This week I had the opportunity to attend the Impact 2016 conference put on by the IMA.
And I’m sorry to say that I was disappointed. I’ve heard that the state of digital marketing conferences has gone down in quality as of late, and I was discussing my frustration with some of our geniuses over here at Post Launch. It turns out there was nothing we didn’t already know about digital marketing. I genuinely wanted to come back from the digital marketing conference with a silver bullet for our team at Post Launch, but unfortunately, it appears that we are already pretty smart. The biggest takeaway from the conference for me was that “75% of Instagram users take an action after seeing an ad.”
This was from the Market Operations Director at Instagram, Jim Squires. A wonderful nugget of knowledge. Thanks, bro. I guess that passes as a “success,” but my friend and I in attendance looked at each other and said, “I guess the other 25% just drop dead.” A completely pointless stat from an amazing company.
The reality is this: The knowledge necessary to be effective in the digital marketing space is readily available through a Google search.
The internal discussion continued, and the realization was that these types of conferences aren’t for “market leaders” like the team at Post Launch. While this article seems to be all about hate and disdain, I hear the same views from my peers in the industry about similar industry tradeshows. This leads me to conclude two things:
- I’m really smart and impressive, OR
- The collective intelligence of the industry has gotten so great that it’s not worth going to conferences any longer.
It’s all bittersweet, and I think that many of these organizations are taking advantage of people’s need for knowledge and the desire to rise above the rest in this market. The reality is this: The knowledge to be effective in the digital marketing space is readily available with a Google search. It all comes down to customer service and the ability to deliver results.
It all comes down to customer service and the ability to deliver results.
I feel compelled to teach the world about the stuff we do.
In the upcoming year, we are going to launch an academy at Post Launch and teach all the things you would take from attending a $1000 per day digital marketing conference.
Stay tuned to get the details about the Post Launch free digital marketing academy.