TIMA February Seminar

I will be presenting at the TIMA February Seminar next Wednesday, February 25th in Raleigh, NC. The topic will be How Search Marketing Can Help You Weather the Tough Economy. Advertisers are cutting back spending, and increasingly they are forced to justify every dollar. There is a parallel shift of dollars from offline to online media, as online can be tracked more effectively. My presentation will cover PPC, SEO, and analytics, and I will provide actionable tactics to attendees on ways they can improve their online marketing. There are a number of great free tools available from Google. If you are in the Raleigh area, you can register here.

Cyber Monday

I thought it was fitting that I post a message about Cyber Monday, which is one of the busiest online shopping days of the year. People typically shop offline during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, and once they get back to the office on the Monday after Thanksgiving, they start placing their online orders. Paid search marketing is a smart and cost effective way to reach a targeted audience. You will get people looking for your product at the time they are asking for it. Many retailers have special Cyber Monday promotions, which you can usually find when you come to their website. Even if you are not currently buying keywords, online search is a great way to see what the competition is up to. You can search for items that you want to rank for and see who the top results are on both the paid and the organic side. More importantly, pay attention to the landing page. Does it make you want to shop there? How can this information help you to compete more effectively? Think about this as you prepare your 2009 online marketing strategy.

eM8 Atlanta

On Wednesday I moderated the Search Marketing Panel at eM8, the eMarketing Association's conference in Atlanta.  Joining me on the panel were Lee Blankenship and Brian Ussery from Search Discovery, Lindsay Blankenship from Razorfish, and Jonathan Nelson from Primedia. The audience included e-marketing managers from around the country. My lead question to the panel was about how advertisers should treat search marketing in the current economy. The answer was that search becomes even more important in a slower economy. People become more price sensitive in a recession and shop around. Therefore, marketers must maintain relevancy and awareness through paid and organic results. Measuring the impact of search traffic is also important and requires strong analytics and reporting capabilities. Thanks to Kevin Lee for inviting me to moderate the panel.