Marketing conferences are essential to stay updated with industry trends, network with peers, and learn from top experts. With so many events to choose from, it’s important to know which conferences will provide the most value for you and become a must-attend event, and which are not for you.
Here is my annual guide to the top marketing conferences I recommend you attend in 2025, featuring in-person options across various digital marketing specialties. Whether you’re looking to deepen your knowledge and learn the latest tactics in SEO, content marketing, social media, or digital advertising, there’s an event tailored to your needs. As always, I have tried to hand-pick only those events that I believe will be worth your time invested to attend from the speakers, education, and networking as someone who has spoken and/or attended a majority of these conferences.
Before I get into the meat of which conferences I have included in my annual review, let’s take a look at why conferences might be important for your business, and how digital marketing strategies can benefit from a conference experience.
The Benefits of Attending a Marketing Conference
Social and digital media is always changing, especially in the age of generative AI. There is no better way to tap into the collective wisdom of marketing experts than by attending marketing conferences where you can:
- Learn from Industry Experts, such as corporate practitioners, well-known bloggers, authors, and speakers in the field that will provide you invaluable insights
- Experience Networking Opportunities through attending networking sessions with other corporate practitioners and professionals in the marketing community to compare notes on best practices for everything from search engine optimization and marketing automation to developing evergreen video content
- Gain a Fresh Perspective by having the chance to learn new strategies and ideas that you can immediately apply to your work to overcome marketing challenges and improve your marketing skills
- Engage in Hands-On Workshops which will help you discover new social media and digital marketing tools that might help you do more with less
- Stay Current with the Trends!
Which are the 15 Must-Attend Marketing Conferences in 2025?
Rather than create a comprehensive list of all of the marketing conferences that exist, I have put together my curated list of conferences–primarily annual events–that I have vetted from either presenting at, attending, or knowing first-hand of the experiences from others who have attended.
Marketing conferences with a strong track record obviously are featured in this list, but I also went out of my way to add new and promising events to the list as well as other major conferences that I might have omitted from previous lists.
If you want to keep your finger on the pulse of digital and social media marketing, to increase customer loyalty and improve your reach, these are the must-attend events in 2025! Marketing conferences are presented in chronological order for your convenience, with information about the date and events venue city.
Date: February 4-5, 2025
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Target Audience: Influencer marketers representing brands and agencies.
Notable Speakers:
- Amanda Solomon, VP, Creator & Social, Playboy
- Jazmine Griffith, Social Listening Analyst, PEPSICO
- Michael Ramirez, Director, Global PR, Disney Experiences
- Gabriela Nieto, PR Account Executive – Influencer + Brand Partnerships, Hinge
- Yasmine Parrish, Director of Influencer Marketing, Fenty Beauty
Creator Economy Live is both one of the newest conferences on this list as well as the only one that is dedicated to helping brands level up their influencer marketing.
Join hundreds of brands eager to gain exclusive insights from industry leaders, designed to elevate your influencer marketing and drive real campaign ROI.
Dive into actionable sessions led by top experts, giving you the strategies and tools to refine and supercharge your influencer approach.
And here’s the exciting part: the first 500 brands to sign up get to attend completely free!
Date: February 24-26, 2025
Location: Scottsdale, Arizona
Target Audience: The B2B Marketing Exchange targets B2B digital marketing managers and professionals interested in growing their business and increasing revenue.
Notable Speakers:
- Neil Patel, Co-Founder NP Digital
- Morgan J. Ingram, CEO of AMP
- Phyllis Davidson, VP and Principal Analyst of Forrester
- Roderick Jefferson, CEO of Roderick Jefferson & Associates
- Fred Sass, Director of Product Marketing at Security Compass
This conference is intended to deliver actionable tools and readily-used insights to immediately apply changes to your marketing strategy.
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The future of marketing is changing rapidly, and the B2B Marketing Exchange aims to help equip marketing professionals with the tools to navigate those changes and come out on top.
