ad:tech San Francisco 2012 Recap

Online marketing conferences are the best! Just a month ago, I thoroughly enjoyed SMX West. Last week, I attended ad:tech San Francisco 2012. ad:tech is a great conference. While I was only there for half of the first day (I couldn’t stay too long due to a huge amount of work last week), I totally enjoyed the experience and wanted to share a few thoughts about the conference.

First and foremost, I would like to highlight ad:tech as a really special conference. While I really enjoy the other online marketing conferences such as (SMX West, SMX Advanced, and SES), ad:tech is in a league of its own. It’s a more holistic online marketing conference covering all online marketing channels, whereas the other conferences are more focused on PPC and SEO. As a focused PPC and SEO professional, I really enjoyed attending the ad:tech sessions and hearing about all different types of online marketing strategies. If you’re interested in expanding your strategic focus and online marketing scope, ad:tech is the conference for you.

Second, ad:tech is a really popular conference. It was packed with tons of attendees, clearly demonstrating the strength of the online marketing industry. I felt like the sessions were much more packed than some of the other conferences I have attended recently. Also, the expo hall spanned two levels. It was huge! It’s really the attendees that build energy at any conference and it’s always more fun attending a packed conference like ad:tech.

Third, ad:tech is the place to network and meet up with friends, both old and new. I exchanged a ton of business cards and built some great new connections. Also, I ran into more old friends than at any other conference. I especially enjoyed meeting up with my former manager and good friend, from Nextag.

So, there you have it, quick recap this time since I didn’t spend a ton of time at the conference. However, the time I did spend there was really high leverage. I totally recommend this conference, especially if you’re looking for a broader, more strategic perspective about online marketing.

Image of PPC Ian at ad:tech © PPCIan.com

SMX Advanced Seattle 2010 Rocked

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 11 14

I attended SMX Advanced Seattle this week and had an awesome time. I really enjoyed the venue and met up with a lot of old and new friends. I even learned a few new tips and tricks from the esteemed group of presenters. In short, this was a superb conference. Today, I’m going to discuss my personal experience!

SMX Advanced Overview

Bing Team

I’m a big fan of online marketing conferences. Back in January, I thoroughly enjoyed the domaining conference TRAFFIC. More recently, I attended SMX West Santa Clara (but didn’t blog about it). The next conference on my list is SES San Francisco, coming in August. Search marketing conferences are a great place to network, learn, and stay in tune with a quickly evolving industry. It’s very easy to get stuck behind your computer and work long hours, losing sight of the bigger industry. My advice to you: Get yourself and your team out of the office and attend a few conferences!

This year, SMX (Search Marketing Expo) Advanced was held at Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle. You can see a few pictures of the venue at the end of this post. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed beautiful Seattle. I stayed at the convenient Edgewater Hotel right next to the conference center, the official hotel of the conference. I enjoy getting my sleep so the convenience of the hotel to the conference was a true gift.

For those of you newer to the industry, SMX conferences are organized by industry guru Danny Sullivan. Danny owns Third Door Media which publishes the world famous Search Engine Land. I always enjoy SMX conferences and this one took it to the next level, in my opinion. Why, you ask? Simple: I walked away empowered with a few new tips and tricks. As someone who’s been a PPC pro for over six years, it’s sometimes hard to find new, interesting ideas! I personally attended all of the sessions on the PPC track and enjoyed all of them.

SMX Advanced Was Great For Networking

Before we even get into my experience in the sessions, I have to highlight the awesome networking opportunities that SMX Advanced provided. I’m a huge fan of the Yahoo-Microsoft Search Alliance. It’s one of the most exciting events in our industry since the Yahoo Panama transition several years ago. As such, I definitely wanted to spend some time with the Bing and Yahoo teams. You can see some photos of me with my friends from Bing and Yahoo above and below.

Second to the end below, you can see me hanging out with my friends from Kenshoo. As you may know, I’m a huge fan of SEM automation. Kenshoo is one of the premier SEM tools out there. The team is amazing (I have known these guys for a few years now) and they are growing rapidly. Their success makes perfect sense to me, the tool is awesome! Stay tuned, I will be interviewing Kenshoo in a future PPC Ian post.

Not pictured in this post, I got to connect with several old reports and co-workers. It’s a small industry and always great to see old friends. Also, I got to meet up with some of my newer friends. I enjoyed meeting Chris Guthrie from Make Money On The Internet and also Matt, Josh, and Nate from Unique Blog Designs. Unique Blog Designs designed and built PPC Ian! I worked extensively with them over the phone and email, and now I finally got to meet them. Good times for sure!

