Why I Think the SEM Conference Industry Has to Change in 2010-11

January 7th, 2010

by Laura Thieme

Recently, I switched to the Google Droid phone (Yes - I must do an entry on my love-hate relationship with my Droid phone in near future). Today, on my Droid/Twitter account, I’ve received two notices from Search Engine Land’s Twitter account about the upcoming SMX Santa Clara conference. I clicked through to see who was speaking and exhibiting. I read most of Danny’s post.

I have been one of those loyal Danny Sullivan followers for years. My first search marketing conference was in San Francisco in August 2001, yes, right before 9/11. I was passionate about search being tracked to the lead and sale. I indicated we, as search marketers (we weren’t called that back then) had a vested interest in how well a retailer or company did as a result of the search marketing space. Greg Boser, who I had met previously, told me I should speak on the topic. He introduced me to Danny Sullivan. Danny literally looked at me, and said, okay, well, if you are so passionate about this, maybe you should speak on the topic. We’re having a conference in Dallas, in December. Why don’t you fly out and talk about it?

I did. Bryan Eisenberg and I were the first to speak on the topic of Measuring Success. Bryan and I did that presentation in numerous formats over the years. I spoke at three domestic conferences a year for SES. I was soon asked to speak internationally. I presented in London, Stockholm and Toronto on more than one occasion. Parties, passion, excitement, fervor, late-night outings, dinners, shared enthusiasm amongst extraordinarily intelligent people were the norm. I have never been in such an energetic, wildly successful group of people. John Marshall. Brett Crosby. Bryan Eisenberg. Greg Boser. Dana Todd. Jessie Stricchiola. Barb Coll. Vanessa Fox. Danny Sullivan. There is a very long list of folks to recall.

How many of you have seen this come and go, as I have in the past year or two? How many of you would go to one, two, three or yes, every single SES conference that Danny ran every year? Yes, we had groupies. Seriously. We had this core group of about 100 people that were there at every single conference, and becoming extremely successful on the tails of Google, Yahoo and MSN. The conversations we’d have at these conferences, at after-hour dinners, were amazing. People were more than just successful, they were accomplishing major feats most ordinary people don’t even dream about. And, here I was, sitting in the center of it all. I loved my life. I was also single. That made it even more entertaining. ;-) Once, there was…. ha ha, I’m keeping that one to myself…..

Income increased for many, in fact likely every person or company I knew in the arena. Customers alike. If you weren’t succeeding in this space, you either didn’t “get it”, or you actually hated search marketing. Why did you hate search marketing? Because you weren’t able to adapt to insane speed of adopting new tools, new technology and communicate about its value in a short period of time? You just weren’t passionate about search, or something like that. You weren’t a workaholic. You weren’t addicted to your cell phone, or email, or blogs, or Facebook, or whatever the latest thing was. You didn’t think it was cool to have a Google Dance t-shirt, or multiples that they handed out at the end, if you were lucky. You didn’t think it was super cool to get private invites to beta-testing dinners at swank dinner parties where they escorted you by limo. You didn’t think it was cool to be talking to 1,000 people in a conference room about what you do. You weren’t into search.

But what if you are still into search, despite the economy, recession, bad stuff you hear about all the time on the news. When was the last time you attended a conference? Many I know that used to attend the SES conferences haven’t attended in a while, perhaps two years. Why? Is it because the conference industry changed two years ago, when Danny left Incisive? Is it because you hopped to another company and they don’t pay for conferences? Or, is it due to the economy? Or perhaps all of these things?

So, I was out of the SES conference industry for a little over a year. I had a baby, on my own, and have re-adjusted. I launched a new product called Bizwatch Search Analytics. I got away from providing pure SEO & PPC analytics services and consulting.

Bizresearch morphed into a search marketing analytics product model, enhanced by service, instead of the other way around. I’d performed search analytics from a service model for years. I was ready for something new. I’ve completely changed the way Bizresearch works, and Bizwatch Search Analytics is the reason for that. I was tired of managing people to manage spreadsheets, and weekly/monthly/quarterly/annual reports. Turnover was high due to frustration on the data and tool requirements to manage what we do on a daily basis. The biggest complaint I hear amongst colleagues is monthly reporting and how much time they spend on this. SEO companies weren’t valuable to investors. SEM companies with employees, large spend, and tool companies were of value to investors. So, I chose to re-create Bizresearch into a search marketing tool company. I also chose to focus on the medium-sized companies who needed affordable tools (< $1,000/month instead of percent of ad spend) at their fingertips. I made the search marketing analytics tool do all the things search marketing account managers and internal marketing managers were tired of. We do annual traffic reports, where you can import one year’s data, trend it, graph, export it and look professional and make better decisions. It does PPC, SEO, SEO competitors, keyword research, traffic, leads, sales, conversions, the things you need, and gets rid of all the stuff you don’t.

