We will be back starting November, so don’t worry. In the meantime get ready for PHXDW!

It is going to be a major event, filled with exhibits, film festivals, national and local keynotes and lots of networking with like minded marketing/ad professionals, interactive, motion and graphic designers.

The full schedule has been posted at http://www.phxdw.com

AND if you haven’t purchased your tickets, it is a STEAL at $40 for everything, exhibits, film festival, evening party and conference.

Purchase your tickets here: http://phxdw.eventbrite.com

Finally, a big thank you to all the people in Phoenix who have helped support the event. Take the time to visit our sponsor list, as there is an amazing group of individuals, agencies small and large and related businesses that have donated a bit more to make this week happen.

The following is a guest post from Margie Traylor, CEO of Sitewire Marketspace Solutions

Any business person will tell you just how difficult it is to say no to new business. It seems counter intuitive especially in this economy and for anyone trying to achieve their sales goals. But let me tell you from experience, it can be one of the best things you can ever do to grow your business.

How do you say no? How do you know when to say no and why? Why would saying no to customers help grow your business? These are just a few of the questions I’m sure you are asking. You need to have well defined qualifying criteria to assess fit of new opportunities by answering the following questions. Who is your ideal customer? How big are they? How much budget should they have for your product or service? Do they value what you have to offer? Who is the ideal buyer? What industry or geography are they in? What is their persona? What are their points of pain? Are they in a financially viable industry? Where are they in the buying cycle? What is the status of their relationship with the incumbent firm? All of these questions and more need to be answered before you can say no to anyone.

Once you’ve answered those many questions then you are ready to create your target filter. a target filter is the set of guidelines you use to determine whether or not a new opportunity is a good fit for your business. When you are done creating your target filter you should be able to consistently and with discipline know when to say no and why. To test your target filter take a few of your existing ideal customers and test the target filter against their criteria. If they pass 80% of the target filter tests, then you are on the right track, and ready to grow your business. If they fail, you may want to assess whether your target filter criteria are right of if you’ve got an existing customer on your roster that really doesn’t fit anymore.

We learned how to create our target filter when we were introduced to the Whale Hunters methodology for landing big deals. At Sitewire, our target filter has saved us many hours of chasing business and wasting our time on new opportunities that don’t fit. Typically chasing one of these “non-conforming” opportunities results in either us not winning the business, or if we win it, lower than average profits and short-term customer dissatisfaction and turnover. Saying no early to business that doesn’t fit allows us to pursue fewer, higher quality deals and has translated into a 50% close rate for new business. Our customer relationships are much more satisfactory and profitable because they are a good fit from the beginning.

So, if you want to just say no to business that doesn’t fit, develop a strong target filter, apply it consistently and with discipline. Learn to say no to new business and watch your bottom line grow!

More about Margie:

Margie Traylor is the CEO and Co-Founder of Sitewire Marketspace Solutions, LLC. As an online marketing agency in Arizona, Sitewire is focused on customer attraction, conversion and retention through strategic, customized online marketing efforts. These efforts often include search engine marketing, social media consulting, media buying and planning, Web development, Web and advertisement design, and much more.

Know of great conferences not on this list? Post the info in the comments!

January 17-19, 2010
Affiliate Summit West (Las Vegas)
http://www.affiliatesummit.com/

January 20-22, 2010
MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Summit (Miami)
http://www.sherpastore.com/EmailSummit2010.html?1154

January 26, 2010
PR & Social Networking in Practice (London)
http://www.haymarketevents.com/conferenceDetail/396/pr-social-networking-practice

January 28-29, 2010
Corporate Image and Branding Conference (New York)
http://www.conference-board.org/conferences/conference.cfm?id=2020

February 1-3, 2010
Email Evolution Conference (Miami)
http://www.the-dma.org/conferences/emailevolution/

February 4-7, 2010
Interaction 10 (Savannah)
http://interaction.ixda.org/

February 9-13, 2010
TEDActive (Palm Springs)
http://conferences.ted.com/TED2010/program/TEDActive.php

February 11, 2010
ANA TV & Everything Video Forum (New York)
http://www.ana.net/events/conferencemtg/TAF-FEB10

February 16-18, 2010
Search Engine Strategies (London)
http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/london/

February 22-23, 2010
In Control (Orlando)
http://2010.incontrolconference.com/

February 23-24, 2010
Technology for Marketing & Advertising (London)
http://www.t-f-m.co.uk/

