11 Conferences for B2B Marketers to Attend in the Second Half of 2013

In another week one of the best conferences for search engine marketing professionals and internet marketers overall, SMX Advanced, kicks off in Seattle. Our Director of Online Marketing, Casie Gillette, will be presenting alongside a group of highly talented search professionals including Kristy Bolsinger, Ric Dragon, Adam Schoenfeld, and Eric Werner, discussing the top social media tactics for search marketers. If you’re attending the conference, I certainly recommend attending that session and dropping Casie a message online that you’ll be attending.

It’s unbelievable that SMX Advanced is upon us, that we are already a week into June, and we’re starting to plan for second half of year initiatives. The conference roadmap is one of those planning initiatives and as I have been reviewing the conference opportunities in the second half of 2013, there is no shortage of impressive events to attend for B2B marketers.

In addition to SMX Advanced, here is a look at the marketing conferences KoMarketing Associates has on the radar as we plan for the rest of 2013.

The Conversion Conference

Conference Dates & Location: June 11 – 13 in Chicago, IL and September 30 – October 2 in Boston, MA

The first of many conferences to be held in Boston this year. Anything related to driving better conversions is worth reviewing for the B2B marketer. This event is being held in multiple locations in the US and Europe throughout 2013.

The Conversion Conference pricing page in Boston appears to tie in a discounted combination package with this conference and DemandCon, also happening at the same time in Boston and discussed later in this post.

Marketing World 2013: A Frost & Sullivan MindXchange

Conference Dates & Location: July 14 – 17 in Boston, MA

The 14th annual Marketing World event looks to feature speakers from organizations like IBM, Dupont, Siemens, and Adobe and cover B2B marketing topics ranging from B2B marketing analytics and demand generation strategies to mobile strategy and social marketing development.

Content Marketing World

Conference Dates & Location: September 9 – 11 in Cleveland, OH

Content marketing is a critical component of B2B marketing strategy and Content Marketing World, created by the Content Marketing Institute, appears to be a must attend event for B2B marketers entrenched in this initiative.

This year’s event includes six concurrent workshops the first day and five special summits covering Finance, Health, Manufacturing, Tech and Small Business.

Search Engine Strategies San Francisco

Conference Dates & Location: September 10 – 13 in San Francisco, CA

Another leading conference for search engine and online marketing professionals, Search Engine Strategies (“SES”) San Francisco has yet to reveal the full agenda and speaker list but typically focuses on a range of search marketing topics across multiple industries, platforms, and geographic regions.

eMetrics Summit Boston 2013

Conference Dates & Location: September 29 – October 3 in Boston, MA

The eMetrics Summit is billed as a comprehensive and forward thinking digital analytics forum. Emphasizing the convergence of “Big Data” and marketing, eMetrics Boston covers the impact of data and technology on marketing while providing focus on how data analysis and technology adoption drives business results.

DemandCon

Conference Dates & Location: September 30 – October 1 in Boston, MA

DemandCon is billed as an event designed for education and insight into the art of aligning and accelerating the B2B company’s sales and marketing funnel.

The conference breaks out into two separate tracks for sales and marketing professionals, coming together to highlight the latest BtoB research and keynote sessions.

Marketingsherpa Lead Gen Summit

Conference Dates & Location: September 30 – October 3 in San Francisco, CA

B2B Marketers closer to the west coast might consider Marketingsherpa’s Lead Generation Summit, happening at the same time as DemandCon and the Conversion Conference in Boston, and focused on improving the entire lead generation process from lead capture to sales hand-off.

According to the conference overview, this four day event will expand beyond B2B and also include case studies and in-depth analysis in B2C marketing as well.

MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum

Conference Dates & Location: October 9 – 11 in Boston, MA

I’ve had MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum on my radar for several months, largely because of the B2B marketing emphasis and it’s convenient location for KoMarketing.

This year’s event features 45 sessions across 5 tracks, ranging from conversion optimization to email marketing to platform-specific social media marketing strategies.

DMA 2013

Conference Dates & Location: October 14 – 16 in Chicago, IL

This year’s DMA conference looks to go beyond “traditional” marketing initiatives, exploring topics like crowdsourcing, data analytics, and data privacy.

Nine track programs run simultaneously Monday through Wednesday, including six new tracks ranging from marketing fundamentals to real-time and automated marketing.

Pubcon Las Vegas

Conference Dates & Location: October 22 – 25 in Las Vegas, NV

I personally have not been to Pubcon in several years, but everyone I know that attends raves about the knowledge and expertise present at this conference.

Recently highlighted in Forbes “Must-Attend Conferences For Entrepreneurs” what makes conferences like this important is in how B2B marketers can take ideas and tactics from industry experts in complementary places to adapt and apply for their organizations.

Dreamforce 2013

Conference Dates & Location: November 18 – 21 in San Francisco, CA

Tired yet? You certainly will be if you attended all of these events and somehow managed to still be on pace to hit all of your B2B marketing KPI’s in 2013 🙂

Dreamforce is the last event of the year we have on our radar (thus far) but could certainly be critical, since CRM powers so much in the B2B marketing space. With more than 1,000 expert-led sessions, Dreamforce promises the latest in product updates, hands-on experience with new technologies, and tips and tricks directly from experts.

Did we miss a must-attend event in the second half of 2013? Let us know via comments below or send us a message on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.