If you’re in the online marketing industry, you should definitely attend SMX. Today, I attended SMX West San Jose 2013. I’m thrilled to recap my fun times at the event and share some pictures of PPC Ian with friends from the online marketing industry. (After reading today’s post, you may also wish to check out my 2012 and 2011 recaps.) There are two more days left in SMX West 2013 so you should definitely try to make it if you are in the SF Bay Area!

It’s All About The People

PPC Ian and Hillary Read From PPC Associates

SMX is all about the people. I primarily attend these conferences for networking and today’s conference totally delivered. In fact, as soon as I stepped out of my car in the convention center parking lot, I ran into my friend Snejana Norris. We used to work together at QuinStreet, and now Snejana is Senior Manager, Marketing at LendingTree. What a funny coincidence that we both arrived to SMX West at the same time!

Upon first arriving, the conference seemed a little quiet. There were not a ton of attendees. This surprised me since online advertising is a huge industry and we’re in the online marketing capital of the world, the SF Bay Area! However, I also know just how busy I am right now – so much that I could only spend a partial day at SMX West this year. Perhaps other online marketing professionals are hard at work, too busy to pause for the conference. Despite the quiet feel, the conference was amazing. Those who did attend, speak, and support the conference are top quality online marketers.

SMX West Delivered Great Insights

PPC Ian and Neil Lunagaria From Marin Software

As soon as I arrived at the conference, I went to the paid search track. I was totally impressed. This year, SMX West over-delivered on content. In fact, the paid search track felt almost like SMX Advanced. The quality of the presentations, the insightful tips, and the level of engagement as very exciting. I have been in this industry since 2004 and I still learned a few new insights from the presentations. Nice work, panelists! My favorite session? The remarketing one for sure.

After the first session, I went to grab some refreshments and ran into my friend Eli Schwartz. We used to work together at QuinStreet and now Eli is Online Marketing Manager at SurveyMonkey. What a small world!

After refreshments, I went back to the paid search track. I sat down on the aisle, noticing that someone’s stuff was already on the seat next to me. After a few minutes, none other than Hillary Read sat down next to me. What an awesome coincidence! Hillary is Marketing Manager at PPC Associates SEM Agency. If you have been reading PPC Ian for a while, you know that PPC Associates is a true friend of my blog. In fact, I have a guest post that will be going live on the PPC Associates blog soon (I’ll let you know when it’s live so you can check it out).

Upon completion of a solid morning of networking and absorbing online marketing knowledge, it was time for lunch. Mike (from my team) and I went to Arcadia Restaurant. Arcadia is on the ground floor of the Marriott hotel and is awesome. Arcadia is a tradition for Mike and I, and this was our third year enjoying the burgers there. I highly recommend it – the food is delicious, especially the angus burger.

Google DoubleClick Search Booth – A Conference Highlight

After lunch, I went to the expo hall. I especially enjoyed connecting with my good friends from Marin Software. Their booth was front and center. I enjoyed learning more about Marin’s social platform from Neil Lunagaria, Director of Social Platform. I also thoroughly enjoyed the DoubleClick Search booth (check out the picture below). Google went big this year demoing their new DoubleClick Search platform and I must say I’m impressed. My favorite feature: DoubleClick Search offers intra-day bidding, updating bids 4x per day on both Google AdWords and Bing Ads. Nice work!

It’s at this time that I decided to head back to the office to get some work done. While I only got to spend a partial day at SMX West, I truly enjoyed my time. Also, I am thrilled to know my team will be attending the rest of the week and reporting back on their discoveries. I hope to see you at a future SMX conference!

Images from SMX West 2013 © PPCIan.com

Some of my absolute favorite posts here on PPC Ian are the ones about search engine marketing conferences. Yesterday, I attended SMX West San Jose 2012 and the conference absolutely rocked! As always, my favorite part about the entire conference was the networking and fun times with friends, both new and old. Today, I’m thrilled to share tons of pictures and a recap of SMX (Search Marketing Expo) West 2012.

It All Started Off With Great Sessions & Great Lunch

Lunch With Rocket Clicks SEM Agency

I arrived at the conference early yesterday. Since my team shared our all access pass, I attended sessions the morning of day 1. I picked two really great ones. It all started off with Hardcore Local SEO Tactics and then I headed over to Best Practices With adCenter For Bing.

