As a Marketing Coordinator working in a government contracting office I can only learn so much about actual marketing. When I’m not working with our subcontractor (at an actual marketing firm), I need to stay abreast of the latest marketing trends going on in the marketing field. I don’t want to become obselete (even though I graduated last year from college) but they always say your degree is basically only relevant for 5 years post graduation.
A great tool I’ve found to help me keep up on what’s going on in the marketing world is American Marketing Association (AMA) webinars. They’re an awesome resource and best of all free. At least once a week I try to set aside a hour (webinars are broadcasted 1 pm EST) to watch one webinar. The last one I watched was “Dodging the Vectors” which explained the evolving designer who is constantly having to adapt to the pressures of the marketing/account manager’s demands. It was really insightful on how to think through a creative lens. 
What’s also great about AMA webinars is that you get a copy of the webinar either via slides, PDF, or recorded webcast, after the webinar. This makes it easy to look back for future reference in case you need to research information on a particular marketing topic. I’ve started a little library on my laptop so for future projects where research is needed, I can just look in my folder and pull whatever I’m looking for.
A couple things you should keep in mind when registering for an AMA webinar are the companies that host the webinars might want to follow-up with you after the webinar to sell their services. This has happened to me a few times where I have received calls or emails for product managers. It’s a great marketing tool for them since webinars create a solid database of potential clients. I however am only a Marketing Cooridnator so I have very small say in what our contracting office will use as far as services. That’s the only caveat to registering for AMA webinars.
Here a some webinars that are coming up:
- The Science of Lead Generation: Scientifically Proven Ways to Get More Leads (12/1/2010)
- Secrets of Marketing Webinars (12/10/2010)
- Do It Yourself (DIY) Concept Testing (12/17/2010)
- Everything We Know About Measuring Marketing Effectiveness in One Hour (1/7/2010)
- Customer Intelligence: The New Frontier of Customer Voice (12/8/2010)
