Top 40 distributor AIA Corporation (AIA, asi/109480) recently hosted its first virtual Marketing Lab event, bringing together nearly 90 AIA owners and seven speakers for two days of learning and collaboration.

Chris Burns keynoted the event.

“In today’s competitive selling environment, marketing can no longer simply complement a sales strategy. It needs to play an integral role,” Katrina Willis, senior vice president of marketing and supplier relations at AIA, said in a press release. “That’s why we wanted to provide our owners with direct access to the experts who could share relevant information, tools and best practices needed to launch and run a successful marketing campaign for promotional products.”

The event kicked off with keynote speaker Chris Burns, a digital marketing expert, entrepreneur and author. Burns provided tips and best practices to leverage various digital marketing strategies such as email marketing, social media, content marketing and SEO. Burns then led a social media panel discussion with industry experts including Charity Gibson, national account coordinator at Peerless Umbrella Co. (asi/76730); Melissa Haen, North America marketing manager at Goldstar (asi/73295); and AIA owner Christina Maag.

“We look forward to making AIA’s Marketing Lab an annual event, while still providing monthly updates so we can continue to give our owners access to leading marketing experts and collaboration opportunities,” said Willis.

With reported 2019 North American promotional product revenue of $210.7 million, AIA ranked 10th on Counselor’s most recent list of the largest distributors in the industry. The new list comes out this summer.