Both sessions were great, but the first one, the local SEO tactics, really opened my eyes. I’m an enterprise level advertiser for large online brands. Sure I leverage geo-specific strategies to the max, but I’ve never promoted physical local storefronts before via SEO. The level of insight from the local marketers was really helpful and totally made my day.

PPC Ian, Jeff Ferguson, and Marin Software

Also, I enjoyed the adCenter session too but I’m already an expert with the adCenter Desktop Tool so it was more of a review for me. As far as sessions go, my teammate Mike went to the Power Tools For The Paid Search Pros later in the day and said it was really great. My good friend David Rodnitzky, CEO of PPC Associates spoke at that one!

After these great sessions, I was ready for a great lunch… Back at SMX Advanced Seattle 2011, I met Steve Kroll, Director of Operations at Rocket Clicks SEM Agency. Steve is a true leader in our industry and has become a great friend. I got a text message from Steve right before SMX West saying he wouldn’t be there but two of his colleagues would.

I really enjoyed meeting Nicole Mennicke, Director of PPC, and Liz Lord, Senior Paid Search Analyst, from Rocket Clicks. Nicole and Liz kindly treated myself and my teammate Mike to lunch at Arcadia Steak House. (It’s funny, Mike and I had lunch last year at that same place. It’s really great food.) We had an amazing lunch, chatted and PPC strategies, and I’m totally impressed with Rocket Clicks. If you’re looking for an SEM agency, you definitely want to reach out to my friends at Rocket Clicks.

Let The Expo Hall Networking Begin

PPC Ian and My Friends At Acquisio

After lunch, I was fired up and ready to network. So, I headed over to the expo hall at SMX West. Surprisingly, it was a lot smaller than previous years. There were some truly great exhibits there, but it just felt small.

As soon as I walked in, I ran into my good friends from Marin Software. There booth was front and center, right near the entrance. I always enjoy meeting up with Marin because they are so impressive. I have a ton of friends there, absolutely love their SEM Platform (it’s amazing), and enjoy hearing about their rapid growth. While speaking with Matt Lawson and his team, I also met Jeff Ferguson, CEO and founder of Fang Digital. Jeff is one of the most seasoned online marketers around, he’s been doing this stuff since the mid 90s.

After spending time with my friends at the Marin booth, I headed over to Acquisio. I was totally blown away! Acquisio has a brand new booth that is out of this world. Each year, the booths keep getting more and more impressive. Acquisio’s booth was one of the best I have seen. Recently, Acquisio Acquired ClickEquations and they are on a roll!

PPC Ian With BrightEdge

Next, I started walking around the expo hall and found a company called BrightEdge. I really enjoyed chatting with Brad Mattick, VP of Marketing, and Mark Melnyk, Talent Acquisition at BrightEdge. BrightEdge is a rapidly growing SEO platform for enterprise advertisers. I’m totally going to check it out and am quite intrigued by the platform. After all, I’m the greatest proponent of SEM automation platforms around (such as Kenshoo). I can’t get enough of these cool technologies!

Next on the expo floor was BoostCTR. As the name implies, this service/platform helps you boost the CTR (click through rate) and also conversion rate of your PPC campaigns. It was really great to learn that BoostCTR has offices right near mine in San Francisco and I’ll be reaching out to schedule a lunch and demo shortly.

While the expo hall floor was a bit small, I was impressed with the quality of companies there. I’m thrilled I learned of two new companies (BrightEdge and BoostCTR) that will help me directly improve my online marketing programs.

Time To Rest & Then Go To The Sharks Game

PPC Ian and BoostCTR

After the amazing times at the SMX West expo floor, I headed over to the coffee shop at the Marriott. I enjoyed spending some time there relaxing and getting some work done. It’s there that I actually published my blog post about 5 Tips For SEM Conferences. I love working at coffee shops and I’m always inspired in that type of environment. I need to remind myself to work at Starbucks and over coffee shops more frequently, it’s all about being productive in an environment you like.

After relaxing and working for a bit, I joined my friends from Marin Software for the San Jose Sharks game. Marin, I can’t thank you guys enough for treating me to the amazing game! We had such great seats at the Sharks game (check out the picture below). It was actually my first San Jose Sharks game, and I definitely want to go again. It was a real blast. The food at the HP Pavilion was really good too. So, there you have it! My SMX West 2012. I did not attend days 2 and 3. After taking in so much on day 1, my team went to the conference on days 2 and 3. We always take diligent notes and share our findings after the conference so I can’t wait to hear what my team learned. I can’t wait until my next SEM conference!

