On Friday March 11, the Cleveland AMA tried a new event at the Westin Hotel Cleveland Downtown. Featured were six roundtable discussions focused on six varying marketing topics. Attendees had the opportunity to choose three different tables where they could participate in conversations led by expert moderators. The overarching opinion of the event was positive! Hear what some of our panelists and attendees had to say about the event!

Content Strategy Table Takeaways – Lukas Treu

First off, I loved this event. I might give people 5 more minutes at each table next time to allow the discussions to go even a little bit further, but I feel like the dialogue was definitely valuable. Here were my top three takeaways:

·        Content strategy is still being largely handled by the Marketing department, sometimes with a lot of input from others, sometimes not. There is room for collaboration and insight gathering.

·        There is a lot of pressure to show the Powers That Be that content marketing creates an ROI, but many executives have trouble understanding that content marketing is a long-term investment.

·        Excel is still king when it comes to content calendars. There are other more advanced options out there, but for the most part, people are using fairly basic spreadsheets… don’t feel bad!

There is a lot of thirst among Northeast Ohio marketers to better understand how they can optimize their marketing plans with a content marketing approach, so I’m looking forward to continuing the discussion at our upcoming April 20th event with Amanda Todorovich, Content Marketing Director at the Cleveland Clinic! Stay tuned for details.

3/11 Marketing Mingle Summary – Vicki Wilson

As the marketing industry evolves and strategies change, companies are stressing more importance on market research and how it can help inform business decisions. While some are just becoming familiar with the process, others face various difficulties and frustrations that any industry can relate to. As is true of all business areas, price is the biggest issue when trying to implement market research. Many companies do not have large budgets for market research initiatives and others have no budget at all. As a possible solution, participants discussed secondary research (online sources, business journals, etc.), what reputable sources are available, and where to go when primary research isn’t an option. Budget friendly primary research solutions included free research tools such as SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics. Others areas for improvement mentioned were how to make research results actionable and how to get buy-in from upper and executive management.

Social Media Table at Marketing Mingle – Madeline Malicki

Social media is ever-changing, so there was no surprise we had a ton of questions at the social table during the Marketing Mingle. Some of the discussions included topics like social media strategies where participants shared their approach to each social media channel they utilize for their business. Another topic we discussed was the balance of paid content vs organic content being published to each channel. It was mentioned that a great social media strategy involved both paid and organic content working together to reach the goals set forth for the channel/page. Lastly, another topic we touched on was emerging platforms and how to utilize them for a business. Aside from the intriguing Snapchat platform, Facebook Canvas, Blab, and live streaming tools such as Facebook Live and Periscope were the main platforms we discussed.