Date: March 30-April 1, 2025
Location: San Diego, California
Target Audience: Marketers from brands and agencies that want to best leverage the latest trends in social media marketing taught by actual subject matter experts.
Notable Speakers:
- Mari Smith
- Sean Cannell
- Michael Stelzner
- Matt Wolfe
- Chris Penn
Having spoken at many Social Media Marketing Worlds, I can personally attest to the amazing speakers that are true subject matter experts and “influencers” together with the content that you can learn from.
Social Media Marketing World, true to its name and brought to you from the folks over at Social Media Examiner, is really the definitive three-day social media marketing event that will provide you with practical insights to help guide you in improving your social media marketing ROI and making many memorable experiences.
Social Media Marketing World attracts a wide variety of people who have a broad interest in social marketing, from digital executives, senior marketers, marketing managers, marketing agencies, content strategists, mobile strategists, bloggers, influencers, content creators, and more, all coming together to learn how to improve content strategy, engagement and reach.
Date: April 10-11, 2025
Location: Brighton, United Kingdom
Target Audience: Professionals in the field of search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO), looking to achieve their business goals through improving their approach to search marketing.
Notable Speakers:
- Abi Bennets, Digital PR Director of Propellernet
- Emily Barrington, Founder of Barrington SEO
- Folashade Uba, SEO Analyst at A.P. Moller-Maersk
- Greg Bortkiewicz, Digital Lead and Trustee at Magenta Associates
- Jonathan Roberts, Senior SEO Executive of Fly High Media
With varying levels of engagement available, brightonSEO can be for marketers looking for speakers who are experts in their fields, or marketers looking for more intensive, hands-on approaches to learning.
It has customizable levels of use, making it ideal for a wide range of marketing professionals.
Further Reading: SEO vs. SEM: What’s the Difference and Which to Use?
Date: May 6-7, 2025
Location: New York, New York
Target Audience: Meltwater is a marketing solutions company, and their annual summit is curated to cater specifically to marketing and public relations professionals eager to gain some networking experience, and develop tools to spark innovation and increase growth.
Notable Speakers: Speakers have not yet been announced. Check back here for updates regarding the 2025 roster!
Innovation typically comes along with new tools and practices, in addition to innovative ideas, and Meltwater Summit places an emphasis on those tools and practices to help people increase their professional network and develop actionable strategies with which to begin working.
While this is a summit for Meltwater users, anyone can and should attend as the knowledge is applicable regardless of what software solution you currently use.
Date: TBD (June, 2025?)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Target Audience: SEO professionals, marketers, and business owners looking to learn about the latest and greatest in search engine optimization as well as data-driven marketing.
Notable Speakers: Speakers have not yet been announced. Check back here for updates regarding the 2025 roster!
MozCon markets itself using “Not Your Typical Marketing Conference,” and with good reason: sales professionals, project managers, and jacks of all trades alike can learn how to effectively curate a digital experience for new and existing customers.
MozCon is designed to offer a more relaxed atmosphere for digital marketers, from social media influencers to project leads, fostering a sense of excitement, community, and connectedness.
At MozCon, the goal is to create a camp-like atmosphere, which is effectively accomplished by getting people out of their online communities and out of their digital experience, in order to connect, learn, and grow.
While innovative technologies, up and coming approaches to marketing, and digital marketing advice all abound at MozCon, marketing agencies, brands, and companies will find far more than a list of speakers to passively listen to, instead finding a thriving and bustling community.
Of all of the content marketing conferences found on this list, MozCon is likely to be the least formal and most relaxed.
Further Reading: 15 AI SEO Tools to Help Your Content Rank
Date: September 3-5, 2025
Location: San Francisco, California
Target Audience: Any marketer, executive, business owner or entrepreneur interested in learning about sales, marketing or AI and how to best apply it to your business.
Notable Speakers: Speakers have not yet been announced. Check back here for updates regarding the 2025 roster!
