Observe marketing tactics from other industries

Earlier this week I spent a few days in Chicago, IL at an American Marketing Association conference.  The conference was geared toward the higher education industry, an industry in which I currently do some marketing and communications work.

The conference was pretty good, not great, but there were some dynamic key-note speakers and quite a few sessions about online social networks and how to join to connect with your audiences.  However, the information given was only enough to make one a bit dangerous with some knowledge, but not quite enough to immerse you in really great best practices.

One thing I enjoy is having knowledge, experience and simply involvement in several different industries--the indie music industry, art/design industry and higher education marketing industry.  For me, I find marketing and communications solutions in one industry that aren't practiced in another and I see where I can fill gaps making connections in one industry informed by another. 

Karlyn Morissette is an e-marketing strategist and web developer, specializing in higher education.  Currently she's the Web Producer in the Development Office at Dartmouth.  Karlyn blogged about and throughout the conference.  I personally enjoyed the key-note speaker Andy Goodman, who spoke about utilizing basic storytelling as a best practice to get your core message(s) across to your intended audience(s) in a way that is humanistic and compelling and doesn't muddy things up with jargon and non-sensical wordings.

Karlyn gives a great play-by-play of Andy's talk here.  

Think about how you can use storytelling to connect with your audiences as a musician, artist or entrepreneur.  Engagement is pretty key and once you understand how to engage your audience(s) your impact on them and potentially their pocketbook will increase.