Online Marketing Blog

TopRank Online Marketing has been fortunate to present at the Direct Marketing Association annual conference for 4 years in a row and a 5th appearance several years before that. (See photos from DMA07 here) Over 10,000 marketers attend the DMA show making it the largest marketing conference in the world and with this year’s show being held in Las Vegas, it should be another great event.

The DMA has traditionally been known as an organization steadfast in marketing principles and rooted in traditional marketing education but has made quite a bit of progress in the online marketing space with it’s Search Engine Marketing Certification program and upcoming attention to social media.  In fact, this year’s DMA08 show includes online marketing sessions on:

• Affiliate marketing
• Consumer generated content

Here is a collection of short video interviews taken during day one of the DM Days conference in New York. The Direct Marketing Association has a variety of special interest groups called “councils”. One of them is focused on search marketing and appropriately named, the Search Engine Marketing Council, or SEMC.

I serve on the operating committee of that organization as does Heather Lloyd Martin of SuccessWorks, Mike Moran of IBM, Andy Wetzler of More Visibility, Jeanette Kocsis of Harte Hanks, Amanda Watlington of Searching for Profit, Doug Garfinkel from Epsilon, Detlev Johnson of Position Technologies and Lisa Merizio Smith from the DMA.

To give direct marketers who read Online Marketing Blog a sense of what the SEMC is up to in regards to SEO and social media education opportunities, I decided to do a few interviews with those opcom members that I could find at the conference on day one.

The DMA06 conference is getting rev’d up with pre conference sessions Satuday and Sunday. The new search engine marketing certification program started on Saturday with Jeannette Kocsis, VP of Digital Marketing at Harte-Hanks, presenting on “Introduction to Search Engine Marketing” and I followed up with “Search Engine Basics”.

Unfortunatley, I was not able to sit in on Jeannette’s session, but Amanda Watlington said there was great feedback. Here’s the description of the module:

Introduction to Search Engine Marketing: Explore search engine marketing and what it takes for a marketer to achieve search engine marketing results. Learn how to identify ethical search engine marketing practices and how search engines define spam. Learn how to shape the business case for search marketing for your business, and how to staff this valuable marketing function.

Spotlight on Search Interview with Heather Lloyd-Martin of SuccessWorks

A lot of buzz in the SEO community lately has been focused on the value of creating compelling content as if it’s a new idea. Writing web site copy that satisfies both search engines and users is nothing new to Heather Lloyd-Martin. She’s been an active proponent since the late nineties.

I first came across Heather’s copywriting wisdom a long time ago when explaining the Internet to potential clients was still common and the idea of Internet marketing and optimizing web sites for better search engine rankings was gaining popularity. Since then, Heather has been a very influential force in educating search marketers on the value of copywriting for the web, for SEO and most importantly, for conversions.

Since I’m on the DMA Search Engine Marketing Council, I thought I’d post this release that just went out.   The Search Engine Marketing Council (SEMC) of the DMA was previously known as the Association of Interactive Marketing (AIM). Lots of acronyms, but also lots of good work.

MOREVISIBILITY PRESIDENT ANDREW WETZLER APPOINTED TO MEMBERSHIP CHAIR, DMA SEMC COUNCIL

New York, NY, December 7, 2005 – The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) announced today it has appointed Andrew Wetzler, president and co-founder of MoreVisibility, membership chair of its Search Engine Marketing Council (SEMC).