INBOUND is, as the name suggests, an inbound marketing conference that focuses on growth and marketing technology innovations that can take a brand or business to the next level.
From mobile marketing that focuses on multichannel marketing, to influencer marketing, INBOUND has a niche for just about everyone in search of growth and improvement in their marketing efforts and campaigns.
With options for networking sessions and interactive sessions that allow conference goers to connect with the business developers and leaders invited to speak, and a plethora of opportunities to get out and mingle with other attendees, INBOUND offers the latest in strategy sessions and key resources as well as in-demand sessions from companies that are able to stay on top of digital marketing trends.
INBOUND provides a plenty of offerings in the form of key resources and networking sessions, as well as entertainment, with food trucks and opportunities to connect.
Date: September 15-17, 2025
Location: San Diego, California
Target Audience: Content marketers, as the name suggests!
Notable Speakers: Speakers have not yet been announced. Check back here for updates regarding the 2025 roster!
The Content Marketing World convention is part convention and part expo, designed to bring the best content marketing professionals together to create a dynamic and informative convention. Convention features include sessions, workshops, and forums tailored to content creators and marketers. Large brands, individual marketers, and everyone in between are expected to attend Content Marketing World’s convention, each of them in search of more effective tools to generate a larger audience and support business growth.
Content Marketing World is an open-call event, created to welcome marketing, public relations, and communications professionals. Attendees will learn how to more effectively communicate with target audiences, deliver compelling content, and create engaging, actionable plans of action.
I spoke at Content Marketing World in 2022 and can attest to the fact that it is an amazing, content-rich and people-rich event that will make you much smarter and help you expand your network with similar-minded content marketers.
Further Reading: 13 Content Marketing Trends to Monitor This Year
Date: September 17-18, 2025
Location: Cologne, Germany
Target Audience: DMEXCO fuses digital marketing and tech, making it a digital marketing and social media conference focused on practical strategies using future trends in both practice and in tools used to increase professional growth.
Notable Speakers: Speakers have not yet been announced. Check back here for updates regarding the 2025 roster!
The exposition/conference (the source of its name) offers both masterclass-style teaching and hands-on workshops, and is a great option for ecommerce professionals and marketers looking for a mixture of knowledge and practical application.
Date: TBD (September ?, 2025)
Location: San Francisco, California
Target Audience: Billing itself as a “vendor-neutral event,” The AI Conference is less about promoting a specific type of AI tool, and more about appreciating how to use AI as a whole, with a special focus on the value of AI in all arenas.
Notable Speakers: Speakers have not yet been announced. Check back here for updates regarding the 2025 roster!
I include this conference not because it specifically caters to marketing professionals, but because it is a key topic in social marketing, and virtually all digital marketing professionals will come in contact with some form of AI.
Social media managers and marketers attending the conference can expect to gain a finger on the pulse of future trends in AI technology, and ideas to safely and ethically integrate that technology into all aspects of their business.
Date: October 7-9, 2025
Location: Dallas, Texas
Target Audience: “For creators by creators” is the latest motto for VidSummit, so as you can imagine, the target audience is Youtubers and TikTok influencers who want to up their game, network, and collaborate.
Notable Speakers: Speakers have not yet been announced. Check back here for updates regarding the 2025 roster!
If YouTube is your thing, VidSummit is your conference.
This is THE definitive conference to better understand all things YouTube and video marketing.
Featuring a speaker lineup that includes popular YouTubers such as MrBeast as well as industry experts and the brightest minds of YouTube marketing, this conference has spawned an impressive community of YouTubers who are both successful in their trade but also helpful to others.
I attended VidSummit the last three years in 2022, 2023, and 2024 and was blown away by how open and giving the presenters were with their experiences and the valuable insights they provided.
VidSummit is clearly for YouTubers, TikTokers, content creators, and digital influencers, but on the flipside this event gives house marketers an unprecedented opportunity to develop relationships with these same influencers to help drive your influencer marketing strategy forward.