February 24, 2010
http://www.haymarketevents.com/conferenceDetail/405/pr-media-2010 (http://www.haymarketevents.com/conferenceDetail/405/pr-media-2010)
PR and the Media (London)

March 2-4, 2010
Search Marketing Expo West (Santa Clara)
http://searchmarketingexpo.com/west

March 3, 2010
Digital Cream (London)
http://econsultancy.com/events/digital-cream

March 10-11, 2010
Digital Hollywood Media Summit (New York)
http://www.digitalhollywood.com/MediaSummit.html

March 12-16
SXSW Interactive (Austin)
http://sxsw.com/interactive

March 16-17, 2010
ad:tech Sydney (Sydney)
http://www.ad-tech.com/sydney/adtech_sydney.aspx

March 17-18, 2010
ANA Advertising Law & Business Affairs Conference (Washington DC)
http://www.ana.net/events/conferencemtg/LAW-MAR10

March 18-21, 2010
AAA Annual Conference (Minneapolis)
http://www.aaasite.org/Conference.html

March 22-26, 2010
Search Engine Strategies (New York)
http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/newyork/

March 22-23, 2010
Marketing 2.0 (Paris)
http://www.marketing2conference.com/2010/

March 23-24, 2010
PMA Integrated Marketing Conference (Chicago)
http://www.pmalink.org/annual/

March 23-24, 2010
Search Marketing Expo Munich (Munich)
http://searchmarketingexpo.com/munich

April 5-7, 2010
An Event Apart (Seattle)
http://aneventapart.com/

April 7-8, 2010
ad:tech Paris (Paris)
http://www.ad-tech.com/paris/paris_en.aspx

April 13-14, 2010
Ad Age Digital Conference (New York)
http://adage.com/aaevents/article?article_id=138630

April 13-14
The Internet Show (Melbourne)
http://www.terrapinn.com/2010/melbourne/index.stm

April 13-15, 2010
PubCon (Dallas)
http://www.pubcon.com/blog/index.cgi?mode=viewone&blog=1253199060

April 14-16, 2010
FUSE 2010 (Chicago)
http://www.iirusa.com/fuse/fuse-2009.xml

April 15-16, 2010
The 99% (New York)
http://the99percent.com/

April 20-22, 2010
ad:tech San Francisco (San Francisco)
http://www.ad-tech.com/sf/adtech_san_francisco.aspx

April 21-23, 2010
The Next Web (Amsterdam)
http://thenextweb.com/2010/

April 22-23, 2010
Search Marketing Expo Sydney (Sydney)
http://www.searchmarketingexpo.com.au/

April 25-28, 2010
ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference (Boca Raton)
http://www.ana.net/events/conferencemtg/AFM-APR10

May 3-5, 2010
CMS Expo (Evanston)
http://www.cmsexpo.net/

May 3-6, 2010
Web 2.0 Expo (San Francisco)
http://www.web2expo.com/

May 17, 2010
International Design Conference (Dubrovnik)
http://www.designconference.org/

May 19, 2010
ANA Brand Conference (New York)
http://www.ana.net/events/conferencemtg/BIC-MAY10

May 19-21, 2010
WebVisions (Portland)
http://www.webvisionsevent.com/

May 24-25, 2010
An Event Apart (Boston)
http://aneventapart.com/

May 24-26, 2010
ACCM Annual Conference (Orlando)
http://www.accmshow.com/ACCM2010/public/enter.aspx

June 2-5, 2010
SEGD Conference + Expo (Washington DC)
http://www.segd.org/conference/

June 4-6, 2010
AAA European Conference (Milano)
http://www.aaasite.org/Conference.html

June 6-9, 2010
HOW Design Conference (Denver)
http://www.howconference.com/GeneralMenu

June 7-14, 2010
Internet Week New York (New York)
http://www.internetweekny.com/

June 8-9, 2010
Search marketing Expo Advanced (Seattle)
http://searchmarketingexpo.com/advanced

June 10-12, 2010
AAF National Conference (Orlando)
http://www.aaf.org/default.asp?id=888

June 29-30, 2010
Online Marketing Show (London)
http://www.onlinemarketingshow.co.uk/

Pulptures is a Paper Sculpture Exhibit at Phoenix Design Week, and it is a chance for graphic designers who love paper, to have some fun. Whether it be recycled paper, decorative paper, phone books, toilet paper rolls, or whatever, we want to see some cool 3D work.

