Conferences

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending Seth Godin’s presentation in NYC on his new book, Tribes. This was my second Godin talk - I saw him in Philly two years ago when he released The Dip - and again, I was not disappointed. In fact, I walked out inspired, enthusiastic, and ready to take action. Seeing Seth speak does that for you. (So does reading his books!)

Seth doesn’t give your typical PowerPoint presentation. Sure, he has slides, but they are mainly pictures - images that complement the ideas he’s talking about. He’s quite the engaging speaker and you can tell from his first few words just how passionate he is about his message. continue

Moderator: Krista Baker
Download: MP3

What You Will Learn:
This call is a review of the Future of Online Advertising conference which was held in New York on June 8-9. Here’s what you’ll learn by listening:

• The key themes addressed by the conference
• Why 50% of advertising fails
• Problems small business owners have measuring advertising effectiveness
• How companies can leverage online video to promote their services
• Difficulties bloggers and advertisers have finding one another

Who Will Benefit?
Anyone interested in industry trends and what the cutting edge of online advertising is.

Websites Mentioned in the Podcast

• Future of Online Advertising
• Greg Stuart
• VideoClix
• Microsoft Ad Labs
• ProBlogger
• Google Analytics

YouTube Videos:

• Shakira’s Fan Version of Hips Don’t Lie
• Flintstones Endorse Winston

The FOOA conference was targeted mainly at ad agencies and big players who buy millions of dollars in advertising and were looking for better ways to reach their niche customers. That said, there was a steady focus on advertising on some of the larger blogs out there - and, in turn, if you were a larger publisher, how you could monetize your blog or publication.

Some of the companies below, like PayPerPost and BlogAds, cater to publications of all sizes, while some of the others like Federated Media and The Deck are highly selective and only work with high quality, high traffic blogs. Here are several of the numerous ways you might consider monetizing your blog - or if you’re an advertiser, here are numerous choices you have to reach niche audiences. continue

I was in NYC Thursday and Friday for the Future of Online Advertising (FOOA) conference held at beautiful Gotham Hall. The event, the first of what will probably many conferences on this emerging topic, has sparked enough buzz to get Mayor Bloomberg to officially declare this week “Online Advertising Week.” I attended for free, thanks to Darren Rowse of Problogger.net who gave away tickets on his blog a few weeks back and I happened to be one of the winners.

Sadly, my digital camera chose Thursday to malfunction on me, so I only have low resolution pictures from my camera phone. That said, you can check out photos of the event on Flickr. continue

Kim Malone, Director of Adsense at Google, spoke on the various pricing models that are emerging in online advertising, specifically in Google’s Adwords/Adsense. She stressed that the consumer buying cycle can be summarized as

1. awareness - prospects become aware of a need or problem
2. consideration - prospects consider their options
3. action - prospects take a specified action to fulfill their need or solve their problem

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Greg Stuart, author of What Sticks kicked off the conference with call to action to all marketers - please hold yourself accountable for your advertising campaigns. In the advertising world, our mantra goes something like “Half of all marketing budgets is wasted - we just don’t know which half.” That must change. Generating publicity isn’t enough.

How can advertisers test the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns? Contrary to Stephen Colbert’s advice, the worst thing you can do is “go with your gut.” Given all the potential ad variations out there, how could you possibly know which resonates best with your target audience without testing? We all like to think we can produce great marketing materials, but the best marketers at Fortune 500 companies are routinely getting it wrong. What does that say for us small business marketers? continue

I attended the Atlanta StomperNet Live conference over the weekend, so I thought I’d write up some articles about what I considered the best content at the event.

What is StomperNet?
If you’re not familiar with StomperNet, it is a membership-based, distance learning portal started by Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkins in Oct 2006. Members pay a monthly fee of about $800/month to access the content, forums, and live events. The benefits are that you interact with a number of other like-minded professionals who are trying to improve their website conversions and sales.

Members have access to all sorts of great videos by well respected internet marketing mavens. For instance, Dan Thies and Leslie Rohde teach about search engine optimization. Sherman Hu and Dave Taylor teach about blogging. Jerry West teaches about affiliate marketing, and so on. Most of these videos teach you step by step how to get started marketing your website with each of these different tactics. continue

If you’ve heard of Stompernet or Butterfly Marketing or Rich Schefren’s coaching program, chances are that you’ve seen some of the effects of Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula. Jeff has taken processes that big companies use to launch new products and translated that into a process that anyone on the internet can use to launch their own product - like an ebook, home study course, software package or coaching program. continue

Michael Stebbins is the VP of Marketing for the analytics firm, ClickTracks, which offers all sorts of hosted analytics solutions for businesses. If you’re new to analytics, I highly recommend you start with Google Analytics, as it’s free and easy to install, but for those looking for a more robust solution, ClickTracks is impressive.

Michael provided an extremely valuable template for asking the right questions and measuring results with analytics software. continue

I admit that I’m not much of an affiliate marketer. My main source of affiliate revenue comes from Amazon.com’s affiliate program, and that’s less than $100/month - not very exciting. So I was curious to hear Jerry West’s presentation on affiliate marketing.

Jerry’s talk was more about how to protect your business than the nitty gritty of affiliate marketing, so I thought I’d share some of the points he made that are valuable to any business. continue