FOOA and Conference Marketing
Following one speaker not being able to make it, Ryan Carsoncgave a short review of how they marketed the conference online
We usually don’t spend a lot of money marketing..with Future of Web Apps etc we are well known and it’s usually easy to sell out etc. For the NYC FOOA we decided we needed to do some stuff. We decided on a budget of 20k..that may have been our first mistake. It seemed like it would be the right amount.
We started with blogs…with barters as well as paid. and most of the traffic came from the free stuff.
Marketingvox did not seem to be too well, 4k and only 318 visits. Around 12$ a visit. They got ads done by site designer, we did the copy. We did no testing…no AB testing, that was a big mistake looking back. if you can’t measure you can’t succeed. We did not have time to get ads designed and tested. Next up was IAB. That was 3k for 1166 visits. We put one on our site; we worked with AdAge you got the magazine and we got some ads and newsletters, 200k impressions and a full page ad in the mag. How do you judge? there was only one sign up with the AdAge code. Was this good branding?
The main thing we learnt was that measuring the success is viral but that takes time and money which we could not do. With Seth Godin, AdPulp and Adrants, we offered free seats. This was successful when it came to talking about it.
Next thing we we did was a revenue share with speakers. We got a bunch of ads designed, we watched to see what was working. the idea was to see which did the best. I did not track them properly so I don’t know which ones worked.
We used Google Analytics. it;s beautiful but still hard to use. It’s hard to track real conversions. We did not have time to properly learn it. Can’t tell how to tell where to get campaign info - which conversion came from which campaign.
The simple things we learnt
Organise your measurement. we found we were getting reports from marketingvox about CTR..but sent as images and got lost in inbox. I should have organised it from the start.
Know how to measure goal conversions. if you got to the thank you page you had bought a seat. But we needed to learn how to use the package. Still not sure if google analytics work all the time, we tested and it didn’t work.
Make time to actually measure! you get too busy doing your job, the time to measure gets lost.
It’s expensive not to measure. We spent 20k..and I bet we could have spent 10k if we knew what was working
Give bloggers something valuable. were our ads too professional for blogs. The seats really worked. The response was extremely quick to get a yes response to put the offer on the blog.
Do proper A/B testing. It’s all free and there…it’s a matter of using them. Should we invest in a proper analytical tool?
Audience Q&A:
Q: did you consider hiring an agency?
A: yes, it may have been cheaper…or would the average spend have been higher? it was primarily a budget issue. For an established event (FOWA) we may consider it.
Comment: your CTR looks good. It was not too bad!
A: Nice!
Q: All our media uses third party tracking. It allows us to track all the clicks, actions etc. One thing we have been thinking about with google is that they may offer free open source ad serving and tracking. which makes it better for smaller companies
A: the same as with analytics…you have to learn how to use it
Q: did you try SEM
A: no. we’ve tried it in the past. It does not work well for us; it’s takes time to learn it and get it right and we can’t do the time. that is the biggest problem. you have to leave time for this stuff.
Comment: When you offer discounts it feels like the conference was not selling and outs them off. So offer a bonus instead, that may do better.
Q: I’m a Publisher Sales Manager, What info did they present back to you? We try and educate client before and after
A: We got images from MarketingVox for the results…no training, no education. It was frustrating as a buyer, not to get a conversation.
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POSTED IN: Advertisments, Conferences and Events, Metrics and Research
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