My guest today is Ashley Le Blanc, Executive Vice President of Little Bird Marketing.

Insights Marketing Day 2022: 

• Location: Chicago, IL
  
• Date: October 6, 2022
  
• Tickets: https://events.bizzabo.com/imd-chicago-2022 
  
• Website: https://www.insights-marketing.org/ 
  

Find Ashley Online:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleymariahleblanc/ 
  
• Little Bird Marketing: https://littlebirdmarketing.com/ 
  

Find Jamin Online:

• Email: jamin@happymr.com 
  
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazil
  
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaminbrazil 
  

Find Us Online: 

• Twitter: www.twitter.com/happymrxp 
  
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch 
  
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/happymrxp 
  
• Website: www.happymr.com 
  

Music: 

• “Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com 
  

This Episode is Sponsored by:

The Michigan State University’s Master of Science in Marketing Research Program delivers the #1 ranked insights and analytics graduate degree in three formats: 

• Full-time on campus 
  
• Full-time online 
  
• Part-time online
  

NEW FOR 2022: 

If you can’t commit to their full degree program, simply begin with one of their 3-course certificates: Insights Design or Insights Analysis. 

In addition to the certification, all the courses you complete will build toward your graduation.

If you are looking to achieve your full potential, check out MSMU’s programs at: broad.msu.edu/marketing.

HubUX is a research operation platform for private panel management, and qualitative automation including video audition questions, and surveys. 

For a limited time, user seats are free. If you’d like to learn more or create your own account, visit hubux.com. 

[00:00:00]

Jamin Brazil: Hey everybody, you are listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast. This is a special episode. I am partnering with Little Bird Marketing. I have my good friend, Ashley Le Blanc, who is joining us today. We are going to be talking about Insights Marketing Day. This is an annual event that is hosted in Chicago, and I hope you can make it. So Ashley, welcome to the show.

[00:00:27]

Ashley Le Blanc: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to talk about Insights Marketing Day. It’s one of my favorite events.

[00:00:33]

Jamin Brazil: You know, mine, too. I’ve been to it for the last couple of years. I always get a ton out of it. You have a great speaker lineup. So why don’t we start there? Talk to us a little bit about some of your highlighted speakers.

[00:00:44]

Ashley Le Blanc: What I love about our speaker lineup- of course, this is an event that is geared towards people with a marketing mindset, but we really try to pull our speakers from lots of different industries. So we have Andy Crestodina, he is a fan favorite. He’s been at several of our Insights Marketing Day. He’s Chicago based, he’s from Orbit Media, but he’s kind of like our web and SEO guru. So for anyone who has questions about how do I rank for certain keywords, how do I get my website optimizing the correct way, he is the go-to person. He’s personally one of my favorite speakers. We’ll have other insights professionals like Sequoia Glen, Bob Farrow from Trusted Talent. He’s going to be talking a little bit about employee retention, which is always a fun topic. David Paul from Dialsmith and Lillian Labs. So lots of people from in the industry and then several people that are from more of a marketing background or even a growth strategies background too.

[00:01:48]

Jamin Brazil: And of course we have Priscilla McKinney who will be opening the day, as well as I believe speaking. She’s got a couple topics, one centered around five LinkedIn tips for conference follow up. By the way conference follow up, conferences are the biggest marketing expenditure in most of our budgets. And we leave so much money on the table because we are not really farming the land after we’ve sewn the seed, using the metaphor. And so that’s going to be super valuable. And then the other topic she’s covering is interactive networking or- and hosting an interactive networking break. And can you talk to us a little bit about the benefit and the opportunity to be able to network with marketing peers in the space?

[00:02:30]

Ashley Le Blanc: So one of the interesting things about Insights Marketing Day is it’s not like your typical industry event, where you sit in a chair, maybe you say hello to the person next to you, and then you move on to the next session. We’ve really set up the day. So if you show up, yes, you get to experience incredible speakers, but you really get to network with the other people in the room. So we all know we’re big. at Little Bird, we’re big fans of industry collaboration. We think that’s how we push our own companies forward, but also how we’re going to push the industry forward. So there will be so many opportunities to network with peers, with people at other companies trying to do the exact same thing that you’re doing. But of course, right after Priscilla gives all of her tips for LinkedIn, we’re going to go into a networking break and rumor has it that there’s also going to be maybe some gelato at that networking break.

[00:03:27]

Jamin Brazil: Last year, I think, was it gelato that you guys brought in? I think it was.

[00:03:31]

Ashley Le Blanc: Yeah, I think it was. I think we’re bringing back the same people, because it was such a favorite that we had a multiple people request that it made a comeback.

