Posts Tagged ‘Marketing PR Conferences’
SES San Francisco 2010 Wrap-Up
| Hot: |  |  | | | |
QR code on the side of a building? Geek cool.
Last week the West Coast Search Engine Strategies conference moved from San Jose back to its roots in San Francisco. It was a well attended show (5,000+ in 2009 vs. 6,000 in 2010 registrations), despite the illusion created by the voluminous Moscone.
As part of Connected Marketing Week, SES included a great mix of sessions. In fact, there were quite a few new sessions and solo presentations such as the one by Andy Beal on Online Reputation Management and the one on Content Marketing Optimization by moi.
Networking events were popular, but of course anything with free booze and thirsty smart search marketers equals popular. Networking opportunities like the black hat / white hat brings an interesting mix of people together. There were specialized training sessions as well and a full exhibit hall. I thought the hall closed a bit early, 3pm, but hey – if the vendors want to go home, let them go home.
White Hat, Black Hat Who? – Mike Grehan & Matt McGowan
Enterprise Level SEO Is Not For The Weak
| Hot: | | | | | |
Thanks to Ray ‘Catfish’ Comstock for providing the title of this post with his opening remarks during the session. Joining Comstock on this panel, moderated by Seth Besmertnik, CEO, Conductor, Inc.:
- Crispin Sheridan, SES Advisory Board & Sr Director of Search Marketing Strategy, SAP
- Bill Hunt, SES Advisory Board & President, Back Azimuth Consulting
- Guillaume Bouchard, SES Advisory Board & President, Back Azimuth Consulting
As a good writer and analyst, I have to ask ‘why’ for even the most obvious problem posed. So why is enterprise level Search Engine Optimization (SEO) not for the weak? The obvious answer: a lot of people, a lot of content. Enterprise is difficult because management of a lot of content and people is difficult to scale.
A recurring theme at the SES sessions I’ve attended this year is the importance of communicating SEO in a language that non-search professionals (high level executives) will understand. TopRank CEO Lee Odden even offered the presentation ‘Selling Search to the C-Suite.’
Let’s identify the problems a C-level executive may have with a fairly basic statement that illustrates the positive results of an SEO campaign:
The Four Pillars of Building Instant Trust Online – SES SF
| Hot: | | | | | |
Websites and landing pages face very real trust issues – for consumers they can be a scary and uncertain place. Before people will take a desired action, their concerns and anxieties must be addresses. But how can you do this on landing pages when you only have seconds to establish trust?
Tim Ash, SiteTuners CEO and bestselling author of Landing Page Optimization , shared how to effectively use the Four Pillars Of Trust and optimize your online conversion goals.
Tim started by reiterating what we know – it’s not about technology, it’s about people. If you’re going to transact with anyone it’s all about building trust.
We can’t function without trust, we are social beings. If we are going to cross the street, we have to trust that people driving cars will see the red light. Trust is critical, it’s the glue that holds everything together.
People weren’t designed to be in mobs, we have our “tribe” of a few dozen people that we trust and it breaks down in crowds.
Users understand “cheesy,” unprofessional sites vs. authoritative looking sites. So your site has to communicate authority instantly.
Four pillars of trust:
B2B Marketing Tips From SES SF
| Hot: | | | | | |
What’s the quickest way to catch a fish? Offer the right bait.
What’s the quickest way to get a B2B marketer to an SES session? Title it ‘B2B Marketing Tips.’
What’s the quickest way to get you to read this post? By diving right in to the top 5 tips shared:
- Your conversion goals must become more sophisticated**
Yes, probably even yours. For the simple reason that you should always be testing and always be experimenting with something new. The keywords that convert today may transform into completely new derivations tomorrow. Always be tracking and always be testing. - Segment transactional from educational keywords*
Keywords that drive sales tomorrow will rarely match the keywords that drive inquiries today. Your transactional keywords are your bottom of the funnel phrases that represent a user closest to the buying cycle, while educational keywords are top of the funnel phrases used by someone looking for more information. Third party tools and research can help identify what keywords lead a user down the path to a sale, while looking at repeat visits in analytics can help identify keywords that are educational.