Speaking at SAScon in Manchester
At the SAScon (Search – Analytics – Social Media Conference) Great set of speakers and the venue looks fantastic! Just saw TouTubes Bruce Daisley talk about the impact and possibilities of Youtube and now watching a session called "Black Hat/White Hat – Does it Matter Anymore?".
Internet Marketing Conference, Reykjavik Iceland
Reykjavik Internet Marketing conference is just around the corner with speakers from Ericsson, Bing/Microsoft, Anomaly, CCP games and Icelandair to mention few. In its 6th year the conference is going to be bigger than ever, attracting a wider audience on an international basis. The conference is accompanied by an Expo that lasts all weekend, Netið 2010 (roughly translates Internet 2010). Some 40 – 50 companies are expected to show their Internet related products and services.
You can get more information about RIMC 2010 at www.rimc.is
Customer feedback changes SMX London
Search Marketing Expo or SMX is again held in London on 18 and 19 May at the New Connaught Rooms, Covent Garden. SMX has changed its agenda in response to recent customer feedback. The now-even-better conference will bring together professionals doing online marketing from all over the world later this month. This is a must go-to conference that you need to attend if you are seriousin gaining online success. Nordic eMarketing has a speaker there, Kristján Már Hauksson will be doing speaking on online corporate communications and online PR.
For more information go to www.searchmarketingexpo.com
Client Agency Relationship, chaired by Patricia Khalifa, Nordic eMarketing
The speaker is Mark Killingley from the NFL. He says online is the best place to be in the recession – although people go out less in such times, meaning they watch more TV. And TV is getting cheaper to advertise on. So he says the internet is great but still only part of the overall media mix.
The philosophy these days should become “we don’t have any money, so we’re going to have to think”.
Client agency relationships are just a lot like marriage counselling in the end. Trust, respect, communication, proactivity, understanding, involvement, partnership, creativity (and ownership – which is less like marriage). In other words, it’s a two way relationship.
Things go wrong when the partners fail to listen to each other. Inflexibility has no place in a creative environment. Lack of hunger and stale thinking are the agency’s nemeses – but on the other side, clients need to avoid loss of focus and inflexibility.
Setting clear expectations is important to make things go right. Who does what, when and why? New relationships need these questions answered. Clear communication is paramount. If either partner is unhappy, it must be known. No politeness for politeness’s sake. British stuttering modesty out of the window.
Of some of the aspects of relationships: partnership, integration, imbalance, confusion and the adversarial approach, only confusion is entirely negative.
Research shows 70% client satisfaction with traditional agencies and only 50% for digital ones. That is a problem for digital agencies. Making clients understand what they do is of great importance. Lose the jargon and don’t make it sound more scientific than it actually is. And clients, on the other hand, should ask more questions.
He then gave a case study of the NFL’s dealings with Nordic eMarketing. The brief was basically non-existent. Just get me some web traffic! And it helped to drive users to a new NFL introduction website.
Sometimes short briefs are the best for creativity and excellent results.
Use the Internet, It’s 2009
Sometimes its good to be taken back a few steps and being reminded of the world that is inhabited by “normal” Internet users. Working professionally everyday with the Internet as a sales and marketing channel, easily makes you loose the perspective of those people. The people that are the end receivers of our clients messages and products.
Luckily though, an article in The Mail on Sunday on the 15th of February reminded me of the Internet reality that actually reigns out there outside of our office walls. Entitled “Millions lost by firms who ignore the net”, the article reveals that six out of ten British companies do not use the Internet to sell their products, even though they are quite happy to use the Internet to buy goods and services for their organizations. A survey on small businesses (up to 50 people) showed that four out of five use their website to showcase their goods rather than sell it. Even more surprising, 67 percent believed that they would not find customers online if they were to try. Considering the fact that 20 billion pounds was spent online during 2008, it feels safe to assume that they are wrong and that they are loosing out on considerable earnings by not incorporating the Internet as a serious marketing and sales channel.
Most of the top UK PR agencies do not offer online press releases
Recent survey carried out by Bigmouthmedia revealed that 79 out of the 100 top UK PR companies don’t offer online PR services.
Sadly, only 14% of the operations that claimed to have new media covered, published their own blogs. All in all, surprisingly as low as 11% of UK PR consultancies communicate with clients, colleagues and the wider marketplace via their blogs.
Companies nowadays still do not seem to see the real semantic difference between online press releases and digital press releases.
The following figures for October 2008 in the UK show the differences in terms of their relative search popularity:
Online PR 2,900
Online public relations 1,600
Web PR 880
Digital PR 590
Internet PR 260
Internet Public Relations 170
Digital public relations 73
Nordic eMarketing just moved offices
I think we must have made some-kind of a record, we moved 12 desks, servers, phone lines and other office related stuff and got it up and running with in 22 hours.
Nordic eMarketing moved from Sidumuli 15 to Brautarholt 8, 105 Reykjavik. On the third floor you will find Iceland's largest Creative Advertising Agency (Hvitahusid) and sharing the second floor with us is ABS Media.
The RIMC Internet Marketing Conference and Expo a huge success
Over 300 people attended the Reykjavik Internet Marketing Conference and Expo this year. With companies like WebTrends, Libius, Nordic eMarketing, Indextools, EJS, adServing International A/S and ABS showing their products and services at the Expo and eight speakers, plus a panel of experts for the Q and A the conference showed guests the deeper meaning of Internet Marketing and how to get their message across. For speaker information read my blog post below. For pictures of the Reykjavik Internet Marketing Conference go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/nordic_emarketing/sets/72157603873198127/ and check it out.