Online Marketing Blog

Phew! What a whirlwind week at SES Chicago.  While my TopRank Online Marketing teammates were taking SES Chicago by storm, I was holding down the homefront manning the blog, monitoring Twitter feeds, and helping in any way that I could.

We were fortunate to have an army of TopRank  staff speaking, attending, live blogging, and interacting for the entire conference including:

Lee Odden: CEO
Jolina Pettice:  Director of Client Accounts
Thom Craver: Senior Technical SEO Manager
Alexis Hall: Account Manager
Evan Prokop: Associate Account Manager
Miranda Miller: Content Marketing Manager

In this wrap up I’ve provided you with a 360 view of the conference which includes links to our live blogs, tweets, a video with keynote presenter Avinash Kaushik, and photos from the conference.  Enjoy!

95% of decisions are considered preconscious.  In fact, the majority of decisions we, as humans, make are automatic or based on “gut feel”, rather than conscious decision making.

So then why are so many businesses building websites for consumers who view and act based on their rational brain? This is the question Tim Ash (@tim_ash) posits during his SES Chicago session “Beyond the Click: Conversion in the Social World.”

The human brain, shaped by thousands of years of evolution, is highly influential on our online decision making. So marketers must look for opportunities to make the conversion process as intuitive, consistent and automatic as possible.

Taking the evolutionary approach, here are five strategies for increasing conversions in a social world, from Tim Ash.

Panda, Penguin and other Google updates are part of  search marketing. The frequency of updates has continued to garner attention over the last 6 months.

The only sure thing; it’s likely to continue as Google stays its course in refining standards for quality content.

And in a post-Panda and Penguin world, smarter more meaningful link building is not only recommended but a requirement.

Understanding this is only the tip of the iceberg. What lies below the surface is the real opportunity and from SES Chicago, here’s what you should be thinking about.

7 Link Building Philosophies to create value and remain Penguin-friendly. Shared with the audience by Jon Ball of  PageOnePower.  

1. In a World without Google
Imagine if Google didn’t exist, where would you spend link building efforts? What would you do and not do?

Did you know that 42% of business executives have made a purchasing decision based on an online video? In fact, 60% of execs will watch a video, before the ever read the text on the screen. Wow!

In the last session on the first day of SES, I was pretty excited to learn the secrets to B2B video success from Peter La Motte from GeniusRocket (@geniusrocket).  You see, I hear from clients all the time reasons why video isn’t a larger part of their marketing mix.

Top 3 Reasons B2Bs Give for Why They  Can’t (or Won’t) Do Video

1. Video is too much work!
2. B2B is too boring for video
3. Video doesn’t drive sales

On Tuesday November 14^th  we will be heading south for SES Chicago.  This will be my second SES event and I am looking forward to attending sessions to continue to educate myself in online marketing, and share it with our readers, all while hanging out in the city of Chicago.  I will be live blogging along with fellow TopRank-ers – Jolina Pettice, Evan Prokop, Thom Craver and Miranda Miller.

When planning any trip, one of the first things I do is map out the stops which are a MUST SEE. Conferences are no different.  We follow online marketing best practices, and always have a game plan to ensure we can get the most out of the time spent at conferences.

This year was my 5th attending the SES conference in Chicago. While smaller than SES New York or SES San Francisco, the Chicago show serves a significant number of client side marketers, agencies and consultants in the Midwest and according to Incisive Media who run the event, attendance at this year’s SES Chicago was the best ever.

This was the first SES for our new Marketing Manger at TopRank, Ashley Zeckman, who stepped up to the plate and liveblogged the event for us. She did a great job and her posts were well received by Online Marketing Blog readers as well as other online publications that picked up her posts. Below is a summary of her blog posts, an embedded TopRank Online Marketing presentation on Social, SEO & Content Marketing, responses on Twitter and a few of my favorite photos from the event.

