As Net-Results made its debut trade show appearance at ad:tech Chicago, 2009, we were extremely pleased and excited at the turnout and fantastic response to us and the growing response to Marketing Automation. Although ad:tech Chicago is regarded as the least attended in the ad:tech conference series, we were pleasantly surprised at the amount of attendees that had their hands on the latest in marketing technology strategies, tactics and tools.
All visitors to the booth were eager to see how Net-Results could either help them from a demand generation platform stand point to grow their own business, or how they could add Net-Results to their current offerings as consultants or agencies, to increase theirs and the bottom lines of their own clients. It also seemed that although their were exhibitors with similar offerings to Net-Results, such as lead generation, shopping cart abandonment tracking, email marketing, and customer relationship management, there really was no one product or company that combined the unique offerings of our software.
One of the most prevalent topics both at our both, and throughout the conference exhibits and key notes, was the hard to ignore social and mobile media marketing takeover. While Rishad Tobaccowala brought his in-depth industry insight and uniquely colorful assessment of the state of the industry to ad:tech, it became more and more clear that social media is not just a fad, and is most likely sticking around for a while. This only encouraged founder and CEO of Net-Results, Michael Ward to talk excitedly with just about every single exhibitor at the conference, about how effectively companies and individuals could manage their social media advertising campaigns and platforms with marketing automation and demand generation.
Tuesday night we joined Tatto Media and targetbase in sponsoring the ad:tech opening night festivities at Enclave in downtown Chicago. The turnout of the event was excellent, drinks were flowing, business connections were being made, and the highlight of the evening? The Net-Results/Career Builder dance off.
Wednesday, the last day of the conference, as each of the exhibitors emerged a bit slower than they had the day before, after a long night of networking and dancing, the conference unfortunately began to come to a close. Wednesday seemed to mainly be a local’s only event, as local Illinois businesses and consultants scattered through the exhibit hall, not quite as tired as the rest of us, having the opportunity to sleep in their own beds rather than in a hotel room. Wednesday gave us the opportunity to meet and discuss our product and services with many of Illinois’s most savvy and informed internet marketers.
Although the event planners at Net-Results were initially hesitant to exhibit at this year’s ad:tech Chicago, this show proved itself to be well worth the time, energy and effort.