Rejected is an exhibit revealing beautiful logo designs that were dismissed by your client. We don’t want just rejected work, but great rejected work. Submit your best logo designs that will never again see the light of day!

If you’d like to submit your own designs to exhibit, send email to melissa@phxdw.com with a description and examples. Submission deadine is Sept. 21st!

For more info, visit http://phxdw.com

Thanks to Ed Brice, SVP of Global Marketing at Lumension, for being our inaugural executive. There are some great insights below so take some time out, grab a cup of tea or coffee and read on.

Tell us about yourself and the company you work for?

I’m currently the SVP of worldwide marketing for Lumension. Lumension is a fast growth company developing software solutions that help companies to effectively manage their endpoints, protect sensitive corporate data, better meet their compliance and regulatory requirements, and achieve lower total cost of ownership.

Marketers tend to come from varied backgrounds because of the intricacies between marketing and other facets of organizations. Tell us your background and how you got into marketing.

I am originally from Arizona and attended Arizona State University where I majored in international marketing. Technically I’ve always been focused on marketing. After college I decided to break out of Arizona and went back East to work for a manufacturing company as a salesperson. It was a real eye opening experience for me because I learned the technical and the business side of sales. After a short stint there,  I moved out to Los Angeles where I found my way back to marketing working for a very successful start up Global Positioning System (GPS)Technology company.  I then came back to Arizona to work for Motorola as a lead for product management and marketing teams. However, when a new opportunity opened up at Sony Electronics to lead their go-to-market effort for GPS in the US, that opportunity took me back to the East Coast. After Sony I went to work for the CMO of SAP where I helped to define a new brand strategy. There, I held various management positions in global marketing and demand generation. While I loved working at SAP, my wanderlust crept in and I really desired a new challenge where I could put all that I had learned into practice, and found a great opportunity back in Arizona with Lumension. The rest, as they say, is history.

How do you engage and track the effectiveness of that engagement with your customers?

The first principle I follow is NIHIO: Nothing Interesting Happens in the Office. This is the most old school concept, yet I find it to be the most effective approach in my view and that’s basically wearing out some shoe leather meeting and visiting customers. This, of course, is easy for sales but it’s harder for marketing to create these engagement opportunities. Great messaging comes from being in the field, not through consultants. I also recommend that you work with your teams to establish a customer communication program. For example, we work diligently on building monthly touch points that deliver value added information that our customers can use in their daily roles. This programmatic way of thinking led us to focus on building new communication channels and not just relying on the traditional marketing push tactics using the old communication channels. As a result we recently launched our new customer community called “Lumension Connect”. This is an online customer forum where we can connect, collaborate and co-innovate as well as  share ideas, not just between Lumension and our customers, but also foster dialogue between customers. This way of thinking opens up the possibilities in what I think will become the greatest opportunity for organizations and that is to co-innovate within their ecosystem (customers, partners etc). For smaller companies like us this ability to communicate and co-innovate with our ecosystem greatly levels the playing fields with companies much larger than ourselves. One early example of how we are doing this is with our “content garden” in the Lumension Connect Community. In the Content Garden customers can create new software widgets which can then be distributed across IT systems currently utilizing our solutions. Customers can create these widgets to do specific tasks and share with other customers, a pure peer-to-peer experience. It’s also important to realize, that at the end of the day, your customers are now defining your brand experience because they can share and communicate with other users online. Making your customers part of your brand experience strategy is vital in today’s world. We also have a program where we survey and track our customers’ perceptions and calculate a Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS is basically how many customers would refer you on to other people, and is a great indicator of your overall degree of satisfaction. We do this survey annually, and benchmark ourselves to other companies in the same industry, so we can get a good comparative view on where we stand, and where we need to improve.

How do you and/or your team stay on top of emerging marketing or technology trends that could help you market to potential or current customers?

This is a challenge for any organization in today’s fast paced world, and especially in the marketing function that has undergone dramatic shifts in technology, required skill sets, and new approaches. It’s important to realize that nobody can ever stop learning, and it’s the skill set of your team, versus the skill set of your competitors that will differentiate your success. So education and training are vital to me as it is more cost effective and efficient for me to add new skill sets to existing personnel than to hire new roles.

