Keynote: "Getting Marketing Back to Making Sales"

The “sales/marketing disconnect” occurs whenever a company’s sales team and management believe their marketing program isn’t producing what the company needs most from marketing: Sales response, in the form of sales leads and new business opportunities from measureable marketing programs.

More and more companies in business-to-business markets realize they need to make their marketing programs measurable; the way to make any marketing program measureable is to make it more effective at generating this critical sales response.

What are the most important B2B marketing skills techniques, and core principles you need to know, and how do you put these to work to generate sales leads and open new markets for your company? During this session, you'll learn:

• The nine most important wasy to improve sales response in your marketing program
• Proven, time-tested approaches to writing copy that sells your company's product
• Key techniques to improve the execution of every marketing project in your plan
• How to use "show what you know" techniques to beat your competition

Richard Kean, CBC, is Managing Director, Business Marketing Institute and Associate Director, Institute for the Study of Business Markets. He created the Business Marketing Institute, (BMI), a web-based skills assessment, self-directed skills building and certification program for business-to-business marketers and marketing communicators to improve the basic knowledge and skills among practitioners.

Showcase of Best Practices In Transportation Marketing

What makes a strategic marketing initiative a success? At your leisure throughout the TMCA Marketing Bootcamp, you'll have the opportunity to browse through detailed descriptions of marketing strategies of transportation companies that received the 2008 TMCA Compass Award of Excellence. Best Practices include:

• CirclePoint: "YBI Viaduct Replacement Public Awareness" - Integrated Communications and Media Relations Campaigns
• Exel Transportation Services: "Sales Network Tri-fold Brochures"
• FedEx Freight: "Launching the FedEx National LTL Brand Postion" and "Small Business Fuel Surcharge Sweepstakes" Direct Marketing Campaigns
• GO Transit: "Barrie South GO Station Community Welcome" Special Event
• Illinois Tollway: "Veterans Memorial Tollway Commemorative Program and Poster
• Con-Way Truckload and KG Partners: "Filling the Seats: Driver Recruitment Campaign"
• Majic Consulting Group: "Breeze Bus Web Site"
• MTA New York City Transit: "The A Train's 75th Anniversary" Integrated Communications Program
• Porter Novelli and DriveCam: "Teen Safe Driver" National Media Launch
• Roadway: "Golf Relationship - Building Events"
• Texas DOT and Thompson Marketing: "Coffee Cups" Advertisement Campaign
• Transplace: "Attack Vendorville Direct Marketing"
• Versant: "This is My Ride" TV Advertising Campaign

Strategies Without EXECUTION are Pipedreams

In today’s hyper-competitive marketplace, organizations are looking to Marketing for strategic leadership that will drive sales and fight commoditization. But even solid strategies often fail for lack of execution. In this session, you will learn a practical, team-based approach for developing and executing winning strategies that differentiate you from your competition, identify your unique value propositions, and deliver measurable results. We will share:

• A simple four-step process for creating and executing your Marketing Plan
• Planning exercises that will unify your team around key goals
• A complete Marketing Plan table of contents
• A communication system for adjusting to market changes and holding your team accountable for results

Clark Neuhoff is President of The Sextant Company, a business development consulting firm dedicated to helping organizations reach the next level. Neuhoff spent over 25 years building brands at Fortune 500 and mid-market companies. He developed a proven, systematic and repeatable approach to business planning and execution called the Sextant Business Navigation System™. Using this proprietary process, he guides clients to visualize their next level, identify what is holding them back and what it will take to break through — while never forgetting the destination is always about the customer.

"Industry Newsmakers: Hot Topics Making the Headlines"

Gain a top-level perspective of the emerging trends and issues that are driving the logistics industry and making headlines in today's industry news. Topics range from hours of service, skyrocketing fuel costs, capacity, security, and beyond.

James Cooke is currently the editor of CSCMP's Supply Chain Quarterly. Prior to joining the Quarterly, he worked in public relations and in the trade publications, including 20 years at Reed Elsevier. During his career at Reed Elsevier, he covered transportation, logistics, materials handling, and international trade. He started his career as a newspaper reporter.

Session: "Measuring Up: A Guide To Success with Customer Satisfaction"

This session is for marketing executives concerned about customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Whether your organization is already engaged in a customer satisfaction measurement program, or contemplating the start of one, this session will provide you with valuable insights:

• Discover the importance of measurement, what you should measure, how and when to measure
• Identify what to do with the results and learn what outcomes to expect
• Find out how to determine what customers want and how you can really get connected to them.
• Determine a path to the golden thread that will bind your customers to your organization so tightly that they will never want to leave you!

