We spent the day talking internet marketing and social media Wednesday (well, actually we do it everyday) at Jacksonville’s first AMA Internet Marketing Expo in downtown Jacksonville. It was a good conference, especially for the low cost, with topics ranging from introductory lectures on Facebook and Twitter to case study presentations on some of the nation’s largest companies. Despite the ranging topics, the underlying theme always came back to high value customer engagement for optimizing conversion rates. At least, that’s how I saw it. Here are some takeaways from the conference for those who could not make it.
- Basic Marketing Principles – The internet is nothing new, yet so many traditional marketers and business owners feel overwhelmed as if internet marketing was something launched last month. A big take away factor that was continually reiterated was not to forget the basic principles of marketing. Idea Integration, a full service ad agency compared an approach they used to a high school term paper, using the “who, what, where, when” questions to better understand their audience. Keep it simple, and listen to users.
- ABT (Always be Testing) – We’ve been saying it for forever. A lot of focus was placed on usability testing and data collection. Laura Hernandez mentioned a new tool that we REALLY like. It’s called ClickTale, and it actually allows you to watch recorded videos of users behavior when they come to your site. We embedded a video so you can check it out. We use it and we love it. For quantitative data Google and Yahoo analytics are good choices. They’re free and simple, but robust. Forums and social media can also be helpful and cheap ways to keep track of what users think about your brand.
- Weak Panel Discussion – Not to say that those on the panel were under qualified. Truthfully I don’t know too much about their accolades. None the less the panel discussion really had potential but completely missed the mark. To better improve it for the next conference consider having a more diverse panel (all were from the Florida Times Union) so that more experiences and opinions can be shared. The other takeaway from the panel is that it didn’t REALLY seem like an expert panel, although I could be wrong. Perhaps they were nervous. My expert panel would have been a Geoff Wilson, Carl Smith and one of the members from IDEA integration.
Overall the conference was certainly a success and well worth the $50.00 bucks I paid to go. I recommend if you weren’t able to go that you plan for it next time. Many of the speakers were very knowledgeable in their fields and it’s always nice to surround yourself with people who have a passion for these kinds of things. You can learn more about the Jacksonville American Marketing Association at www.jaxama.org.
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