Search Engine Marketing: The No. 1 Online Marketing Tool. Magee/Marckini

Introduction: Search engine marketing is the most successful form of marketing that the Internet has spawned. One example: 87% of respondents to an Internet Retailer survey of search engine marketing report using such marketing and 62% report that 11% or more of their web site sales are the result of search engine marketing. Among the reasons it is so successful is that it is the most measurable form of marketing in history. Marketers know precisely their investment and their return, and they can continually modify their investments as responses and profitability change. But it is also the most complex form of advertising, with marketers having to make hundreds or thousands of decisions on keywords, placements, and rates they are willing to pay as well as having to understand the role that site design and product merchandising play in search engine rankings. In addition, they must understand the differences between natural language search results and pay-per-click search results and how consumers react to each set of results.

Workshop Content: This workshop will walk retailers through everything they need to know about search engine marketing, including:

Optimizing your site design so the site places high in search engine results
Search engines' rules for site design that will get you high in—or keep you out of—search results
Choosing keywords that create sales but don't break your marketing budget
Managing your keywords to keep them current
Making sure that your web site converts keyword searches
Determining which search engines make the most sense for the merchandise you sell, based on demographics, conversion rates and more
Understanding the role that different parts of the day and days of the week play in a successful search marketing campaign

This workshop will also deal with the other important aspects of search engine marketing, including:

How to make the in-house vs. outsource decision
Key questions to ask search engine marketing companies if you choose to outsource
How to find the right staff for an in-house program-and what it takes to be an online marketing pro
How to compute the true ROI, including in-house staff and resources and not just the cost per click, of a search campaign

About the Instructors: This workshop will be led by pros in the search engine marketing arena. Fredrick Marckini is the CEO of search engine marketing company iProspect.com, which he founded 10 years ago. Clients include such retailers as Circuit City Stores Inc., Sharp Electronics and Hatworld/Lids.com. Gordon Magee is head of Internet marketing and data analysis for online pets supply retailer Drs. Foster & Smith, whose online sales exceed $100 million a year. Drs. Foster & Smith employs clickstream analysis to help it understand exactly how its search results are performing and whom search engines are attracting. In addition, it employs an internal staff to manage both paid search and natural language search. Gordon Magee will discuss how the technology and people sides of search engine marketing come together. Georgianne K. Brown has been Executive Vice President of Marketing since July 2005 for BabyUniverse Inc. where she heads up all marketing initiatives, including successful search engine marketing campaigns.