At the urging of a close friend, I'm attending this year's Traffic and Conversion Summit in San Diego on February 25-27 for the first time. It's put on by Digital Marketer and there are 6000+ marketers in attendance. As more established marketing conferences have shrunken and fallen out of touch with the needs of Digital Marketers, it's refreshing to see that a show which speaks our language is thriving!
The keynote presentation by Digital Marketer's founder, Ryan Dieiss, offered several thought provoking insights, such as:
- Response and click through rates are down across the board, and email is probably the best example of that. What could be relied on in the past to drive conversions is no longer the formula moving forward.
- Google and Facebook advertising costs much more than it did just a few years ago.
- Facebook Organic has gone from a viable channel to one that's impossible to make an impact. You have to pay to play.
- Not everything that you want to implement / test needs to be immediately trackable. Be willing to try things and grow them organically before worrying too much about ROI.
- Just because you're in Digital Marketing doesn't mean that you shouldn't pick up the phone or get on a plane to meet with your customers. Personal interactions matter today, more than ever.
- Successful customers are much more valuable than happy customers. Happy customers will say nice things about you. Successful customers will be your best brand advocates and drive new business.
- Digital ad spend is now larger than offline marketing spend.
A few other observations:
- Don't offer attendees Wi-Fi during the conference; they'll concentrate a lot better.
- The exhibit hall was particularly upbeat and exhibitors were giving away a plethora of free stuff, including tee shirts….a sure sign that there are active buyers for the most cutting edge tools in the market today.