Last Spring 2009, I spoke at Danny’s new show in Toronto, SMX Analytics, and in October at the SMX East search marketing conference in New York about search analytics tools. I also recently came back from speaking at SES Chicago put together by the SES Advisory Board and Searchenginewatch.com. It was two years since I spoke at SES Chicago. I only missed six months at the SMX conferences, as I attended right before I delivered my daughter.

I’ve noticed a dramatic shift at both conferences in the past two years. The attendance is different. The energy has changed. The exhibitor list has dramatically declined. There are no more parties, like there were. The search engines don’t even seem to show up anymore, or if they do, it might be just Bing.

I think things have to change, dramatically, in order for the continued success, or perhaps renewed success in these conferences. I’ll blog tonight, about why and what I think needs to change. Please subscribe to our corporate Twitter account @bizresearch Bizresearch Twitter account, for when I post ten things I think ought to be done differently for the SEM conference industry as a whole. In the meantime, you can read Dana’s musings on this as well.

Part Two is here - 10 Things That Should Change in the Search Marketing Conference Industry in 2010-11.

Posted in SES Conferences, SMX - Search Engine Land Conferences. No Comments »

 

PPC Consultant Lowers Ad Spend But Has to Defend Her Services And Rates

November 2nd, 2009

by Laura Thieme

I have one of those PPC/SEO clients who really has a sensitivity to paying consultants. You might have one of those clients too. I always get a kick out of looking at a company’s Adwords expenses in Bizwatch (a search analytics platform that reports on PPC, SEO, Analytics). I see no problem in their spending several thousands of dollars a month, but what I do have a problem with is the following:

1) Not tracking conversions and cost of conversion (lead or online sale)
2) Telling me they think their ad campaign is working because their phone is ringing
3) Simultaneously questioning my charge of barely a $1,000 for Bizwatch ($595) and 4 hours of consultation to review, make recommendations and make edits; or making me explain myself in numerous emails and phone calls
4) Finding out they contacted my colleague and asked for a cheaper rate, and bad-mouthed me
5) Waffling on spending a couple hundred bucks with me a month
6) Coming back to me after they’ve bad-mouthed me, amongst others

Despite that, I looked at their seemingly free Bizwatch data, since they haven’t paid for this month yet. Within a few minutes, I can learn the following:

1) It tells me within 5 minutes that by adding negative keywords to your ad campaign, your ad spend in Google decreased YOY by nearly $1k.
2) It tells me that while I decreased their ad spend, I simultaneously increased their traffic by about 1k visitors
3) It continues to tell me that the company still isn’t tracking conversions, which their last vendor inadvertently left out when he/she/they redesigned that website
4) The real measure of success is in the number of leads and the profitability and/or cost of those leads. That said, the value of such information costs money.
5) I can’t tell quickly which keywords are performing best on the Adwords side, but that’s because client needs to authorize the newly hired web guy to install the code and approve it.
6) I can tell that one term continues to be highest cost keyword; whether or not that term is profitable is based upon conversion data

It’s a waste of my time if I have to defend my services & rates to someone who is spending thousands of dollars each month in Adwords, and wonders why they should have to pay me $1,000 to analyze, recommend and fix their problems. Why is it that some companies question the value of PPC Analytics consultants, yet they pay Google directly and haven’t got a clue what to do, or which keywords are working?

By the way, in case you’re wondering, I don’t typically work for $1k a month for any company. This was a returning client, and so I gave them the small business discount as a loyal customer. But there are times when I say this is why I don’t work with very small businesses because I literally can’t afford to talk to them, much less service them.

I am, however, interested in working with companies who spend tens of thousands of dollars or more per month in Google, and know the data is overwhelming and there is no way they want to go it alone with managing their PPC strategy and ROI. That’s the client I want. Add a personal human being how knows what they are talking about, and attends the SES and SMX conferences - that’s an added bonus!

Posted in Paid Search Tools, Search Analytics. No Comments »