Online Marketing Blog

If you are in the market to harvest leads from your web site, then this is the session for you! Industry experts Barbara Coll, CEO of WebMama.com, Patricia Hursh, President and Founder of SmartSearch Marketing and Adam Goldberg, Chief Innovation Officer for Clearsaleing gave some tips and insight to help B2B marketers develop search strategies to increase the number of qualified leads from their search campaigns.

Patricia kicked off the session with 10 tips for B2B Marketers!

1. Reach prospects early in the buying cycle
The sales cycle can often be long and complicated. B2B marketers rarely face the fact that people are conducting product searches at the beginning of the buying cycle. Reality is, your customers are looking for your product information way before they are ready to convert. You have to be there early!

The global market represents a huge opportunity for those who can master the nuances of local customs and languages.

In this session, leading global B2B search marketers Patricia Hursh, President of SmartSearch Marketing, Kevin Lee, Executive Chairman and Co-Founder for Didit, and Jeffrey Pruitt, President of SEMPO and VP of Corporate Sponsorships for iCrossing share their advice on how to optimize your global search efforts to improve ROI for global B2B campaigns.

Patricia Hursh kicked off the session, giving tips on how to get started in global B2B search.

Before launching a global B2B search campaign, consider:

• Which search engines to focus on
• The importance of translation
• Regional search trends
• Ease of PPC campaign set-up

Satya Nadella is the SVP of the Search, Portal & Advertising Platform Group for Microsoft. In this session, Satya discussed the evolution of search and outlined strategies to help prepare for success. Specifically, he brings light to how we think about the evolution of search and the unique assets that will take it to the next level.

The evolution of search:

We can categorize the history of search by looking at 3 dimensions:
1. Core technology of search
2. Business model
3. Expectations

The core technology of SEO is the magic of keyword base search. The business model continues to shift with CPC driving efficiency as we continue to measure quantitative results and ROI.

Online Marketing Blog published a record breaking 14 blog posts on the first day of Search Engine Strategies in San Jose. Congratulations to Thomas, Ashley, Dana and Jessica on a great job on what was a very busy day.

• SES San Jose: Search Industry Update – Jessica
• SES San Jose: Video Search Engine Optimization (VSEO) – Ashley
• SES San Jose: The Next Wave for Online Video – Ashley
• SES San Jose: Search Around the World – Part 1: Asia/Pacific & Latin America – Ashley
• SES San Jose: Keynote with Lee Siegel – Jessica
• SES San Jose: Pay Per Conversion – Jessica
• SES San Jose: Storyteller Marketing: How The Art of Storytelling Matches Up With the Business of Marketing – Thomas

We’re really picking up steam with our tips on Iternet Marketing Conferences, appropriately enough, during SES San Jose. Our next tip comes from Robert Scoble, Managing Director of FastCompany.TV and blogger extraordinaire.

I caught up with Robert at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and he agreed to play along and answer a few conference tip questions. The insights below are transcribed from the video interview I did with him during the event.

It’s tough because I’m the guy who likes to hang out in the hallways. I hate being stuck in a conference session unless I know I’ll learn something. To me the hallways are great because that’s where I do my networking and find out what’s really going on.

Paid search not only accounts for nearly 45% of the global online ad spend, but it is also one of the fastest growing online ad formats.

I’m currently enrolled in the Advanced Search Advertising course through the SEMPO Institute and am excited to learn about the new trends in search marketing, shared by industry experts like Heather Dougherty, Research Director for Hitwise, Kevin Lee, Executive Chairman & Co-founder of Didit, Sean Walsh, VP Online Marketing for LuxuryLink.com and Jaideep Singh, CEO & Co-Founder of Spock.com.

Online advertising spend reached $35 Billion in 2007 and is projected to continue to reach $44 Billion in 2008 and $54 in 2009.

Lee Siegel is the Author of Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. I haven’t read the book, but this session shed a new light on the effects of the online world we all currently live in.

Kevin Ryan leads this Q/A session, focusing mainly on how the digital mafia is affecting our society’s current state of being and the challenges foreseen for the future.

A few of the Q/A highlights from the session include:

Where do you see this online world we’ve created taking us? Do you see us moving in a negative or positive direction?

The internet is a revolution in the social arrangement, and technology is not a cure for human nature. The media is opening their doors to online audiences, however most media venues have tight controls.

Many business owners and marketers can agree the current economy is having an impact on marketing plans, making every dollar and click matter. As part of the TopRank Account Team, I am excited to learn a new perspective to help clients increase conversions for their marketing campaigns.

Bryan Eisenberg, Co-founder of Future Now Inc., along with Brett Crosby, Group Manager for Google, shared insight to identify missed conversations and how to improve your landing page and increase PPC ROI.

Pay Per Conversion, as explained by Eisenberg, is a shift from our Pay Per Click mentality. No longer focusing our efforts to just get the click, but rather transforming those clicks into a business opportunity or conversion.

We’re on a roll this week during SES San Jose 2008 with our next tip in a series of how to “Get the Most Out of Internet Marketing Conferences“. Previously a Vice President and Editor in Chief at ClickZ for 7 years, Rebecca Lieb serves as an Editorial Consultant to the ClickZ network as well as a public speaker on interactive marketing and advertising.

She’ll be keynoting the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) Summit this October. She can be found many places online including Twitter.

Get organized. Plan in advance. Make a conference calendar grid with all the sessions you want to attend, as well as the parties you’re going to. Set up meeting around all that stuff. Color code it, if you’re anal. Now that you have a perfectly framed agenda, rest assured portions of it will go straight to hell. Relax. Accept it. Spontaneity’s good. Go with the flow!

Our third set of internet marketing conference tips come on day one of the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose and are appropriately from Kevin M. Ryan, Vice President, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch.

Kevin Ryan has been involved with numerous conferences over the years working for various interactive and internet marketing agencies before starting his own and now as head of the SES conferences in the U.S. and abroad for Incisive Media.

1. Events are a great place to meet with clients, vendors and potential partners.

a. If you have a relationship with who you’re meeting with, begin scheduling meetings about a month prior to the event. Less time than that and your choices will be limited. More time than that, and they are going to forget you.

You’ve probably picked up that this week is about SES San Jose from Dana and Ashley’s “15 Things Not to Miss at SES San Jose” followed by Jessica’s “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” post.  I am also headed out to sunny California next month. There’s plenty to take in on a trip to the Golden State including the beautiful weather, celebrities, good wine, and, of course the Search Engine Strategies Conference.

Here are a few of the sessions I’m planning on covering:

More Customers, Fewer Costs – Why Marketing to the ‘Long Tail’ Makes Sense
Who doesn’t want more customers and fewer costs? Isn’t that a business’ dream? This session will be interesting as there have been recent stories on how the long tail is not as effective as we once thought. I still believe in the long tail though.

Originally written by Burt Bacharach, the song Do You Know the way to San Jose, la la la la la… didn’t actually come to fruition until the lovely Dionne Warwick won her first Grammy for Best Contemporary Pop Female Vocal in 1968.

Although I wasn’t around in 1968, I understand the anticipation Burt must have had waiting for this song to hit the main stream. I have been chosen as a TopRank blogger at the upcoming SES conference in San Jose, CA, (and yes, I have been singing the song for days now ) and the anticipation has got me on the edge of my seat!