The Pole Position Marketing Team was off to Las Vegas last week for Webmasterworld’s PubCon conference. After last years experience of coming home with my brain on overload, I was prepared for an equally fulfilling week.
This year PubCon went really crazy with sessions, running a keynote and 4 sessions each day. And, to cram in even more information, there were six tracks to chose from! Doing the math, that’s 31 topics to choose from in one day. Truly something for everyone. With so much going on, it wasn’t possible to live blog or even create a wrap up at the end of the day. Thus I am pulling my wrap up together for the entire week in one post.
And then since 15 summaries is too much for anyone to deal with, I’m just going to give you the takeaways from my favorite sessions.
PPC Engine Vendor Panel
If you’ve ever been to any conference, you’ve at one time or another sat in on a vendor panel. And typically, I think the feeling is that if you’ve been to one, you’ve been to them all and there’s no point in attending another one. Well, with PPC it’s always nice to get an update on what might be new in each. For example last year I was excited to hear first hand (before any blogs posted about it) how MSN adCenter were releasing their keyword tool to integrate with Excel (07). Cool stuff.
This year I got excited to learn some stats from the Ask.com rep Dustin Kwan. He emphasized the importance of spreading your presence across a variety of vendors. He mentioned how Ask has a larger percent of the search traffic over MSN, saying that 2/3 of searchers don’t use MSN, and of those, 1/2 of them don’t use Google. Interesting point, and something to consider for my clients who are looking for more presence in the search world.
Yahoo Search Marketing rep Patrizio Spagnoletto told us how Yahoo have fine tuned their geo-targeting down to the zip code, which having that ability is pretty cool.
AdWords rep Frederick Vallayes mentioned something new in the Geo Reports, that you can find where clicks are coming from. Important information to have, helps you fine tune your geo targeting. Why pay for advertising and clicks in regions that don’t convert as well? Or with this information, create a geo-targeted campaign and spend more money in the regions that convert well.
Not much of a takeaway from MSN adCenter rep Doug (last name??) beyond his focus on improving ROI using 3 metrics of Market Change/Technology/Knowledge. He did recommend the following @adCenterBlog on twitter and staying current with adCenterCommunity.com
Navigating the Complex World of PPC Engines
The big take away here is Christine Churchill of KeyRelevance, she’s just totally awesome every time I hear her speak. She gave us a big list of copy “secrets that sell” … excellent take aways, easy to follow, easy to implement.
The big bullets that I grabbed (although I did get her entire list) are:
- Know what differentiates your ad
- Provide incentive to click
- Talk about benefits
- Use psychology – add humor and get their attention
- Use DKI – when it works
- A/B test your ads
- Pre-qualify clicks with ad text to eliminate those unwanted clicks
Top-Secret Tools of the Trade
This session was great – I have a list of tools to check out. Some of which I have seen and used, but there are others that I’ve not so I’m interested in looking into them further. I’ve recently found analytics to be FUN to play with. I want to check out Caphyon and DupeCop
Fun Stuff
Had some time to do fun stuff in Vegas too, including walking blisters into the soles of my feet … Spent a bunch of money, did the roller coaster at NY NY, the rides on the Stratosphere, and saw the Cirque du Soleil, KÀ. Even taught a friend how to lose money gambling. Ye ha!
That wraps up the wrap up … until next year…
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