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Q and A with Christian Thomson

Canadian Internet Marketing Conference coming to Squamish

Squamish will host the 2015 Canadian Internet Marketing Conference at Quest University March 28-29. This is the first digital marketing conference of its kind to be held in the district.

Hundreds of business owners and web folk are expected to descend on Squamish to take in the 25-plus internationally recognized speakers, including Google’s Fab Dolan and Strategy Magazine’s Emily Wexler. 

Squamish’s Christian Thomson, owner of the local business Marwick Internet Marketing, explains more about the conference, which he is organizing with Darian Kovacs.

 

Q: What are you most excited about in terms of the conference? 

A: Learning from all the people I want to learn from in our industry. This started out for purely selfish reasons – like bettering my own understanding of how Internet marketing works. We drew up a list of all the people we really wanted to learn from and then asked them to come and speak. The most exciting thing is, they said yes and they are going to come. 

 

Q: Who exactly is the conference for?

A: There are two big demographics. One is small to medium-sized-business owners and then the second demographic is anyone working within a marketing department. So, it could be the marketing assistant or the marketing manager, where they have some or all control of the digital marketing.  

 

Q: Why hold this conference in Squamish? 

A: Squamish is a good place for this because you have a lot of thriving new businesses and established businesses – a lot of entrepreneurs are moving here for that mix of recreation and working remotely. And, what we are finding is, a lot of people are extending their stay and coming up a day before, or a few days before and then actually going biking or hiking or going up the Sea to Sky Gondola. We wanted it to be more than a conference in a stuffy hotel. We wanted it to be fun and refreshing.

 

Q: How have sales been so far? 

A: Our capacity at Quest is about 260 to 270. Based on the trajectory of the sales at the moment, we will be sold out by about three weeks before the conference. It is mostly people coming up from Vancouver and the [Fraser] Valley, but in the last week or two we are seeing more interest from Squamish and Whistler. 

 

Q: What do you hope people who attend come away with? 

A: Our goal is that every attendee walks away with a stack full of notes and ideas to implement, whether in their own business or the business they work in. 

What we find with Internet marketing is that there is so much recycled advice online and this is an opportunity to learn and hear from the horse’s mouth, if you like, from the head of Google and all these brands. A lot of the time it will be new stuff that isn’t even out there yet that a company can implement to get ahead of the competition and get those easy, quick wins.

 

To learn more about the conference go to digitalbuzz.ca.

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