Search Expo was held in Beijing, China September 5th and 6th and the main focus from the keynote speaker was analytics. This conference was put on by Timev who co organized the first two Search Engine Strategies in China, 2006 and 2007. They also have one scheduled for November 8-9 in Hong Kong and sometime in March in Xiamen. The China Search Marketing Tour will be joining forces with them for that conference. Unfortunately they no longer have a working relationship with SES. Maybe the guys over at SMX should give Inway Ni, the conference chair, a call. That is if they’re interested in not only China but the entire Asian market. Word on the street is that they may be already talking.
Yes, the conference was nearly a week ago. I’m obviously not as adept at covering events, let alone doing it in real time as is the lovely Lisa “the lisa” Barone, the ever present Barry Schwartz and the gang at SEO Roundtable, Mr. online marketing himself, Lee Odden and his PR savvy group, or the countless numbers of people that blog about search engine conferences. Nor can I come close to tickling your funny bone like that queen of comedy Rebecca Kelley, who hearts SEO but scores miserably on quizzes. One thing about Rebecca is that she does put out, a wicked comic that is.
This however, is the only place you can read about what happened in China unless of course you can find anything by Farrah Sadiq. Farrah said she would write about the conference and I’m sure writes better than I, but alas she hasn’t written a word or it just can’t be found. I’m looking for it to appear on Facebook as she is an FB junkie of sorts but I digress, as usual. So here’s my take with a disclaimer that it is only based on my poor recollection and messy notes. Where is “the lisa” when I need her?
The keynote speaker at Search Expo in Beijing was Brian Chan, CEO of CC Media. Brian’s main focus was analytics. He stated the benefits of SEM are useless unless it is tied to some sort of analytics. Yes, there are free analytic tools provided by the search engines themselves but if you really want to dig deep into what is happening on your site, you need to pay for professional tools.
Free tools only provide a static look at what is going on but professional tools give you a dynamic look at things. It used to be that marketers wanted to know about visitors and page views but now they are interested in behavioral analysis. The media landscape has changed and things can be tracked and changed instantly.
Look at the different industries represented here at the conference. Why? Because you can target your audience much better than in the past since you can analyze the data and match it to your demographics. You can now provide A content to those seeking things about A and B content to those looking for B. He gave an example of a bank they did work for where they were providing 100 different types of content to different users. Since this was done in real time it improved their retention.
He finished his remarks by saying marketing is not a science but an art and it is deeply rooted in the company. Those that get the most out of their analytics will gain the most.