More Pictures From SMX West 2012

Images in this post © PPCIan.com

It’s very apparent based on my wonderful experience at SMX West 2011 today that the search marketing industry is absolutely on fire. There is no time like the present, the SEM career path is the best career path in my opinion. Today, I’m looking forward to sharing with you some of my favorite SMX West 2011 conference highlights!

SMX West Had Some Great Advanced Content

PPC Ian, Marc Poirier, and the Amazing Acquisio Team

SMX West has historically been more of an introductory conference, one geared towards those newer to digital advertising. I consistently attend each year because it’s in San Jose, just a short half hour drive from my job. By contrast, SMX Advanced has been more advanced (as the name implies).

This year, however, I was pleasantly surprised. SMX West 2011 totally delivered and included great content both for beginners and seasoned industry veterans like myself. I was definitely at the edge of my seat, taking diligent notes! In terms of advanced content, it was especially exciting hearing all about Microsoft’s adCenter quality score algorithm directly from Microsoft product managers. Moreover, I was totally floored when a panelist on the Google AdWords Extensions seminar predicted that Google will be launching sitelinks on an adgroup level (they’re currently set on a campaign level). In my opinion, this would be a tremendous opportunity to fine tune ad copy to the next level, now that sitelinks are showing up on many generic queries.

PPC Ian and My Great Friends From Kenshoo

A few other exciting topics from SMX:

• I learned all about Google product feeds. I used to be in retail back in 2004-2006 when I managed SEM at comparison shopping giant NexTag. Since then, however, I’ve been in services-oriented verticals. A lot has changed over the years and it was really great to pick up some product feed insights.
• Efficient Frontier presented some truly amazing industry trends. Basically, they compiled data across all their clients and reported it on an aggregate level. An incredibly important part of our jobs as SEM professionals is answering questions about macro industry trends. Efficient Frontier helped me out quite a bit with their data points.

SMX Is Great For Networking

PPC Ian and My Great Friends From Marin Software

What’s my favorite part of search conferences? It really comes down to networking. Whether it’s catching up with old friends or making new friends, conferences like SMX West are ideal for networking. When it comes to your long term career within search engine marketing, a strong network is everything. It’s because of my strong network that I’ve made it this far in the world of SEM and I continue to invest in relationships each and every day.

As you can see throughout this post, I had the great opportunity to catch up with my close friends from Acquisio, Kenshoo, and Marin Software. If you’ve been reading PPC Ian for a while, you’ll know that I’m totally obsessed with SEM automation. Acquisio, Kenshoo, and Marin Software are three of the absolute top leaders when it comes to search marketing software, and I’ve been incredibly fortunate to establish close relationships with all of them. It was really great catching up with my friends!

I had a real blast chatting with Marc Poirier, Co-Founder and CMO of Acquisio. I had the opportunity to chat with Marc at length about my personal career trajectory and truly enjoyed it! Also, I scored two of those amazing Acquisio t-shirts (one for myself and one for my wife). I will be highlighting them in a future post. Side note: Make sure to check out my exclusive interview with Marc Poirier.

As you can see in the image on the right, Marin Software really went all out this year. They had, in my opinion, the most impressive booth at SMX West. It was truly great catching up with Matt Lawson, VP of Marketing at Marin Software. Side note: Make sure to check out my exclusive interview with Matt Lawson. Making their booth even more enticing, they had an Xbox giveaway!

Last, I had an amazing experience chatting with Geoff Shenk, Managing Director of Kenshoo North America. Kenshoo has a new product called Watchdog that’s truly amazing and I’ll be blogging about it soon! While I don’t have a interview directly with Geoff here on PPC Ian, I recently interviewed Chad Baldwin – Kenshoo’s VP of Sales.

This Year, I Just Went To The First Day

This year, I decided to just attend day one of SMX West. Why? I’m in a leadership position and it’s my responsibility to balance conferences with my day-to-day responsibilities. As such, I decided to share the excitement and am having my team cover for me the rest of this conference. This will be a tremendous experience for my team, and I’m truly excited that I got an opportunity to enjoy day one of SMX West while still leaving myself time to get my important projects done! Did you attend SMX West this year? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

All Images In This Post © PPCIan.com