IMC: Best Tips and Conference Summary

Internet Marketing Conference took place in Vancouver September 11 and 12 at the Coast Plaza Hotel. The conference was live blogged by Corey Rollins of AdHack.com, Rebecca Bolwitt of Miss604.com and me, Monique Trottier, of BoxcarMarketing.com.

You can find Corey and my posts here on TechVibes. Thank you very much for inviting us to blog on your behalf.

Sponsor Slide

Below is a short summary of some of the sessions that were highlighted during the wrap-up session.

John Hossack offered up:

1. Rich Devine: Monetization models
Conversion rates don’t tell the full story. Your SEM likely undervalues the full value. You need to monetize the micro-conversions: using store locator, downloads, newsletter sign-ups. These are contributors to the total value of the business.

2. Amy Mischler of dotMobi provided Jaguar data on display advertising on mobile space. They had 15K visitors to the mobile site through the promotion. Only a small percent carried on to book a test drive but the point was you’re not going to get the traffic or reach yet but the conversions will be there.

Top mobile players at the moment are in the following industries: financial, auto, retail, entertainment, publishing.

3. Tom Leung from Google on testing. Pruning is a new feature in Google Optimizer. It’s a powerful tool for speeding up your test by pruning the losers earlier.

4. Liveclicker. Video’s time is coming for retail. It doesn’t work for every thing but it’s worth considering when done right.

James Carter, IIMA, was inspired by:

1. Capulet’s social marketing session, in particular Twitter. This idea of micro-blogging finally made sense during this presentation. The integration with Facebook and a variety of other formats is appealing.

2. Gary Beal’s 12 SEO Tactics are fantastically interesting. Optimizing 404 pages is definitely worth doing. Pay attention to this. Key site navigation should be on this page.

3. Crawford Kilian: Brought us back to class in terms of returning to concise marketing messages.

4. Using LinkedIn: The average pay grade of someone on LinkedIn is $140,000 per year. These are our peers. LinkedIn drove 25% of the IMC attendants.

Jon Husband reflected on:

1. The techniques and the mechanics of SEO software and tools can help you with the tech aspect, but where’s the web 2.0 part? We can’t forget the connected eco-systems of conversation. It will be interesting to see how social media plays out. It’s not just the media, it’s social.

2. Darren Barefoot’s uses of conversation prism is interesting.

3. Prediction: Expect more nuances of behaviour and psychology in marketing.

James Richardson, Engine Digital, thought:

1. Online advertising and the track on tool demos were great.

2. The online advertising panel really spoke to him about running integrated SEO, PPC, display advertising, etc. All the various tracks need to be integrated. Don’t have conversations in isolation. Take advantage of each other’s successes and knowledge. The laws around advertising and planning need to happen in the same room. How many tracks contribute to the full success? Get them all in the same room early.

3. Protoshare.com: There’s lots of wasted time during the development of campaigns. The time is squeezed and the prototyping platform is compelling because you can compress the conversations around what we are going to build. As an agency, we’re trying to liaise between the client and the development. Making this faster and easier is worthwhile.

Mike Owen, Snap Technologies, offered the following key themes to the conference:

1. Engagement.
2. Testing.

Companies still making decisions based on gut instinct need to look at the numbers and understand the story they are trying to tell.

Related Links:
IIMA
If you liked this conference then think about other events locally.

FundFindr TV
Captured the event and they will be posting in a couple of weeks.

My final thoughts:

Regardless of what tools and online marketing activities you are engaging in, always remember that it’s about People, Process and Technology. You must have all 3 in hand. The tools are only as good as the people using them.