinterest which is nicely populated with images now that link back to the microsite I set up under instructions to make it feel like inboundconference.com (the American event). There was considerable time pressure to do this as the site had to go live by Monday morning but I managed to get the grid style graphics made in that Friday afternoon, whilst Vicky made an awesome logo/banner. My proudest achievement has to be the floating navigation bar that stays with the page scroll. Check it out in its full glory here: inboundmarketing.co.uk/2012  

---

Who's going to be there?

Richard (the company founder and director) has used his contacts from the business world to get some really interesting keynote speakers involved such as best-selling author David Meerman Scott and Hubspot CMO Mike Volpe. A friend of his from Nike marketing is also up for presenting at the event too! Richard also made this conference a bit different in terms of the topics covered. We're having Paul Berney CMO of the Mobile Marketing Association to give a social media oriented take on marketing, and Frank Belzer to link us marketing folk up better with the Sales department! 

Location, location, location

My colleague Ellie worked with Richard on finding pricing, capacity and layouts of different venues in and around London. Coincidentally, they looked at a few of the hotels I had temped at before in Heathrow and Windsor! It took quite a while as at that point in time they didn't know whether or not our US  partners were going to underwrite the event. Richard was still pretty adamant about not choosing somewhere with a stuffy or old fashioned interior design! The final choice was Congress Centre, London, where our main room will be the fancy Congress Hall with breakout sessions taking place in neighbouring areas.

---

More money, less problems

Last week the director pitched the initial proposal over video call to Hubspot and they were very supportive of the idea, so much so they offered to help fund it.This was really good news because it meant we could plough on with making a the event brilliant without needing to chase around for more sponsors (and thus preventing competitors from getting a mention at the event!) Hubspot are also keen on getting some reps in from the major social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

The full ticket price is £199 but if you're an early bird delegate you can grab it now for £99. However the aim of Inbound Marketing UK 2012 isn't to make a profit. With a 400 attendees target, this is a Hubspot user group conference and we hope to gain new customers for a Hubspot license once they see what the software can do - and inbound marketing contracts when they see what Strange can do.

Come along and learn to grow your business

It's on the 6th of November which means I sadly can't make it, although this is admittedly because I'll be working in sunny Spain!

If you're a marketer looking to revolutionize your marketing or know someone that does, then tell them about Inbound Marketing UK 2012. You probably aren't though, so i'll get to promoting the event on LinkedIn instead :)

Bye for now!