2025 Conference Schedule
Thursday, October 9, 2025
What’s New This Year?
We heard your feedback to offer more content, so we’ve delivered! This year, you’ll notice we have two tracks to choose from for some of the time slots. Unfortunately, that means you’ll hit a fork in the road and have to choose. Remedy this by bringing a buddy to divide-and-conquer, OR check out the digital content after the conference so you don’t miss a thing!
8:30 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.
Fuel for the Journey:
Caffeine, Sugar, and Big Intentions
Stop at the registration table to grab your name tag, Roadmap Conference materials, and a light breakfast!
9:00 a.m. - 9:40 a.m.
Opening Keynote:
From Boring to Bombshell
Maggie Zeman doesn’t do ordinary. With over 20 years of shaking up the PR and marketing world, she’s built a career out of turning “meh” into magnetic. Whether she’s rebranding a legacy label or masterminding a media blitz, Maggie finds the heartbeat of a brand and makes it impossible to ignore. We’ll start our day hearing about some of Maggie’s transformational work!
9:50 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Choose Your Own Adventure
Click Smart Not Scared: Smart AI Moves for Cyber-Aware Marketers
In today's rapidly evolving landscape, artificial intelligence (AI) has become integral to various industries, driving innovation and efficiency. However, as businesses adopt AI, safeguarding data becomes paramount.
In this session, we will explore the current state of AI, discuss how Coulee Tech's using AI, and provide insights for protecting your business's data in this AI-centric era.
Key Takeaways:
Current AI Landscape: Understand AI's role in modern business and associated risks.
Coulee Tech's AI Integration: Learn how we incorporate AI in our business.
Data Protection Strategies: Implement measures to secure data when adopting AI.
Supercharge Your Brand
Discover the essence of your brand and explore ways to strengthen its positioning and connect with others. This session offers an insightful journey into understanding and elevating your brand's identity. You'll walk away equipped with powerful tools designed to refine your messaging and content, ensuring you work smarter and create a more impactful experience for your customers and community.
During the session, you will do an exercise to help refine your top 3 values.
11:00 a.m. - 11:40 a.m.
Choose Your Own Adventure
I’m Talking Here:
How to Communicate Your Ideas to Leadership
In this session, communication coach Jason Jones distills his Adaptive Conversations method to show you how to present ideas to senior leaders as peers, not petitioners—surfacing the business stakes they care about, framing proposals in their language, and guiding the dialogue so they see marketing opportunities the way you do. You’ll leave with a concise messaging template and follow-up rhythm that transform executive head-nods into green-lit action.
Not Sucking on Social Media: A Case Study
Details coming soon!
12:00 p.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Lunch Pit Stop
As professionals in marketing, communications, and creative fields we know that talking to people is a must, especially if you’re also in a sales role. Knowing how to start up conversations with strangers is a skill that can be developed.
During lunch, sit with someone you’ve just met. Here are a few conversation starters if you’re struggling to find something to talk about:
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Listen first, and then come up with some follow up questions. Need some help? Here are a couple:
What was your favorite part?
What really challenged you?
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Listen first, and then come up with some follow up questions. Need some help? Here are a couple:
How will you go about doing that?
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Listen first, and then come up with follow up questions. Need help? Here are a couple:
What was that like?
How do you do that?
Where are your favorite places to do that?
12:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Detour!
The Power of a Bad Idea
Harness the power of negative thinking to improve your marketing approach.
2:30 p.m. - 3:10 p.m.
Choose Your Own Adventure
Mom + Dad Are Fighting: Exploring Sales and Service Marketing Synergies
As the lines between sales and service continue to blur, there are immense opportunities to create a seamless and impactful client experience that drives acquisition and retention.
This presentation will dive into the importance of aligning these two critical areas of marketing and how doing so can lead to measurable success in your businesses.
Coming out of this session, you’ll be better equipped to align sales and service—diagnose gaps, launch quick-win fixes, modernize your CRM for seamless data flow, and hold monthly reviews to refine results. You’ll leave with a simple, repeatable roadmap that fuels growth and elevates the customer experience.
Think Like Your Audience: Keeping It Real in the Age of AI
In this session, we’ll shift into your audience’s point of view, unpack why certain content resonates, and help you decide when it makes sense to use AI, and when your own voice should steer the message. You’ll leave knowing how to spot the right moments to deploy AI and keep every page or post firmly focused on what your visitors need next.
3:20 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Panel Discussion + Q&A: Your 2026 Roadmap
Our event hosts will wrap up the day with a discussion of what we see for marketing in the year ahead. What should we focus on? Where do we need to be looking in order to stay competitive in a quickly changing market? We’ll be collecting questions throughout the day and will take some time during this session to answer as many as we can for everyone.
Beer ‘N Curds
A Truly Midwestern Happy Hour
Stick around for a live podcast episode with a local business!
We’ll open up the bar and bring in some snacks. Hang out, wind down, and reflect on the day over a local brew, cocktail, or mocktail.
BONUS: We’ll be recording a podcast episode with a local business during happy hour, so stick around to get behind-the-scenes of podcast production, and be part of the magic!