Utah County had its first-ever Demand Utah conference Thursday — a one-day event focused on all things marketing.
With the teeming smorgasbord that is Silicon Slopes, Bradley Davis, organizer for the conference felt there was a need for one place local companies could gain marketing “tips, tricks, hacks, and best practices.”
The event focused on all types of marketing in today’s world: lean marketing, social selling, content marketing, influencer marketing, video marketing, conversion optimization and engineering as marketing. Much of the workshops narrowed down into how-tos for these topics, pulling from local experts, and nationally known experts as well.
Keynote speakers Susan Petersen and Sujan Patel addressed one of the hot topics of the day — growth. Petersen talked about how her company, Freshly Picked became one of the fastest growing businesses in Utah Valley. Patel, a Texas-based growth marketing expert, shared tips on how companies can create a growth framework.
Sahil Lavingia, founder and CEO of Gumroad, addressed growth as well. Gumroad is Silicon Valley platform that enables creatives to sell and connect directly with their audiences, and Lavingia discussed how to grow without actively marketing in the regular channels.
“Growth is basically the only thing that matters. Growth solves every single problem. Call it innovation, the world is basically driven by growth,” Lavingia said in his presentation. “Growth is the oxygen. You can screw everything up, but if you’re growing really fast, you’re probably going to be fine.”
To grow successfully, Lavingia said your customer should be your only marketer. Companies that fail to empower their customers to market business, he sees that as a failure. With customers marketing your product for you, he said, you can focus your efforts on continuing to build a really good product. He saw this in his work in the early days of Pinterest, and his work in his own company. Growing this way means that businesses will grow sustainably.
The key to this is relationships, according to a midday panel that looked at content marketing and influencer marketing. Reaching a company’s target market can be done well, if marketers reach out and form meaningful relationships with them.
Skyler Meine, chief marketing officer for IdealShape in Lindon, and Noelle Bates, senior vice president of marketing at Stance in California, both emphasized that creating long-term relationships with customers and influencer partners are essential to business success.
Bates said just because famous celebrities might post about your brand — as happened with Stance socks recently — it doesn’t facilitate those relationships crucial to brand success.
“If you’re going to do something with an influencer, do it for long term,” Bates said.
Shaun McBride, a well-known influencer on the same panel wholeheartedly agreed, saying partnering with influencers should be with the idea to affect culture, not just get views.
“Views don’t equate brand loyalty, to sales, to growth,” he explained. “It’s not the amount of reach an influencer has, it’s the story that’s being told, and the connection.”
According to the panel, the long-term relationships approach helps customers “fall in love with brands,” and ultimately follow Lavingia’s admonition of empowering customers to be the true marketers for the product.
The event was held in the Bright Building on 400 South in Provo, one of the newer and more unique co-working startup venues in the town.