Good morning, Search Marketer, let's get smart about search marketing for a minute.
As the world has now turned to "virtual" events, we're seeing an incredible amount of innovation around experiences. Events are adding features like gamification, virtual cocktail hours, interactive "booths", musical performances, speed networking and more. But all of that innovation seems to be skipping over the core content experience. What we mainly have is still a menu of sessions, available live or as recordings now.
Sure, the best conferences still win on great speakers and actionable takeaways, but following an in-person playbook for online events falls short of leveraging what a purely digital medium offers.
As a marketing discipline, search marketing is broader than most, especially given its makeup of organic and paid focuses. So this year we will produce six SMX conferences that will explore targeted topical areas of search marketing from analytics to content strategy to conversion optimization and more. In a virtual setting, where pricey travel and lodging is no longer a barrier, marketers can attend more events than before. That change allows us to go deeper on those timely subtopics that require more attention today. But that is not all we're changing
On Feb. 23, we will debut the first in the series: SMX Report. The one-day show will explore current advancements and approaches to search marketing analytics across both SEO and PPC. But unlike traditional conferences, the tracks represent complete learning journeys that will take attendees through best practices and emerging considerations that marketers need to best maximize their analytics strategies today.
With most skills, the progression from competence to excellence comes from building upon each new lesson that you learn. So that's how we're programming SMX Report, not through an assortment of sessions, but through a guided experience where each section builds upon the next.
Click here to check out how we are structuring those learning paths for the upcoming show.
Enjoy the day off.
Henry Powderly,
VP, Content