As a participant in the TMCA Marketing Bootcamp, you will receive a free copy of Miner's book, "Measuring Up!"

Anne Miner is founder and President of The Dunvegan Group Ltd., and author of a best-selling book, "Measuring Up!" She is an entrepreneur, a visionary leader, and an acknowledged expert in the field of customer satisfaction measurement. Miner is the founder and President of The Dunvegan Group Ltd., a company specializing in business research and customer retention consulting services.

How Marketing Brings Value – and How You Prove It

Marketing can bring value to a company in countless ways. It has been known to increase sales by 50% percent with existing customers in 3 years or double market share within 5 years. It can educate markets on new products or services, or upsell enhanced features on existing ones to generate more revenue. Smart marketing can strengthen reputations, squash marketplace rumors, and build a brand that stronger than David Cook’s victorious ratings on American Idol.

During this panel discussion, you will hear unique perspectives from transportation marketing practitioners who have successfully incorporated marketing strategies to bring value and results to their companies. This session will provide you:

• First-hand examples of how leading-edge marketing has generated optimum ROI.
• Ideas on how to diversify your integrated programs to ensure success, ranging from direct mail and one-to-one relationship-building initiatives to PR, advertising, and e-marketing campaigns.
• Guidance on how to ensure results are measured and reported to ensure continual engagement and full buy-in from top management in the value of marketing.

General Session on Media Relations: "How To Get Results in PR"

You'll hear frank discussion from a business-to-business editorial veteran in the transportation media on what you should do to be effective in PR - and what is career suicide in terms of working with the press. This session will provide practical tips on how to maximize your ability to generate industry-wide media coverage of your organization (particularly as it relates to approaching editors with story ideas and details) and the steps necessary to follow through to the desired published results. Topics include:

• Decoding an editorial calendar
• Making the pitch to the editor
• Engaging potential shippers and other contacts the editor will be looking for
• Getting the editors and writers what they ultimately need

Michael Levans is Group Editorial Director for “Logistics Management” magazine. A 20-year newspaper, B2B magazine, and web-content veteran, Michael took the helm of LM editorial in 2004. Before joining LM, he directed editorial efforts, launched publications and conferences, and built web communities covering business IT, medical device, and high-tech manufacturing. Of the B2B markets he’s covered, he says logistics and transportation is by far the most engaging.

Special Interest Group Dialogues (Lunch Included)

Talk with other industry marketing pros about specific issues. These facilitated discussion groups will be an excellent opportunity for you to network with your peers who have similar interests, goals, and challenges. Choose a topic that interests you most, including:

• Charting the Right Course through Strategic Planning
• The Good, the Bad, the Ugly: Gaining Buy-in From Management
• Marketing Metrics and Dashboards, 2.0
• Harnessing the Power of Social Media
• Advertising that Builds Brands and Drives Sales
• If It Moves, Measure It! Steps to Evaluating RO

Case Studies: “Award-Winning Marketing Tactics Featuring Compass Awards Strategies”

What makes a strategic marketing initiative a success? The definition of success is different, depending upon your perspective—whether you’re in the boardroom, in the sales depart­ment, a customer or a prospect. You’ll gain new ideas as you hear successful case studies on how today’s marketing and communications professional can identify corporate needs, set goals, overcome obstacles, budget resources, and measure success. These success stories will be told directly from your peers!

Closing Keynote: "Building The Brand Powerhouse"

The marketing structure in most companies today flourished in a simpler time…one of rapid economic growth, isolation from foreign competition and buyers who were willing to let their suppliers define technology solutions. Today, all of the complex technologies and product features that won the day for companies are only tickets to the game today. The growth in global markets with more aggressive, diverse competitors has trampled the barriers of technological advantage and the differences between products has disappeared.

The long term prospect is that we likely will see small incremental product improvements and derivatives, but fewer and fewer genuine breakthroughs and business model innovation matters more than the innovations in the products and services we sell. Companies simply cannot afford to operate only as product-focused.

In this session, we'll learn that for both marketing theory and actual practice, the most dramatic implication in this new environment is in the complete transformation of the company's essence, and the delivery of the concept of the company as a brand entity. And with that, more emphasis on building brands, growing brands and givingmore attention to managing brand equity.