The Marketing Machine: How to Build Yours for 2027

Event Details

Date: Thursday, 26th November 2026

Time: 10.00 am–11.00 pm

Location: Online

By popular demand, following Sam Evans' presentation at the East Midlands Growth Conference, we're bringing the session back, but this time we're going deeper.

At the Growth Conference, Sam explored a fundamental shift taking place in marketing: marketing is no longer a collection of individual activities. Marketing is now a system.

The Marketing Machine: How to Build Yours for 2027 is the extended, practical version of that presentation, giving business leaders the time and framework to understand what their marketing operation should actually look like heading into 2027.

The challenge isn't simply whether you should invest in Google or LinkedIn, SEO or social, organic or paid. Your customers are everywhere, moving between search, social media, websites, content, reviews, email and advertising before they ever make an enquiry. The businesses that succeed will be the ones that connect those touchpoints into one coherent marketing machine.

And then there's AI.

AI is changing the economics of marketing, but simply adding more AI tools isn't the answer. Sam will explore where AI genuinely saves time and increases capability, where human judgement and expertise remain essential, and how people + AI + technology can work together to create a faster, smarter and more commercially effective marketing operation.

We'll tackle some of the questions being asked in boardrooms right now:

• Are we actually getting an ROI from marketing?
• Is our marketing function capable of delivering our growth plan?
• Should AI mean we need fewer marketing people?
• Why aren't marketing and sales producing one joined-up pipeline?
• How are we supposed to deliver everything modern marketing now demands?

Most importantly, this isn't just a trends presentation.

Sam will break down how to build the machine: starting with your commercial growth target, understanding the customer journey, creating the right channel ecosystem, combining the right people, specialists, AI and technology, and then measuring what actually matters from traffic and enquiries through to pipeline and revenue.

If you're responsible for growing a business in 2027, this session is designed to help you understand what your marketing machine needs to look like, how the pieces fit together, and where you should focus next.