A Few Cool Takeaways From SMX Advanced

I took pages and pages of notes at SMX Advanced. Throughout the conference, I enjoyed emailing tips and tricks back to my team. I’ve been in the industry for over six years so it’s not often that I walk away from a conference with action items. SMX Advanced was different, however, and I now have a few new strategies to try. The presentations were great from the standpoint of sparking new ideas while also helping me re-engage old ideas that I had but filed away. I’d like to highlight just a few fun takeaways from the event:

Craig Danuloff, Founder and President of ClickEquations gave an excellent presentation on Google AdWords quality score. I walked away with an awesome white paper and a few new quality score tests. In particular, Craig piqued my interest with his hypothesis that display URLs with fake subdomains and folders (to improve CTR) are considered different from the root URL for quality score history purposes.
Wister Walcott from Marin Software proved that conversion rate does not vary by position! There has been an ongoing debate in our industry about this topic forever. It was great to see Wister independently prove this concept, further validating the findings of Google’s chief economist Hal Varian (I recently heard Hal speak on this topic at Google’s Think Finance event). As you know from my recent Marin Software Interview, I’m a tremendous fan of this amazing SEM technology company and give them my top recommendation.
Siddharth Shah, PhD from Efficient Frontier discussed portfolio theory versus profit maximization bidding models and how one may leverage the concepts of portfolio theory even with an unlimited budget. I really enjoyed his talk and walked away with an awesome white paper as well!
Several awesome presentations on mobile PPC. Mobile is going to be huge in coming years and now is the time to start testing. Of particular interest, I enjoyed learning that shorter queries perform better in mobile and that catchy abbreviations such as "4" (instead of "for") and "ur" (instead of "your") are accepted by Google. I feel empowered to start some mobile tests.
The idea of microconversions was covered several times. I’m a big direct response guy. However, when you’re building out awareness, branding, and social media efforts, it’s not always practical to look at the entire funnel. However, one should assign a dollar value to microconversions such as number of Twitter followers, white paper downloads, and Facebook fans. An old concept that I’ve been thinking about for a long time, but great to put it in font of me again and remind me to take action!

Couldn’t attend SMX Advanced this year? Don’t worry! SMX conferences are frequent and SMX Paris and SMX East are just around the corner. One thing is for sure: I will be attending SMX Advanced again next year! I will tell you, there was one huge downside to this conference… My two hour flight home turned into a six hour flight home. High winds in San Francisco forced my small United plane to turn around and land in Sacramento (lack of fuel to circle and wait for landing clearance). After waiting a long time on the Sacramento runway, we finally took off again for SF. The second time around, we had to circle like crazy until we finally landed. Upon landing, there really were some seriously high winds so I do appreciate that United put safety first and didn’t rush the landing.

Some Photos From SMX Advanced Seattle

All Images In This Post © PPCIan.com (An IJL Productions LLC Website)

Search Engine Marketing Conference Tips

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 15 1

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending Yahoo’s Ad Forum, an exclusive conference for Yahoo’s top advertisers. It was actually my third Ad Forum and by far the best one yet. I really enjoyed learning more about the Yahoo Microsoft Partnership, new upcoming releases to Yahoo Search Marketing, information about Yahoo Smart Ads, and so much more. More than anything, it was a great opportunity to network with top executives at Yahoo in addition to search marketing leaders at other large companies. I’m a huge proponent of actively participating in conferences and industry events. Today, I’m looking forward to highlighting my strategies for getting the most out of search engine marketing events.

Get Out of The Office Today

This first point is very important. In the world of search engine marketing, it’s extremely easy to get caught up in the day-to-day details. We’re so focused that we rarely get out of the office. This is exactly why it’s important to take every opportunity possible to attend industry conferences. It’s simply not sustainable to stay in the details without any breaks and networking. Special note to team leads and people managers: Make sure to get your team out of the office. It will give them a much needed break and make your team even more productive over the long run. Moreover, this is a great way to retain your team members and lower stress levels.

Speak Up at Search Marketing Events

I absolutely love this second tip because it’s all about challenging yourself. If you’re like most people, you may feel a bit intimidated about public speaking. With a hundred or so people in the audience, you might feel a bit nervous about asking questions and speaking up. My advice to you: Never leave a search engine marketing event without actively speaking and participating. Life is a challenge! You want to be a leader in the industry, right? You want to continue to grow your career, right? You simply want to feel good at the end of the day that you did your best, right? For all of these reasons, it’s very important to participate.

So how do you participate? It’s easy! Why not start small and ask some questions during the smaller breakout sessions. When you have a little more experience, why not ask questions in front of hundreds of people at the larger sessions? Once you’re comfortable in that setting, why not volunteer to speak on a panel? Next, you’re ready to lead an event!

I recently spoke on a panel to a few hundred Google employees and it was the opportunity of a lifetime. I was certainly a bit nervous before the event, but that nervousness quickly went away once I started speaking. I ended up totally owning the panel! The event was an incredible success and a big move for my career and personal brand image in the search engine marketing world.

Take Diligent Notes

As mentioned in the introduction, I just attended Yahoo’s Ad Forum. I was careful to take diligent notes during the event and came back to the office with several solid action items and a variety of other notes. I quickly typed up my notes, sent them out, and prioritized several new projects. My advice to you: Take diligent notes because solid revenue-generating action items will come out of these conferences if you listen carefully.

Network With Other Search Marketers

As you know from my post all about Growing Your SEM Career With LinkedIn, I’m a huge fan of networking. It’s a really small industry and your network means everything. Now, can you think of a better opportunity to network than search marketing conferences? I can’t! Make sure to bring business card and introduce yourself to as many people as possible. This can be a great recruiting ground as well. Another tip: Make sure to stay until the very end. At the end of these events, they often have cocktail hour. This is the best time to really network.

I hope this article helps you get the most out of your next SEM conference and wanted to leave you with a final tip: Make sure to Dress For SEM Success when you attend your next SEM conference.