Further Reading: How to Become a YouTuber in 2025: 19 Steps to Success
Date: October 14-16, 2025
Location: Cleveland, Ohio
Target Audience: Marketers and business professionals in general who want to learn more about AI an how it applies to marketing and business.
Notable Speakers: Speakers have not yet been announced. Check back here for updates regarding the 2025 roster!
The Marketing AI Conference (MAICON) is a conference dedicated entirely to hearing industry leaders speak on AI in the marketing industry, and how it can and should be used.
Although it may seem like a relatively narrow territory to cover in a conference, the advent of more substantial options for AI applications in marketing makes it possible to discuss artificial intelligence in marketing on a much grander scale than would have been the case even a few short years ago.
From the marketer with experience using AI to the marketer looking for more information and unsure about where to start, MAICON has plenty to offer.
Despite its focus on AI and technology, MAICON is an in person event that encourages marketers to develop a digital strategy focusing on artificial intelligence.
MAICON is designed for marketers looking to increase their ability to use AI, and do so responsibly; one of the lead panelists heads an organization dedicated entirely to developing and managing ethical AI practices.
As a conference designed entirely for AI in marketing, MAICON is ideal for anyone looking to be on the cutting edge of new AI technology as it applies to marketing, whether you are new to AI entirely, or have been using existing tools for some time.
I interviewed the founder of this conference, Paul Roetzer, on my podcast, and I can honestly say that this is THE conference to attend if you want to raise your knowledge of AI in marketing in the shortest time possible.
Further Reading: How to Evolve Your Marketing with AI in Social Media
Date: October 21-25, 2025
Location: Orlando, Florida
Target Audience: Marketing innovators and leaders who want to help shape the future of the industry.
Notable Speakers: Speakers have not yet been announced. Check back here for updates regarding the 2025 roster!
The ANA Masters of Marketing Conference is another change-maker in the advertising industry, in that it focuses on bringing successful companies and campaigns to a conference format, in order to dissect and present what it takes to make those companies and programs successful, so that marketers can implement what those leaders learned, and experience their own improvement and growth.
With panels that show ways to improve customer experience, encourage growth, and spark needed change within a company or structure, this is a great conference for those looking to shake things up and make some improvements to an existing infrastructure.
ANA Masters of Marketing Conference is ideal for marketers who may be struggling to inject new life into their campaigns and strategies, and are looking for some actionable insights and ideas from successful marketers whose footsteps they can follow in.
Date: TBD (October?, 2025)
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Target Audience: The event is marketed exclusively to marketing professionals, from entry-level to senior marketers, and is a great option for people looking for a highly specialized conference with practical solutions and tips.
Notable Speakers: Speakers have not yet been announced. Check back here for updates regarding the 2025 roster!
Spotlight is hosted by Semrush, an SEO tool used around the world. As such, the target audience of the conference is primarily digital marketers and businesses looking to improve their digital marketing techniques.
From business developers to people working in the advertising industry, the Spotlight conference can help people in the marketing sphere network with peers, gain insight into valuable marketing tools and practices, and develop fresh ideas with which to increase marketing reach and performance.
Date: TBD (November?, 2025)
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Target Audience: Marketing Profs B2B is for B2B marketing professionals looking to increase their reach, and make sure that they are using the best industry strategies and tools to achieve their goals.
Notable Speakers: Speakers have not yet been announced. Check back here for updates regarding the 2025 roster!
As its name suggests, this particular event is designed for marketing professionals who work in B2B sales or marketing.
Many digital marketing insights focus on B2C strategies and outreach, but Marketing Profs B2B veers away from that model and holds a forum for business marketers to come together and learn how to most effectively leverage their business practices to increase B2B sales.
The focus of this particular event is on growth: as a B2B marketing event, the focus is not necessarily on deepening connections, but is instead focused on increasing reach, improving ROI, and increasing your reputation among businesses.
