Last Thursday we attended a full day of online marketing sessions/panels at the annual InnoTech Austin eMarketing Summit. The crowd was largely made up of local online marketing professionals, but there were a few that hailed from the likes of Portland, New York, and Seattle that we got a chance to meet. From our experience, there seemed to be a few over-arching themes that prevailed throughout the conference. If you didn’t get to attend, or would like a quick refresher due to the “undoing” of your mind during the lavish post-conference Happy Hour(s), here are the Cliff Notes!

Mobile Marketing

The QR code debate was not spared during the Austin Innotech eMarketing Summit. Speakers did not shy away from this “controversial” topic in the least bit, avidly supporting the QR code and the role it will play in the future of marketing. Craig Wax, CEO of Invodo, presented some innovative uses paired with video, such as QR code links to assembly instruction videos on product boxes. In his view, linking QR .

The bottom line across the Austin Innotech eMarketing Summit sessions: the QR code will soon be a “native feature” to phones, making it easier and more natural than ever to scan while you shop, or while you wait at a bus stop. The unanimous agreement seems to be QR codes are good, but their marketing execution must be on point. Good call to actions (that explain what content you will be consuming after you scan and mobile friendly pages that require very minimal navigation (clicks and scrolls) in order to convert are key.

Geo-targeted Marketing Efforts

Location focused search engine marketing goes hand and hand with mobile, because search engines serve results based on your physical location on mobile devices. The importance of registering your business on review sites and directories, as well as having pages for your address(es) was stressed in Brian Combs “#Winning With Google Places” session.

Aside from having the proper anchor text, verifying subdomains for each location, and other nerdy and necessary SEO stuff, local listening was touched on by Kate Niederhoffer of Dachis Group. She discussed several tools that can help marketers use social searches to listen to and monitor the conversations that surround their brand. Creating specific searches that hone in on regional target markets can help you filter the noise and tap into what people are really saying about your brand on a local level.

The bottom line across the Austin Innotech eMarketing Summit sessions: Zero-in on your local and regional markets from a bird-eye-view. Monitor the geography of your conversions and brand conversations, and use this info to target and improve your market segments. Also, don’t forget to register your physical address to any and every directory/review site you possibly can.

Optimizing for Bing

“There are more daily searches on Facebook than on Yahoo and Bing combined”, according to Chris Treadway, CEO of Polygraph Media. Yet, Bing searches dominate 30% of the market. “Don’t be surprised to see a data exchange between Bing and Facebook in the future”, says Bill Leake, CEO of Apogee Search. Since Facebook is the number two search engine, and Bing is associated with Facebook, it is wise to cover all of your search marketing bases. And let’s not over look that “you could make a decent living off of 30% of the search market” (Leake).

The bottom line across the Austin Innotech eMarketing Summit sessions: Don’t forget about Bing! Making sure that video sitemaps are verified in Bing, is just as important as verifying them in Google’s Webmaster Tools. Also, don’t be surprised if Bing plays a more significant role in the future as the battle of the search engines becomes even more heated.

Did you attend the Austin Innotech eMarketing Summit? Tap into the conversation about the conference on Twitter using the #innotechatx hashtag.

Tags: austin search marketing, bing optimization, emarketing summit, innotech austin, mobile search, search engine marketing, SEO, social media marketing

This entry was posted on October 24th, 2011 by Yola Blake and is filed under innotechaustin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.