Education is part of everyone’s MBO and everyone is given at least 1 outside educational opportunity. For example, I sent two of my team members to a two day seminar to learn how to better optimize landing pages and email campaigns. As a result, conversions have tripled and the team now has a zeal now for testing. We also partake in the global and local marketing community. We attend seminars and read blogs from other thought leaders while trying new things and testing it in real life. We can never stop innovating as a team and, I believe that education and awareness of new approaches is vital to our success.

With the recent popularity of social media platforms such as Twitter, where does social media marketing fit within your organization or your marketing strategy?

Social media is a major part of our marketing and communications strategy. It’s important to realize that the old marketing model of “awareness drives perception” is no longer relevant in today’s world. The days of advertising, cakes and cookies, pretty pictures and big events are being relegated to an ever decreasing role, at least in my marketing mix. The reason why this model has changed is related to what I have said before – you are no longer in control of your brand experience, customers are. What your ecosystem writes, films, blogs and shares are now influencing your brand. You can decide to either engage in that conversation or not, but the conversation is taking place everyday. Just look at the impact that word of mouth has in this frictionless conversational digital world we live in today. A person can write a song about the poor customer service he received from a major airline and have over 1M views on YouTube by the end of the weekend. By participating, listening and monitoring to the conversations online, you and your business can succeed in today’s world. To that end, social media is vital to our business strategy in getting our messaging out there, communicating with our ecosystem, and listening to what others are saying about us. However, be careful when you define goals for social media. In my view it is not about leads and sales. It’s about building advocacy, trust, and conversation. These are longer term goals, and harder to measure the value created in the traditional sense so you have to look at the return on influence or value as I like to put it.

What does your dream marketing campaign look like? And, how do you want it to affect your customers?

It wouldn’t be a campaign at all in the traditional sense. It would be an active, conversational, dialogue within and across our ecosystem that would drive a powerful and emotional brand experience and new levels of co-innovation within our ecosystem.  We take a multi-tiered approach to communicating with our customers, partners, prospects and media/analysts. For every campaign such as the one we’re currently working on called Re-Thinking the Blueprint for Endpoint Security, we first define our objectives/goals, strategy and tactics to support our execution. This includes an integrated approach – Social Media, webinar, ebooks, blog posts, whitepapers, social media news release, and traditional PR outreach to help build awareness, drive demand and SEO, and elevate our thought leadership. You’ll see some great things come out of marketing that not a lot of companies are doing today and that is due in part to the cohesive approach of the team and the integrated, programmatic side of our execution strategy.

Tell us what future marketers should be focused on if they are in college or just starting their career?

Future marketers need to realize that the traditional marketing model has changed. The principles are still the same, but the tools and approach have changed significantly.  They also need to realize that the people you will be working for may be steeped in the old way of thinking. You must build bridges of understanding between these two worlds for you to have success. Business is still about bringing in more revenue and demonstrating ROI (not the return on influence) than what you send out and wrapping the new marketing approaches around that goal in ways that all can understand will be important. Marketing today is more about publishing as content is king. We must know our personas inside and out and develop value-added and relevant content to those personas that will help them in their decision making process across the buying cycle. One important note to remember is that in many ways marketing today is more about science than creativity. Always be focused in building out key skill sets as this will ensure a strong value adding role to any organization.

What will the Phoenix marketing landscape look like in 10 years? Any dramatic shifts you see on the horizon and how will that affect your marketing strategy?

That is an interesting question. I left the Phoenix area for more than 12 years and have worked for very large multinational corporations. Upon coming back to the local market I see a vibrant entrepreneurial community. However, I also see a market that is very challenging to find the level of skill set required for today’s marketing function, especially if you’re a larger company. We have a plentiful resource of young professionals, but in many cases they lack the level of experience and skill set. I find that across more seasoned professionals there is a lack of core skill sets necessary for the more scientific areas of marketing and a general lack of understanding of how the marketing function and role within a company have  changed. This makes it difficult for companies to hire the best talent from the local area, and these companies have to either outsource, relocate or establish virtual resources. This is different from larger metro areas where you can easily find experts dedicated to very specific areas of the marketing model.

