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Last week Lisa and I attended Day 1 of the Integrated Marketing Summit in St. Louis, which was held at the Hyatt Regency downtown. IMS aims to be the signature summit for marketing and sales professionals in both B2B and B2C markets throughout the U.S. The agenda for the summit included hot integrated marketing communication topics such as content strategy, integrating online and offline media, and social media marketing; and the panelist lineup included some of my favorite local speakers and online marketing colleagues. So here’s a recap of a few of the nuggets we gleaned from the presentations:

Content Strategy (@digitalbrett)

Many B2B companies aren’t developing personas and use cases as part of their integrated marketing communication strategy, and they need to. Personas and use cases can help a business identify sales trends and more effectively engage their audience throughout the sales funnel.

Here are 3 simple rules to remember when creating personas:

• Companies don’t buy, people do.
• When people buy, emotion is always involved.
• Connect with people, connect with sales.

Use cases answer the Who, What, When and Why. To build use cases, start with your top 10 sales, and identify:

• Who were they?
• What did they buy?
• Why did they buy?
• When did the buying happen?

Integrating Offline with Online Media – Panel discussion

In this discussion of integrating offline and online media, PURLS were a hot topic – That is creating a personalized URL for your direct mail campaigns so you can measure the success of offline media driving online conversion. A/B testing was another popular topic for optimizing online and offline campaigns. When asked the 3 key benefits of associating offline and online marketing, the panelists replied with some of the following answers:

• Reach, velocity and intensity (@tniman)
• Giving customers choice of where and how they interact with a brand (Tom Perez)
• All forms of media should work together, extending the campaign timeline (Bob Mastis)

A good summary of this discussion was that although the technology has changed, the fundamentals of marketing strategy have not changed. Or as @tniman said, “The fundamentals have not changed, just now everything is so much faster.”

Social Media Best Practices – Panel discussion

And of course, an integrated marketing communication conference would not be complete without a high-energy session on social media. Although I had to forgo the SEO panel discussion to attend this one, it was worth it since the panel was stacked with some of my favorite local social media powerhouses: David Siteman Garland of The Rise to the Top (@therisetothetop), B2B social media extraordinaire Erin Eschen (@erine) from Perficient IT Consultants, and moderated by the Director of Social Media Club St. Louis, Brad Hogenmiller (@javastl). Add to that mix Kristy Meyer (@Kristy3M), who gave us some insight into how Sigma Aldrich uses social media, and Leigh Mutert who taught us why The (H&R) Block is hot in social; we ended the day on a high note.

Some key takeaways:

Monitor for opportunities and respond – Erin shared the “Anyone Know” tip with the audience, which involves searching “Anyone know (your product/service)” on Twitter. This gives you a quick view of people who are openly searching for your products.

H&R Block believes in 1:1 engagement on Twitter, Facebook and their iPhone app. Leigh also came equipped with a delicious flowchart of H&R Block’s response process – thanks for sharing!

Good content should be like peanut butter: spreadable. David talked about the effectiveness and reach of his Top 10 Marketing Predictions for 2010 blog post, and then discussed what he believes qualifies as good content: items that are educational, entertaining or inspirational; not salesy.

If you’re looking for more integrated marketing communication tips from Integrated Marketing Summit St. Louis 2010, you can also check out “My Top 10 Takeaway Tweets from #IMSSTL” on @patrickjpowers blog, or search Twitter for #IMSSTL.

About the Author
Erin Steinbruegge is a Partner and Lead Marketing Strategist at The Loud Few who specializes in search engine marketing strategy. You can learn more about her here or follow her on twitter at twitter.com/steinburglar.