In this all-day conference, you will learn how to engage your customers and prospects online through your website and social media and track your activities so that you know what is working and what needs to be adjusted. Join us to build your marketing toolkit and take a time-out to learn more!
8:30 am – 10:30 am Finding Your People: How to Identify and Attract Your Ideal Audience (presented by: Justine Kessler)
“When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one.” – Meredith Hill
Defining and understanding your target audience can help you create more effective sales and marketing strategies, build stronger customer relationships, and ultimately achieve greater success. This session will feature practical exercises and real-world examples to help you learn how to create effective marketing strategies that resonate with your customers. We’ll go inside one well-known local brand to understand the insights that drove them to redefine their target audience, explore how this change influenced their business decisions, and evaluate the resulting business impact – and then we’ll apply these principles to help you define or refine your own audience profile.
Session objectives:
- Understand how target audience identification can help guide and focus your business decisions
- Learn how to define your target audience and create detailed customer personas to inform sales and marketing strategies
- Feel confident using practical audience research techniques like surveys, social media insights, and listening sessions to further enhance your understanding of your target audience
10:30 am-10:45 am Break
10:45 am – 12:15 pm Harnessing AI: Strategies to Supercharge Your Business Development and Marketing (presented by: Garth Beyer)
Start scratching the surface of artificial intelligence, and discover the transformative power of AI tools in business development and marketing. In this session, we will explore practical strategies to leverage artificial intelligence for optimizing the launch of a business, accelerating growth, and enhancing customer engagement. Whether you’re a startup or looking to modernize your approach to an existing business, this presentation will provide actionable insights and real-world examples to help you integrate AI effectively. Tools we plan to share (knowing this stuff changes all the time!) include: Jasper AI, Rytr, Perplexity, DALL-E, Fireflies, Canva, and ChatGPT.
In this engaging presentation, we’ll discuss lessons learned from experienced marketers and demonstrate first-hand how AI can benefit your business.
12:15 pm – 1:15 pm Lunch
1:15 pm – 2:30 pm Master the Facebook Ads Manager (presented by: Josh Klemons)
Do you know how well your ads are performing? You should! If you’re NOT running ads in the Facebook Ads Manager, you’re leaving money on the table.
The Facebook Ads Manager is where ads should be built, tested and monitored. It provides you tools and insights far beyond what you can find in the Ads Center.
In this session, we’ll cover building audiences, how to develop and A/B test creative, navigating your analytics to ensure you’re getting the most for your money and much more.
Here are some of the things we’ll cover in this comprehensive training:
- Setting up your Business and Ads Manager accounts
- Building custom audiences, allowing you to target (and retarget!) your email list, people who visit your site, people who engage with your accounts and more
- Building lookalike audiences off of your high-performing custom audiences
- Building saved audiences of people based off of interest, location and demographics
- The difference between a campaign, an ad set and an ad (and why it matters!)
- How to build and A/B test powerful creative
- Different types of ad objectives, what they all mean and when to use which one
…and much much more!
2:45 pm – 4:15 pm Minimal Effort, Maximum Impact: Digital Marketing Basics for Busy Entrepreneurs (presented by: Emily Ruyle)
Enter the fast-paced world of digital marketing with “Minimal Effort, Maximum Impact: Digital Marketing Basics for Busy Entrepreneurs.”
This session is designed to show you how to make a big impact with minimal effort. We’ll cover essential tactics like email marketing and social proof that can drive significant growth for your business, even when time and experience are limited.
You’ll walk away with actionable strategies and examples that demonstrate how these simple yet powerful tools can be integrated into your busy schedule. Get ready to maximize your marketing efforts with strategies designed specifically for small business owners on the go.
4:15 pm – 4:30 pm Complete session evaluation & wrap-up for the day!
Registration
Location: Grainger Hall, Wisconsin School of Business, UW-Madison
Schedule: 8:30 am- 4:30 pm
Date: November 21, 2024
Course Fee: $309 (Includes boxed lunch. We cannot guarantee lunch for those who register less than 2 weeks ahead of the event)
Registration Deadlines
| Registration type | Date | Fee |
| Earlybird | Earlybird closes: 10/31/2024 | Earlybird Registration Fee: $278.10 |
| Late Registration | Late Registration begins: 11/13/2024 | Late Registration Fee: $339.90 |
| Course registration closes | — |
Register HERE for Fall 2024 or call 608-262-2451 to register. BONUS: Place 2 or more paid leadership courses in your cart, and use discount code SBDC10 for 10% off. Classes must be purchased in the same transaction.
Registration & Cancellation policies
- Payment will be required at time of registration. You must have either a credit card or valid UW-Madison funding string to be able to register.
- We cannot guarantee that a meal can be provided for in-person participants registering less than 14 days prior to the event date.
- Cancelations at least 24 hours before the program begins will incur a $25 cancellation fee. Cancelations less than 24 hours before the start of the program will incur the full program fee. To cancel, call registration at 608-262-2451. Please note that in the case of a cancellation (by either the participant or the SBDC), participants can only be transferred one time into a new course.
Disability Statement: Reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities will be made if requested at least two weeks in advance. Contact the UW-Madison SBDC office at sbdc@bus.wisc.edu to request accommodations.
Learned so much and also gained confidence in my current strategies and inspiration for future ideas!