[00:03:42]

Jamin Brazil: It’s almost like if you’ve ever had a street vendor or something along those lines, it’s like a super professional pop-up that goes, it’s like, where did that come from, wow. It’s a pretty good experience.

[00:03:54]

Ashley Le Blanc: Everyone needs 3pm gelato.

[00:03:57]

Jamin Brazil: That’s right. I totally agree with that. That should be in all of our benefit packages. You have Doug Potters, who’s going to be speaking. He works for CIVC Partners, a private equity company. Which I thought was really interesting and definitely connects into marketing. Is the event strictly for marketing professionals or are you seeing some C-suite folks move in as well?

[00:04:21]

Ashley Le Blanc: Yeah, definitely. And my encouragement is anyone that is in a company, in a research company that has a growth mindset. So whether you’re on the sales team, the marketing team, in the C-suite, leadership team, this event is really beneficial for you. Like I mentioned before, while we have people speaking on marketing, we have people like Doug, even like our end client panel. When we talk about brands as a whole, when we talk about lead gen best practices, that goes so much further than just marketing. That ties into how are we growing our company, how are we scaling our company. So I would encourage anyone who has big growth goals for this next year, this event will be really beneficial for you.

[00:05:08]

Jamin Brazil: Ashley, you partner with Greenbook or more broadly Little Bird Marketing partners with Greenbook to put this event on year over year. Talk to us a little bit about what’s unique about Little Bird, and why you guys are the chosen marketing company to partner with Greenbook.

[00:05:23]

Ashley Le Blanc: So we’ve had a long term partnership with Greenbook, and as many people know Insights Marketing Day is not a new event. It was actually the first insights event, Little Bird attended, I think back in 2016. It’s how we broke into the industry. So it’s- we love that now we get to host it. But Greenbook, obviously with all of their other incredible events, they just, they outgrew the capacity. So we were able to take that on. It’s really a true marriage of what we are best at. We get to combine our in depth knowledge of the industry with marketing best practices and bring those two things together for professionals in the research industry to have marketing broken down for them specifically. There’s not a lot of- of course you can go to a large marketing conference, but to go to a marketing conference that’s specific to your industry, those are honestly few and far between. So since 2016 Little Bird has been serving the market research industry and we know the buyer, we’re at the events, we know the space. So partnering with people who are in the industry or even support services of the industry, that’s who our ideal partnerships are with. And because we have knowledge because our team knows market research, because our team is at the events, it makes the partnership really easy. Because you’re not hiring a marketing agency and then spending a year teaching them about market research. We already bring that knowledge to the table and we’re able to get started on actual marketing efforts from the beginning, instead of learning about the industry or the trade for that first year. So makes us a little bit different.

[00:07:09]

Jamin Brazil: So attendees will walk away with very tactical things or techniques that they can leverage to have better return on their marketing ROI, as well as drive improved SEO. We’re seeing in the last couple of years, we’re actually, since COVID seeing SEO becoming more important than ever before for discoverability with new customers. And so to that end, and what Andy brings in the speaker lineup, I think is just so vital, is exactly how to look at your Google Analytics, understand where traffic’s coming from, analyze it in a cohort framework, build on that over- on your SEO over time. So you can get that front page placement. Tickets are relatively inexpensive, under $300, $297 for the in-person conference, but you also have a virtual aspect. Is that right?

[00:07:58]

Ashley Le Blanc: We do. We will be recording all of the session. So it’s not virtual in the sense of, on demand when they’re actually happening, but you can buy, I think it’s maybe $100 and you get access to [CROSSTALK].

[00:08:09]

Jamin Brazil: $97.

[00:08:11]

Ashley Le Blanc: You get access to all the video content post event, and that is life- for a lifetime. So you can download those videos, you can keep them, you can watch them as a team. We do not record the panel sessions. It’s just a little bit more difficult with all the multiple mics, but all of the keynote sessions are recorded and you can even add that on if you’re coming in-person and you want, you’re like, hey, I want to replay that. We’ve all been there, right, to a conference, you heard something you’re like, I want to re-listen to that. You can add it on to your in-person ticket and have video access post event as well.

[00:08:45]

Jamin Brazil: So listeners, if you would like to learn more about Insights Marketing Day, you can find out specific information at insights-marketing.org. Again that’s insights-marketing.org. As always, you can find links in the show notes. Ashley, thank you so much for spending a few minutes with me today and us today, telling us about the event.

[00:09:03]

Ashley Le Blanc: Thanks for having me.

[00:09:05]

Jamin Brazil: Everybody, have a great rest of your day.