I find it entertaining how at every conference, I manage to come home with BAGS full of Online Marketing" SWAG" (Stuff We All Get). Well this time around, in spirit of the elections, I decided to rate all of the SWAG and name a "BEST SWAG AT AD:TECH". It's a tough year full of yoyo's, usb lights, wireless mice and cigars! The winners will be chosen based on the following criteria: Longevity, Practicality, Popularity and Design!
This list will exclude notebooks, pens, gum, sticker, and squishee balls ...'cause they suck! Below is a list of the best SWAG and their companies:
1st Place - LinkTrust, Sturdy Messenger Bag/Laptop Case
This is the bag on the right of the picture on top (and NOT the yellow one). A well built product, usable compartments and a padded laptop section, this item was hard to come by. The entire show, people kept asking me "where did you get that bag?" Even my boss was a little jealous. This one takes the cake!
2nd Place - EliteCommission, Fresh Rolled Cigars, Clippers and Lighters
Originally I was considering giving this 1st place, but there was no practicality here. It was definitely popular and this booth definitely got the most buzz! Also, it's funny to note the Chief Marketing Officer who decided on the cigars idea is only 16-years-old! And the other staff members were also under age: Rishab Verma (CSO) is 17 and Joe Helewa (Sr. AM) is 16. And the best part? Their booth ended up having a line around the corner for the first few hours of Ad:Tech on Monday. A little ironic that 3 members of their staff aren't legally allowed to touch their own SWAG! I found an interview with Joshua Kopac: 16-year-old Internet Marketer, which is worth reading. He's definitely a sharp kid and the company looks like it is doing quite well. Worth keeping an eye on!
Practically speaking, a wireless mouse makes a great addition to both your laptop and desktop. I was also very surprised to see there was no shortage in supply. I was able to snag 4 of them, without even being questioned. They earned this one!
Overall it was a successful day for SWAG collectors and exhibitors alike, and I look forward to letting the winners know that they truly earned this one ;)
Principals of Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing
Practical advice for maximizing your S.E.O./S.E.M. investment
Build vs buy (do-it-yourself vs hire an agency) decision criteria
Customer testimonials and entrepreneur experiences with S.E.O./S.E.M.
For those of you unaware of this event, the mission is simple: "Tech entrepreneurs, sharing techniques to launch faster and cheaper!" A room full of 50+ Entrepreneurs with bootstrapped budgets discussing professional techniques on improving their businesses. A great source for networking and information. And more importantly, the panel at this event felt a lot more engaging than the big conferences, but the content and material was just as good, if not better!
I was very impressed with the companies presenting this time around. I made a few notes about the companies I found to be the most intriguing. Web100.com presents top 10 and 100 lists in many different categories and brings in over 125,000 page views per month. The funder and CEO of SlipFire, built a web marketing and design company using wordpress (impressive!).Other noteworthy companies included SEO Tools company SEO Drop, TurboCourt the TurboTax for law, and Boomerator.com the one stop shop and social network for Baby Boomers (I'd like to not that they were recently mentioned TechCrunch and Mashable.com).
Once the networking+pizza 1/2 hour was over, the panel was ready to get going. It consisted of the following:
Joseph McElroy, Search Artist at Gigapixel Creative and Chair of IPTV Committee on Emerging Technolgy (SEMPO)
I usually report on the panel in the following manner: Q & A format, where write the question and provide each panelist's response below it. It lasted about 1 hour, but here's the most relevant content I was able to write down:
Q: How do you know you're SEO campaign was effective/is doing well?
Sarah: "You're making money (everybody luaghs)...but note that setting a benchmark is very important"
Regau: "I need to know your GOAL in the beginning"
Q: Pro's and Con's of doing SEM in a Content Management System (CMS)?
Joseph: "Wordpress, Joomla and Drupalare great porgrams. If you're not going to use a CMS and start from scratch, you better be an expert"
Q: How long until you see results?
Regau: "It depends on your campaign and goals."
Sarah:"As soon as tomorrow to a couple of months. It really depends on Spider Frequency from Google...oh ya, there are other search engines too (everybody laughs). SEO is like PR, where you have to pitch to the editor every day...and the pitch keeps changing."
Q: SEO Basics?
Regau: "A huge part is how many sites are ranking in your area! How many site are ranking against you?"
Sarah: "3 Basics - 1. Make sure a spider can get into your site; 2. Make sure the content is relevant to the text; 3. Internal and External linking."
Joseph: "It's also important for when people get there, what's going to happen after that?"
Q: What's the difference in promoting a Product vs. Services?
Joseph: "You should contentrate more on PPC for Products and SEO for Services."
Q: How much time should one spend on SEO vs. Social Marketing Optimization (SMO)?
Regau: "If you're aiming for the longtail, longer lasting success then SEO...SMO is an ongoing process that needs daily updates."
Sarah: "Utilizing social networking sites will be good for Tomorrow's success...but you have to keep up with it then."
Overall it was a successfull event and if you're interested in going, I suggest going to December 4th: Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS) to hear from Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress experts. It's a guarantee you'll find what you're looking for!
eMarketer.com just posted that "fewer consumers worldwide are opening marketing e-mails, according to a November 2008 study by MailerMailer." (eMarketer) MailerMailer is an affordable ESP for smaller list management needs if you're interested. Based on research, they found that in the first half of 2008, the average marketing e-mail open rate fell to 13.20% and Click rates fell to 2.73%. Some industries had higher open rates for their marketing e-mail (ie: finance, religious/spiritual, gov and telecom).
Also, another factor that could contribute to the drop in Open Rates and Click Through Rates (CTR) is the Subject Header. For anyone new to e-mail marketing, eMarketer conducted earlier studies that showed, shorter subject lines performed better than longer ones:
But don't start thinking "e-mail is a waste of time"...that's simply crazy talk! E-mail is 2nd to paid search when it came to driving high volume. (You should already know that!) What I didn't know was that an average of 4 out of 10 SEM companies said "e-mail marketing yielded the best ROI of any tactic worldwide" (Survey results from January 2008 from Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO)).
If you are looking to do e-mail marketing, I'll be writing an article next week about "The Best Email Service Provider's For Small Businesses", with Q&A, Price Quotes and more.
I was reading a CNN article "Ten Jobs That Pay $80,000 A Year", and noticed that Marketing Manager held the #6 spot. The statistics were as follows: Annual mean income: $86,283, Projected employment in 2016: 192,000, Increase between 2006 and 2016: 14%. That looks like a promising future, but I decided to do a little research of my own. I wanted to see the difference when I specified the position as "Online Marketing Manager".
So I went to 6 different Salary Predicting sites, typed in the term "Online Marketing Manager" and here is what I came up with:
I was also able to get my hands on an effective PayScale salary widget. PayScale is a market leader in global online compensation data, and this widget directly accesses the world's largest database of individual employee compensation profiles. Give it a shot:
