I’ve been back from PPC summit for about a month now and I thought it’s about time that I provide a full review. I wish I would have written this sooner but I got busy and didn’t have time. So, I might as well post it now because who knows someone may (or may not) find this useful.
I attended the PPC summit at the San Francisco Airport Marriott on May 20-21st, 2008. It was a fairly small conference with approximately 135 people (approx 70 in each session, according to one of the organizers). The majority of the people I talked to were actually with a larger company of some sort. There were very few (if any) PPC affiliate marketers at the conference. Most of the people were either e-commerce, online web businesses or larger business looking to increase their online exposure.
My overall impression of the conference was good, however, it I do believe it requires some changes.
First the good parts. There was a few REALLY good speakers at the conference. Jason Miller from Engine Ready was probably the best talk that I attended. He was discussing PPC ad copy and some of the stuff he mentioned, although simple, looks very effective. Some of his PPC ads have click-through-rates of 15%!
The other two speakers that I really enjoyed were Jamie Smith, from engine ready who discussed “Web Analytics for Search Engine Marketing” . I also enjoyed Aaron Kahlow, from Business Online, who discussed “How PPC plays in the Big Picture of All Online Marketing.” One of the great things about this conference was the opportunity to interact with the speakers after the talk. I was able to get a few questions answered that I couldn’t find the answer for online.
The biggest ‘beef’ I had with the conference is the amount of interaction. Interestingly enough, I actually attended the conference based on some reviews that said there was lots of interaction. I figured that with this ‘open’ approach I’d be able to absorb more material. Unfortunately, this is was not my experience. The session that I attended were usually overrun by a few individuals who were asking very specific questions and typically not instrumental in increasing our knowledge. Even long comments or questions were posed during these times.
You see I have no problem with people asking questions. However, the reason I mention this is because the sessions were approximately 1.5 hours long. The first hour would be fairly basic stuff that I had already learnt online and the last 30 minutes would be higher level stuff. Great! Except, what would happen is that the first 80 minutes would be the lower level stuff and question answering while the last 10 minutes (the ‘good stuff’) would be rushed through. At some point the speakers must be told that answering one-on-one question isn’t helping the conference.
I guess the big question is would I attend this conference again?
At this point I’d say, no. However, this is because I feel that I’ve learn’t what I need to about PPC and that I won’t gain anymore knowledge in a classroom. I need to “get out there” and try these specific techniques, hence the $1k PPC experiment.
I would, however, recommend this conference to a beginner PPC affiliate marketer. That being said, as most things in this world the information provided at the conference can be found online. It just take a bit more work.
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