The Midwest Digital Marketing Conference returns to St. Louis this year with a startup pitch competition.
The MDMC Entrepreneurship Competition will reward the highest quality digital startups located in the Midwest. The winning pitch will receive a $5,000 cash prize sponsored by Purina and UMSL Accelerate.
Focusing on digital startups
The pitch competition is a new avenue for the conference to support startups in the region.
“We’ve highlighted businesses before and given startups a boost. We wanted to do that again but be more focused on digital startups,” said Alex Cruz, CEO of St. Louis based PenPath and featured MDMC speaker. “In order to bring in the best to display at the conference, we decided a good way was to get applicants through a pitch competition.”
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MDMC will take place on April 12-13, 2017, at Union Station in St. Louis. The top five applicants will have the opportunity to pitch their ideas to a target audience and a panel of experts on day two of the conference.
The pitch competition is open to startup companies focused on digital marketing and communications, data insights or social media. Startups should be under two years old or have gone through a major pivot within the last two years.
“We want to see what’s out there, see a variety. We want to be open to a lot of applicants,” said Cruz.
Startups interested in participating in the pitch competition can register online by February 24, 2017. Top applicants will be notified by March 3, 2017 and will complete a fifteen-minute interview.
The five finalists chosen to participate in the MDMC Entrepreneurship Competition will be notified by March 10, 2017. Finalists will receive a prize package including two conference passes, a free booth, select speaker access and more.
Value in exposure
Created by the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 2013, MDMC is known as the largest digital marketing event in the Midwest.
“The MDMC is an effort by UMSL and the community to highlight digital marketing innovation and presence in the Midwest region,” said Cruz.
Last year’s conference saw a record breaking 1,367 attendees and hosted over fifty speakers. This year’s conference is expected to draw over 2,000 participants. Speakers will include major digital companies like Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat.
Cruz says that the reward for the pitch competition is “not only the $5000, but the real value is in the exposure to the audience and the digital marketing space.”
To apply for the pitch competition, visit the MDMC application page.
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Christine McGuigan is the Associate Editor of Silicon Prairie News.
