On Tuesday, I attended the Online Marketing Summit in Boston, which was 1 of 18 stops on their “Whistle Stop Tour”. I attended the same conference last year, at the beginning of my journey learning about online marketing, so it was interesting to see how much I have learned in just one year.  I definitely recommend checking out this conference if there is one in your city.

Below are my notes from the day.  By far, the most interesting and personally useful topic to me, was the talk by Chris Baggott.  You can also see other people’s tweets from the day here.  Feel free to ask any questions or make a comment below.

Keynote (Aaron Khalow)

• Online retail up 11%, overall retail down 3%
• 63% of people who go to a website and don’t find why they want will never come
• 92% of people go first to search to find what they are looking for

Integrating Online Into Your Local Marketing Strategy (Internet Advertising Bureau Local committee)

• Weather.com is a great place to advertise because it’s national but local at same time. National news can be Same if register
• Why pay when you can create your own content? Answer – speed
• IAN smart brief is their weekly email
• Technographic – targeting based on a specific technology
• 66% of Internet users would click thru an online ad if it’s well targeted
• Auto, real estate and general merchandise are highest categories.
• 70 percent of Bostonians (city, not Boston area) are online. Higher than national.
• Only 26% of marketers feel that their company is tech savvy
• Local advertising is growing faster than national

Online Video: Secrets to Viral Video and Advertising ROI (eConsultancy, YouTube, BrightCove, Visible Measures, Nabbr)

• Very cool HD18910 Samsung camera phone ad on YouTube – engaged people
• Once you get popular in video it’s easy to stay popular
• Video campaigns that work invite people in and get people to share
• Advertise on YouTube. It’s not a about getting a million views. It’s about getting the right views
• Healthination is good example of video use. Use answers.com.
• Nabbr is about push and YouTube is about pull
• Another way to get involved in video is with sponsorships
• Video knows no limits. May even want to see what ended up on cutting room floor. May have legs
• YouTube is 2nd largest search site after Google
• Kobe Bryant Nike video was watched for 82 seconds although only 1 min. Rewinding and watching again
  • Only 40% of 14million views were on YouTube. Also users engaged with comments and ratings

Improving Search Marketing ROI During a Recession: Top 10 Insider Tips (Ben Hanna, Business.com)

1. Look before you leap

• Know your goals and priorities

2. Don’t try to boil the ocean (take one step at a time)
3. Improve relationships with sales
4. Find where you’re not capturing value

• Marketing Sherpa increased conversion rates by 39% by adding offers to their thank you page

5. Start from a focused base

• Exact match or advanced match
• Advanced match advertises for keywords that are similar to the keywords you’re paying for
• Search implementation vs. content implementation (??)

6. Pick apart the buying process

• You must cover all buying stages

i. Could focus social media on early state of process
ii. Focus SEO on later stages
iii. Early stage – SEO & relevant community participation
iv. Mid-state – directories
v. Late-stage – branded keywords

7. Reduce buyer risk & barriers to conversion

• Office depot boosted paid search revenue 200% by incorporating customer reviews into ad copy

8. Roll out the purchase incentives

• To improve conversion rates, attack conversion barriers
• Clarify target audience & purchase type

i. Blank slate –> free trial (extend it if need to increase?)
ii. Repeat modified
iii. Repeat

• Simplify landing pages

i. Clear call to action
ii. Compelling trial discount or other incentive
iii. Eliminate sensitive form fields
iv. Indicate commitment level – 30 day vs. 90 day vs. autobill

9. Get social

• Search marketing is the glue that holds together all of their activities

10. Target the doer

• 2 basic buying roles

i. Doers – have to get something done
ii. Buyers – attempting to enforce a rational buying process
• Most people focus on doers

11. misc

• Ad copy – what is the person trying to address? What issue are they trying to solve? Benefit not feature.

Advanced Blog Strategies – Chris Baggott, Compendium Blogware

• People who find you because of searching and finding your blog convert more, bounce less, buy more and stay
• Experience is that if you give people the capability to give content, they will
• Search is an acquisition tool; Email isn’t
• Phones and website are changing the way we do business. It’s not the phone or the website itself though. It’s what you can do with it. And it’s not going to be with ads!
• Fastest growing key words are 5+ words. Grew 22% last year
• Benefit to social media and blogging is to win in search! Not to broadcast.
• What is content? Text, pics, video
• Search means nothing of you don’t have good content
• Most of clicks in search happen in organic results; BUT most qualified leads come from PPC – answer to this issue is blogging

i. If you need to target many keywords, best way is PPC, but it’s expensive;
ii. Most clicks in search happen in organic
iii. So blogging is best way to change organic results

• Most people don’t subscribe to blogs – it’s ok because blogging is for search; most are 1st time visitors
• While they say blogs are good for comments, engaging, community dialogue, it’s ok, but much more important as a foot in the door.
• Good for – More inquiries, increased traffic, more qualified leads
• Can’t control referrals or direct navigation, you can only control search — that’s what a blog is for
• Why does blogging work so well?

i. Search works on titles, keywords, recency/frequency, blog volume, relevance, links

• Blogging is not about thought leadership, although it might happen as a benefit
• Why blogs are your #1 search marketing tool; Keys to successful search blogs

1. Title – instead of Chris Baggot as title, use “list building technologies” … you need MULTIPLE blogs for capturing various types of business – need fleet of blogs

2. Use the language of your customers

• Think about what people are going to type and rank on that

3. Keywords

• 4-7% of your post should have to do with the keywords
• Key to writing posts
• Blogging is a volume driven strategy. Not every post has to be a white paper or major thought leadership. Minimum every day or multiple times a day.

4. Recency/frequency

• Need to blog every day
• Employee bloggers are 5 times more credible than C-level bloggers
• All employees who get a business card, should have capability to blog – tough to do, but ideally would be great
• The more you write about a topic, the more traffic you’ll drive

5. Measure both relevance and ROI

• Great thing about effective search is that the customer gets exactly what they wanted. Blogging does that very effectively.
• Need a way on your blog for your customer to convert to a purchase – Best Buy doesn’t have that
• Ok to use same content on your multiple blogs is good if you have a clear path
• Host multiple blogs on same site, with same domain name – still on same website
• Best way to do a link strategy is to have strong content – it will happen

Big Brands, Big Plans Panel

• How handle irrelevant user generated content? Community will automatically vet it
• What’s a proper extension of your brand and what’s not? (bud tv, ESPN phone failed) you have to listen before doing anything
• Is meaty content generated by users or paid? Must be balanced.
• If you’re not authentic, accessible and consistent yours setting yourself up for failure
• Smartphones will really change how we buy; GPS will change things too
• An injection of negativity in content helps the credibility

Any questions about the above? Comments?