As SES Chicago reaches its final sessions the audience is still alert and ready to learn at TopRank CEO Lee Odden’s afternoon presentation on “Content Marketing & Optimization.”  According to Google’s Eric Schmidt, every 2 days we create as much information as we did from the dawn of time to the year 2003.  With so much information being shared what can we do as marketers to make our content easy to spot and easy to consume?

Can Customers Find Your Content?

Content creation is so much more than marketing, it is a way of engaging and enticing potential customers to take action.  Optimized content can make sure that customers interact with your brand.  There are many types of content that companies publish and many different audiences that a company should interact with.  Content creation is one of the most effective form of online marketing, it also happens to be the most difficult.

Proper execution of a local and social media strategy is still a head scratcher for many internet marketers.  The session on “Local + Social: the Future of Promotion” featuring Gregg Stewart and Benu Aggarwal at SES Chicago was a must see to answer several important questions.

A Best Practices Approach with Gregg Stewart

Did you know that roughly 20% of all Google searches have local intent?  When you look at mobile data that number is even higher.  These statistics alone should show us as marketers how important a online local strategy is for improving engagement.

Checking the Box Won’t Work

While website All Facebook says that 96% of small businesses are on Facebook, Mashable.com says that 64% of small businesses think that social media is unnecessary.  Part of what this data tells us that many companies are simply checking the box, but aren’t sure how to properly utilize social media marketing channels.

Wednesday morning’s panel discussion on search, social, and content was flush with information that was easy to digest and provided helpful tips for implementation. The session was moderated by Anne Kennedy from the SES Advisory board and featured speakers:

• Aaron Kahlow, Chairman & Founder, Online Marketing Summit & SES Advisory Board (@omconnect)
• Arnie Kuenn, President, Vertical Measures (@arniek)
• Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board & CEO, TopRank Online Marketing & SES Advisory Board (@leeodden)

Kahlow Presents the What, Why, How, and Who of Search, Social, and Content

Aaron Kahlow focused on some very basic but essential areas that all marketers should focus on when creating a campaign either online or offline. In regards to search, social, and content he had this to share:

Michael DeHaven’s presentation at SES Chicago on “User Generated SEO” started with some actual user generated content from the audience. Before the session DeHaven gave 5 volunteers a bite sized Ghirardelli chocolate bar. In exchange for the treat he asked that each of the volunteers write a review of the chocolate and then share it with the rest of the audience.

What Was the Response?
The chocolate was called everything from waxy, to too sweet, messy, and melt in your mouth goodness. In contrast the packaging created by the Ghirardelli marketers was quite different, “take time to slow down and feel yourself melt with each bite.” As you can see the professional marketers took a much different approach than the consumers.

Mikel Chertudi, Senior Director, Global Media & Demand Marketing at Adobe Systems, presented Tuesday morning’s opening keynote at SES Chicago. The goal of his presentation was to take a deep dive into:

• How the value of what marketers do is often viewed incorrectly
• Mistakes that many marketers are guilty of
• What questions marketers should ask themselves in order to invest marketing dollars appropriately

Changing the Marketing Conversation
Often times, as marketers we talk too tactically

Many marketers today still refer to marketing dollars as “spend”, “budgets”, or “cost centers”. One of the things that Chertudi urges online marketers to do is change the conversation. What does this mean?  Organizations should begin considering marketing costs as an investment and not just a cost. Instead of focusing on the “burn rate” we are urged to focus on determining if our investment is large enough to fuel the growth of the company. This will enable marketing to be properly viewed as a means of growing the organization instead of being perceived as a cost center.

I’m going to be visiting the windy city for SES Chicago this week and have been trying to figure out where to explore if I can find some time while I’m there. I always enjoy a great meal so turning to search engines and social media platforms was an obvious answer for me to find great restaurants.

Understanding how end consumers use search and social to find and discuss your business online is key in creating an effective online marketing strategy.  The more that you study and adapt your strategy to positively impact new customers, the more successful your social media strategy will be.