With speakers ranging from chief marketing officers to VPs of innovation, this event is intended to address business leaders and help them develop strategies to grow and improve their marketing practices.
Marketers will benefit the most from attending this event, rather than business leaders as a whole, and any marketers who are struggling to achieve their growth goals and improve the ROI of any tools or practices that you may be using.
I did a joint speech with Jason Miller when he worked at LinkedIn many years ago at this conference, and I can attest to the fact that it really is the definitive B2B marketing conference on this list.
My Advice on How to Choose the Right Marketing Conference for You
From expert speakers to a prime opportunity to network with peers, the conferences I have put together can be a great way to grow in your business and improve your approach to marketing. Not every conference is going to be worth your time and investment, however, so it is important to select a conference that will cater to your specific goals and needs. To help find the conference/s that suit your needs, consider the following suggestions:
Assess Your Goals
Identify precisely which knowledge and skills you hope to gain during expert-led sessions and breakout groups. Each conference targets a different skillset, so determine which of those skillsets you are most in need of developing. A close look at any consistent weaknesses in your social media and marketing efforts can be helpful in creating goals.
Consider Your Budget
Select events that fall fully within your budget. Stretching your financial limits will likely not produce enough return, so make sure you are selecting the conference that will not put strain on your finances–ticket, travel, and accommodations included.
Research the Speakers and Agenda
Different speakers will touch on different developments in search engine optimization and other forms of marketing. Search for speakers with whom you are familiar in your niche, or research the speakers that have been announced to determine if they are experts in your field of interest.
Check for Virtual Options
Travel can be costly, so consider looking into conferences with virtual access. A virtual conference can still help you look into and become familiar with cutting-edge technology, so consider saving yourself the cost of travel if budget is a concern, and opt for a virtual-access conference.
Networking Opportunities
If networking is integral for your own digital strategy and digital transformation, select a conference that fosters connections within your target industry. Combing through conference information for any specifics regarding intended audience or networking opportunities can help identify which conference is ideal for you.
My 5 Tips for Making the Most Out of a Marketing Conference
Once you get to your conference, make sure you are making the most of the experience. You will not take everything in and successfully implement what you have learned by showing up as a passive observer, so do your best to…
Plan Ahead
Review the agenda of the conference you have selected, and identify the key sessions you want to attend. Mapping out your itinerary can help carve out the most important talks and workshops for your needs.
Network Proactively
Instead of going in unprepared, create a basic elevator pitch and seek out new connections! Part of the reason for attending an in-person conference is networking and meeting new people in your field, so develop an outline for why meeting people at the conference is a fantastic opportunity for growth and use that outline to connect with other attendees.
Engage with Content
Take notes as you listen to speakers, ask questions during panels, and follow up with speakers whose content you value after the conference. This will help clarify any questions you may have, will improve your networking muscles, and can help solidify what you have learned.
Leverage Social Media
Social media can be used to share insights you are gleaning during the conference you are attending, and can help you build your professional profile. It can also provide an additional means of networking, if you use branded hashtags.
Continue the Conversation
Using LinkedIn, reach out and connect with attendees and speakers, and continue your networking practice online. Developing deeper relationships with the people with whom you share mutual values can increase your professional network and open doors well past the few days you attend the actual event.
Conclusion
As you can see, these marketing conferences cover a broad spectrum of marketing topics, from content creation and social media to SEO, PPC, and AI-driven marketing. Attending any of these events in 2025 can help you gain fresh insights, build meaningful connections, and implement cutting-edge strategies for growth. Whether you’re looking for hands-on learning or networking with industry leaders, these top marketing conferences are valuable investments in your professional development.
Post-conference, make sure you continue to use what you have learned and maintain any connections you developed during the event. Conferences are often a wealth of both knowledge and relationship building, so make sure you make the most of both by continuing your engagement with the material and people after the event has passed.
Will I meet you at one of these essential events IRL in 2025? Which one?
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