Online Marketing Summit Atlanta - The educational conference that can benefit software marketers

Last week I attended the Online Marketing Summit Regional Tour in Atlanta.  I first attended OMS in February of this year at the annual main event in San Diego.  The San Diego event was a 3 day conference with presentations from professionals and experts on specific topics related to online marketing - SEM, SEO, email, social media, etc.   The Atlanta conference (and the summer tour) is a slimmed down version of the main conference but is no less valuable.

OMS is put on by a marketing company called Business Online, but  this is "not your daddy's conferece" as Aaron Kahlow, Founder of OMS says at the beginning of every conference.  There are no sales pitches, and attendees are encouraged to boo speakers if they start promoting themselves or their companies too much.  OMS has done a great job gathering experts from all aspects of marketing to teach us marketers how best to leverage online venues for marketing and also discuss whats next for us to look forward to.

The Atlanta conference was packed with over 300 attendees.  Most of the sessions had standing room only.  Sessions included Complete Website Strategy (Usability), Search Engine Marketing, Behavioral Targeting, Email Marketing, Social Media and a lot more!  It's impossible to make it to all the sessions, so I recommend bringing along at least one other person from your marketing department and splitting up!  The best presentations in my view were the Behavioral Targeting session done by Olivier Chaine at magnify360 and Social Media Strategies by Barry Tallis at Jive Software.

At the end of the day there is always a Keynote Panel, where we get to ask industry experts whatever we want about online marketing.  This conference had a panel comprising such people as Lesli Smith, Interactive Marketing Manager from IBM and Joe Pulizzi, CEO of Junta42.  These panelists are engaging and provided valuable feedback from the questions asked.

All day we are encouraged to network and meet other marketers - the backgrounds are diverse! I love to bounce ideas off my fellow attendees and also learn about their challenges.  It gives me some perspective.

If you are looking for an educational conference, I recommend putting OMS on your calendar.  The summer tour is almost over, but the main conference comes around again in February.  I know I am going to try my best to be there.  In the 6 months since my first OMS conference, we have implemented many of the lessons and tactics learned and seen a tremendous increase in our marketing quality and effectiveness.

Check out http://www.onlinemarketingsummit.com for more information.  OMS has a Facebook group and a blog with contributors from all over the marketing world at http://blog.onlinemarketingconnect.com/.