Marketing is much more specialized versus generalized today. During my travels I have come across a very active marketing community in Atlanta that is really bent on bringing in the best thought leaders from the outside to stimulate, train and create dialogue across new ways of thinking about marketing. While I see exciting opportunities in Phoenix, especially with some of our younger marketing professionals getting together and exploring these new ideas, we must scale that “outside” thought leadership and, in doing so, we need to get all aspects of our marketing community focused on learning, sharing, and innovating on marketing here in Phoenix. We must develop a skill base, in marketing, in the valley that is on par with that of the larger metro areas. It’s not that it’s not happening, but it’s really a question of needing to come together as a community to do more, in a bigger way, and at a much faster pace than what we are moving at today, or our level of competitiveness will decline on the global stage.

Any additional insights for our readers?

The fundamental principles of marketing have not changed, but the approach and the tools we use have changed significantly. Know your persona, content is king, and think like a publisher. Also, learning and innovating your skill set will remain vital to success.

Tell us what you think of this new series. What questions should or shouldn’t we be asking?

Get all the info over at http://bit.ly/eS8St and don’t worry, proceeds will go to support Twestival/St. Mary’s Food Bank.

Some of the speakers present at this exciting conference include industry-specific keynotes from Guy Kawasaki, Bryan Eisenberg, and Jim Lecinski (Managing Director, Google).  The conference will also include eight sessions where attendees can learn analytics packages, email management tools, social sentiment tracking tools, mobile marketing tools, PPC management tools, etc. There will also be three hands-on training sessions for an entire afternoon, including an advanced search marketing session and a Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn for agencies session.  Also on tap are a host of breakout sessions, a few panel discussions and a usability best practices review of attendee-submitted sites.

The event runs from October 11-14 at the Hotel Valley Ho in Scottsdale.

Everything in the schedule is geared specifically towards advertising, marketing, PR and design agencies, typically with under 50 employees.  The content of the event was put together to address needs that are unique to them and is focused more on local and regional players as opposed to national marketers.  For instance, there is a breakout on how to price and sell social media engagements and another on whether or not it makes sense to engage Twitter on behalf of a client.  This is one of the key things that differentiates BOLO from other events — a small agency focus and a commitment to actionable learning.

Register for the event today!

Local attendees who register before August 28, 2009 will receive free attendance at a 2-day, hands-on training session. The hands-on sessions are typically $799, so for anyone looking to get some extensive training, this is a great option. In this instance, registrants would need to call Lacey French at 480.355.0074 to receive this offer.

Bolo is put on by agencyside, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sitewire.

To resolve this issue, the promotions group working with Phoenix Design Week thought up the Phoenix Design Poster Contest where anyone can submit a poster design that they feel represents themselves, represents the spirit of Phoenix design (not the clichés) while demonstarting the diversity, talent, and intelligence of the design community.

To make it more fun/interesting, they tacked on a prize for the best poster; the possibility of having their poster placed into the swag packs handed out to all Phoenix Design Week attendees. Though this is great exposure for the artist, it’s not really the point of the entire contest.

Some people were upset by this, making it seem as if Design Week was going against the AIGA standard of “spec” work by holding this contest. To be 100% clear, Phoenix Design Week does not consider this spec work, and they are 100% against such practices. The AIGA lists the differences between purely spec work and uncompensated work in their position on spec work article. Some people have pointed to the “contest” part as an example of this, but Phoenix Design Week has responded by saying they think the idea applies only to things like 99designs, not a community building poster exhibition.

Each piece submitted will be displayed on the Phoenix Design Week website and a certain number of them will be printed and displayed in an exhibition during the week’s events in October. Everyone who submits wins on some level, it’s just the enticement of an additional level of exposure that some have viewed as being out of line with AIGA’s standards of practice.

This article was written to invite everyone to join in on the designs, to take a few hours from the daily humdrum of day-to-day work and go crazy, have fun, and make a poster about who YOU are, and how your work represents the talent in Phoenix.

What do you think Phoenix Design is?

Show us.

Objectified is a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the designers who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability.

Through vérité footage and in-depth conversations, the film documents the creative processes of some of the world’s most influential product designers, and looks at how the things they make impact our lives. What can we learn about who we are, and who we want to be, from the objects with which we surround ourselves?

There will be an after party at La Bocca immediately after the film with Q & A featuring an AIGA wine special!

Tickets on sale now:
Sunday, August 16, 2009 | 7 p.m.
Harkin’s Valley Art Theatre | 505 South Mill Avenue | Tempe, AZ
Cost: $12 AIGA members | $15 for non-members

For questions, contact programs@arizona.aiga.org.