Sales & Marketing, Fortune Favors
This was super informative and helped me not be so afraid of advertising... The speaker was lovely + very informative. Great materials to keep us reminded of everything after class!
Angle Liehme, Owner, 2024 Participant
The conference was efficient and welcoming!
Site supervisor, Discovery Education Station, 2024 participant
Such a wonderful day. Inspirational and informative.
Manager, Green Life Trading Co., 2023 participant
Each speaker took their ideas and introduced them at my level of understanding and provided simple, easy ideas and examples to implement... thank you for taking the fear out of marketing my business! I feel empowered to grow!
Justine Leo, Elbi Interiors, 2023 participant
The open conversations and ability to chat one-on-one with the presenters was amazing!
Marketing Specialist, UW Interdisciplinary Professional Programs, 2023 participant
The variety of topics made for a really fun day!
Marketing Specialist, UW E-Business Consortium, 2023 participant
The speaker was lovely + very informative. Great materials to keep us reminded of everything after class... Automating needs to be added to a list of monthly to-dos!
Angle Liehme, Owner, 2024 Participant
Presenters, Fall 2024
Session: Finding Your People: How to Identify and Attract Your Ideal Audience
Presenter: Justine Kessler
As a strategic marketing executive, Justine’s passion ignites when she’s able to leverage the art and science of marketing to help grow brands that improve people’s lives. For over 20 years, Justine has helped build strong brands, attract and grow customers, develop high-performing teams, and drive business success for healthcare and financial services organizations.
Known as a dynamic changemaker, Justine leverages collaboration, curiosity and authenticity to deliver high-impact strategies and drive meaningful change.
Prior to her current role as Director, B2B Marketing Strategy at Labcorp, Justine held marketing leadership positions at UW Credit Union, Healthgrades, and image.works.
Justine holds a master’s degree in marketing and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin, as well as a professional certificate in executive leadership from the Wisconsin School of Business.
Session: Harnessing AI: Strategies to Supercharge Your Business Development and Marketing
Presenter: Garth Beyer, Garth’s Brew Bar
Garth Beyer is the owner of the award-winning beer bar, Garth’s Brew Bar, and marketing manager of beverage production solutions for Encompass Technologies. He’s also a freelance beer writer, showing up in publications like Madison Magazine, Men’s Health, and others. Garth is also a Certified Cicerone® (the beer equivalent of a sommelier for wine) and loves going on hikes with his wife, two daughters and Bernese mountain dog.
Session: Minimal Effort, Maximum Impact: Digital Marketing Basics for Busy Entrepreneurs
Presenter: Emily Ruyle, Marketing Strategist, Small Business Advocate, and Digital Marketing Expert
Emily Ruyle is a seasoned marketing strategist with over a two decades of experience in helping small businesses navigate the world of digital marketing. As a former seven-figure e-commerce business owner, Emily brings firsthand knowledge of the challenges and opportunities that small business owners face in today’s competitive landscape.
Currently serving as the Marketing Manager at the Wisconsin Historical Society, Emily has spearheaded numerous successful campaigns that have driven engagement, boosted sales, and strengthened brand presence. Her approach is rooted in understanding the unique needs of small business owners, particularly those who are short on time and resources.
Emily’s expertise spans a wide range of digital marketing tactics, from email and SMS marketing, content marketing, paid social, to building a subscription membership, all designed to maximize impact with minimal effort. She believes that with the right tools and a clear strategy, any small business can thrive in the digital space.
A sought-after strategic consultant, Emily is dedicated to demystifying digital marketing for small business owners. Her practical, no-nonsense advice has helped countless entrepreneurs build sustainable marketing practices that drive growth and success.
When she’s not helping businesses thrive, Emily enjoys traveling the world, painting, and spending time with her family.
Session: Master the Facebook Ads Manager
Presenter: Josh Klemons
Josh Klemons is a Digital Storyteller/Strategist and the founder of Reverbal Communications. He and his team help progressive campaigns, brands and organizations find, hone and tell their stories online.
He’s done social media and digital marketing work with local, statewide, national and international political campaigns, tiny non-profits, Fortune 500 companies and everything in between.
He writes, teaches, trains, presents, podcasts and consults regularly on social media, digital marketing and ways brands can reach, engage and expand their audiences online.
He has served:
- As Board President for Social Media Breakfast Madison
- On the board of The Daily Cardinal
- On the Marketing Committee for the United Way of Dane County
He has a BA in Advertising he never thought he’d use… but now uses every day. And an MA in International Peace and Conflict Resolution with a concentration in the Middle East that is occasionally useful in his daily life.
For some, digital marketing’s a good gig — for Josh, it’s a passion. He never tires of guiding brands, organizations and political campaigns through the ever-changing landscape of the internet. He wears his passion on his sleeve, and it’s one of the things he hears most often following consultations or public speaking gigs: that his passion for the industry is both infectious and inspiring.
He reads dozens of newsletters, listens to hours of podcasts and endlessly scrolls social media… so you don’t have to!
The Wisconsin SBDC Network is a proud part of the Institute for Business & Entrepreneurship in the University of Wisconsin System.
It is funded in part through a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities will be made if requested at least two weeks in advance. Contact us at sbdc@bus.wisc.edu or call (608) 263-2221.