RIMC 2012 – The Reykjavik Internet Marketing Conference – Search Engine Marketing Track – PPC & More #RIMC12
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RIMC 2012 – The Reykjavik Internet Marketing Conference – Search Engine Marketing Track – PPC & More #RIMC12

14th March 2012

The search engine marketing track started off with a superb insight into the culture of Facebook from Chris Dowd. Followed by Phil Greenwood sharing start up tips, Ólafur Kr. Ólafsson helping us to make the most out of Google alongside other marketing efforts, and Bardur Orn Gunnarsson who gave us a fascinating insight into A/B testing for PPC.

Speakers:

  • Keynote – Charles Dowd – Facebook
  • Phil Greenwood – Microsoft
  • Ólafur Kr. Ólafsson – Nordic eMarketing
  • Bardur Orn Gunnarsson – Hvíta húsið

Keynote speech – This Journey is 1% finished – Charles Dowd – Facebook

“1% done does not mean it is not a good product – you always have somewhere to go from here… the hardest part is getting from zero to something the first 1% is critical and difficult”

This journey is 1% finished is one of the core mantras of Facebook but what does it actually mean? A reminder to everyone working there that you are on a journey and you haven’t actually arrived yet which creates a different energy, freedom to take risks.

Charles Dowd works on the platform team integrating products into the Facebook system and is of the belief that when you enter an environment where everyone has the same common vision you get things done.

How do Facebook apply this on a day to day basis?

Using Hack culture. Hacking is a way to solve a problem so Facebook use hack culture to get people to make the first step. Every 6 or 7 weeks a hackathon is held where the team are encouraged to do what they want. If you want to build a wall, you build a wall. If you want to paint a picture you paint a picture.

The iPhone app was built one night by one person who thought this would be a fun thing to do and now 450 million people are using Facebook on a mobile. The Timeline was built at a hackathon by two people. The Facebook ethos is to take the ideas, productise them and get them out to market as soon as they can.

Move fast and break things

If you’re not failing up to half of the time you are probably not trying hard at all. If you take no risks there is no innovation, If you don’t fail you can’t succeed. Facebook believe that if you have an environment where people are allowed to fail have people fail faster rather than over  a two year period.

Charles says there is no point trying to control people that ultimately you can’t control, you have to go with it, give people boundaries rules and a set of principles and culture and values that they all align to then they can make decisions within those boundaries. The results you get are even better than you get in a controlled environment

Facebook Boot Camp

In order for all platform and dev newbies to understand delivering, culture and impact – in the first two weeks theyare expected to ship at least one change to the site. This means that your code is sent out to 825 million users every day giving you an instant connection. Every Tuesday a new version of the account is launched so that there is a cadence of delivering and they are always moving forward

Inspiring and fascinating, this talk shows that things can’t be done with control but much can be achieved with trust, understanding the impact you have on others and communication with people

A perfect keynote within the theme of you are not in control. No one knows where things are going to go but stay focussed and keep shipping because that way you’re focussed on the right thing

The Mafia, Bachelor Parties, Black Hats and Me – Phil Greenwood – Microsoft

Phil Greenwood – ex wine merchant, now Microsoft, gave an interesting talk about things to consider about marketing. One of the only presentations I have seen containing Joe Sugarman (AKA my hero – I own a pair of ‘blue blocker’ sunglasses and he personally gave me a Batman credit card – he is a marketing genius).

Phil started off with a ‘Marketing Effectiveness Quiz’. Asking us to score ourselves out of 10 for the ‘Four P’s’; product, positioning, price, promotions. “You can’t be a truly effective marketer if you don’t control these things.” Then took us on a journey through case studies to illustrate effective marketing

Takeaways

  • Talk to your customers and develop customer insights outside of the analytics package
  • Listen to the crazies – they are the people that will teach you the most
  • Continue to refine your message
  • Be your customers first love – create a habit
  • Be customer centric
  • Keep in mind that you are not the customer
  • Think outside the search and display box to drive better results
  • Build early awareness (pre-launch)
  • Dig deep into customer issues – they hold the keys to success

Google Adwords and the bigger picture – Ólafur Kr. Ólafsson – Nordic eMarketing

“Say it like you mean it”

Talking about traditional marketing and online marketing, Oli showed us examples of how to do it and how not to do it. Offline and online marketing are often seen as separate marketing methods but for maximum marketing success they should work together.

Using examples of an interior decorating show, and homeowner searches, you can get some great results by taking advantage of increased searches that may occur when shows are on TV. Understanding how people search. Oli gave us the following takeaways:

  • Know your customer – know who they are, what they want, have what they need, and know how to tell them about it.
  • If you don’t know your customer, don’t know what they want to know, where they will look for it, or how they search for it, you are giving them to your competition.

Real time market research & PPC the beginning not the end? – Bardur Orn Gunnarsson – Hvíta húsið

A/B testing is not always definitive as Bardur showed us with examples of A/B testing for PPC campaigns due to some unusual results for Keflavik Airport. Starting with Facebook ads until feedback started coming in there was an advert for Malmo that was nearly disregarded completely crushed the performance of the rest of the ads.

Discovering that the word ‘shopping’ seemed to be a deciding factor. No amount of trying shopping in other city titles or changing the ads changed that performance and using the display network brought completely different results

Takeaways

  • Test on all mediums
  • Do not trust 100% your results
  • It pays to be more targeted
  • Roman Abramovich Is the king of AB Testing!

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Written By
Jackie Hole is an Award Winning Search Marketing consultant specialising in Paid Search, Conversion Improvement and Organic Search / SEO for the USA, Canada and European markets. Starting out in Multimedia & Interface Design, Jackie has over 15 years experience in online marketing and was recently awarded European Search Personality...
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