Don’t forget to join us at the AI for Enterprise Marketing virtual event on October 15th. It’s currently at $295 for non-Conference Board members. For $100 off – use code BIZ100. Learn more here: https://conference-board.org/events/AI-for-marketing.
My oldest child (now 28) has Down Syndrome. Dave doesn’t always follow everything that’s going on, but he observes patterns and draws his conclusions. When Dave was little, he liked watching movies on TV but he also liked watching the Weather Channel, which at times back then was just a screen of rolling information of temperatures and other data for various cities. It looked like the credits at the end of a movie. And so when Dave put on the Weather Channel he would say “It’s over.” And then he’d say it again. And again. And he would keep saying it. He just thought the credits were really long.
You can be excused for feeling that way in this current crisis. Every day seems the same and you’d like to just keep chanting “It’s over.” Over and over. Because maybe wishing hard enough can make it come true. But it’s not enough to wish for it to be over. We’ve all been forced to hunker down — literally — to protect our personal health and that of the entire planet. But we can’t hunker down mentally.
In most countries, we are over six months into social distancing and we need to accept that it’s not going away anytime soon. Marketers can’t just ride this out. We need to focus on positive strategies to cope. If you can’t do in-person events anymore, what can you do? If your salespeople can’t visit customers because your customers aren’t even in the office, what can you do?
The answer is digital. Your digital marketing needs to step up. It can’t just be a website redesign. Marketers need to focus on what we’re missing in our customer experience. If you’re getting more web traffic, but not more leads, that’s a clue. Maybe ask yourself what you’re missing. Maybe you aren’t attracting the right people, so you might need better SEO. Maybe those people can’t find what they are looking for, so you need better site search and personalized content recommendation (like Amazon).
How do you do those things? We’ll tell you on October 15th at The Conference Board’s AI for Enterprise Marketing conference. Maybe you are a bit fearful of Artificial Intelligence. That’s OK. My opinion is that marketers are not going to lose their jobs to AI. But marketers who don’t use AI are going to lose their jobs to marketers who do.
I know that it’s hard to get past this “who moved my cheese” moment to move productively forward, but that’s what we all need to do. This conference is not full of technical mumbo jumbo, nor is it packed with aspirational ideas where the rubber meets the sky. Instead, it’s loaded with practical advice from marketers just like you who have started to do the real work of AI. Join us virtually on October 15 to get started. Sign up now. Really. I will wait right here for you.
Someday, we will all be able to collectively say, “It’s over” just like my son David, and it will be true. But when that happens, you won’t regret making these changes now. You’ll never say, “Why did I waste all that time with AI now that in-person events are back?” You know these are the right moves to make, and you know that now is the time. Move forward now to infuse your digital experience with AI. It will still be a good idea when the pandemic really is over.
The conference is only $295 for non-members and free for Conference Board members. If you miss it, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
