Yesterday the folks at the Main Street Marketing Community put on a conference for small business owners in Saint Louis that wanted to learn more about building their business through online measures.  The conference was at the Hilton Frontenac, and it seems that all of the feedback was very positive.  Here is a wrap-up of the days events with a few nuggets thrown in.

Session One – Keyword Research

Russ Henneberry and myself presented a quick 30 minute session on keyword research.  We covered the basics of keyword research such as various keyword tools (AdWords, WordTracker, Google Instant, Yahoo Suggest and SEOBook) then went in and showed how to seed the keyword tool and get back a ton of results.  We talked about the Long Tail of search, geographic indicators (such as St Louis, Saint Louis , STL) and then mentioned the keyword tracking tool called AWR.  Russ followed that up with a quick mention of Google Analytics and we were done.

We were hoping to help the attendees understand that keyword research is the foundation of any online campaign, whether you do PPC, SEO or even a mobile campaign.

Session Two – Local Search & Maps

Our emcee for the day, Bob Sommers, took us on a trip through the mind of a business owner that owns a car rental company in Florida.  Bob implored us to claim our Google Places listing, and then went in and actually showed us how to optimize our page so that we could get the most out of it.  Bob told us about Viz on the Net and shared his 16 step process to get your business into local search.

Tips included:

• Claim Your Listing!
• Use your local phone number
• Set up a ‘service area’
• You can have coupons show up on local results (very cool!)
• Make sure you upload pictures that show what your business can do for customers.

Session Three – Search Engine Optimization

Next up was a real good looking guy named Will Hanke from Where Is My Business.  (ok enough of that).  I shared a Ten Step DIY Website Audit and explained each of the steps.  Some takeaways include:

• Build an XML sitemap of your site
• Buy the .net, .org as a minimum. Stretch your main domain out to ten years if possible.
• Also consider purchasing the .cm and .co versions of your main .com domain
• Fix your non-www redirect problem
• Validate your website HTML with the W3C validator

Session Four – Pay Per Click Advertising

Adam Kreitman from Words That Click shared his great in-depth knowledge of Google’s AdWords tool, a terrific way to get your website listed for keywords that may be difficult to rank for with SEO.  Adam’s session was my personal favorite, and his extensive knowledge of PPC is pretty obvious and impressive.

Adam took local mattress company STLBeds and gave them a $100 credit to start advertising on Google.  He set up the entire campaign, and showed us how we can target certain geographic areas all the way down to zip code.  He showed us how one campaign ad was doing quite well, while another ad in the same exact market was not doing great at all. Other takeaways included:

• Adam knows what the heck he’s talking about
• A PPC campaign doesn’t have to cost you thousands a month if you target specific areas and keywords.
• You can show your ads during certain days, or even certain hours of a day
• You have to have a good landing page. (You can’t SEO a turd)

Lunch!

We headed over to another room for lunch, and each of the speakers sat at a different table.  Attendees got to pick a table and sit with the expert of their choice. I obviously can’t really speak for what happened at the other tables, but at mine we had a nice variety of questions.  They included:

• Should I put my blog on another site or my own? (A: your own domain)
• How often should you blog (A: Often as you like, as long as you’re consistent)
• Can you blog too often? (A: Not really)
• Various questions about subdomains, franchises with multiple locations, and branding

Session Five – Content Marketing

Russ Henneberry from Tiny and Mighty was next up and delivered another great presentation on how using content can dramatically increase your sales and referrals by moving people through the sales funnel.  Russ showed us how most of our potential clients are in the Apathy stage and how, through the use of content marketing, we can get them to awareness, interest and ultimately conversion.

Russ took on Complete Solutions and showed the owner Donna how adding an audio file could extend her reach and credibility as an expert.  He followed that up by showing how Donna can reach even more people with her marketing hub.  Other takeaways include:

• Interruption marketing sucks. Permission marketing rocks
• WordPress is a top-notch platform for building a website – don’t be the one that has to call the guy
• Bleeding on your customers through the method they choose is best
• Constantly promoting sales and specials will get you hidden quickly
  

Session Six – Website Usability

Next up was Sue Spencer of (oddly enough) Sue Spencer Designs. Sue took on a local incontinence products business Medical West.  She showed us the home page of the website for about 8 seconds then took it off the screen and asked us questions about it.  Many people couldn’t answer the questions because the site was so busy that they had a hard time deciphering quickly what the site was about.

Sue also talked about colors and how they should be used to frame certain areas of the site.  Sue did a very nice ‘rebuild’ of the Medical West home page and showed us the before and after.  Nice job, for sure!

Sue also mentioned that contact info, phone number and logo should always be very visible when designing a new site.

Session Seven – Email Marketing

Tom Ruwitch of MarketVolt, a local email marketing company was up next.  He had a series of questions for the attendees including What business are you in.  Many people knew where Tom was going with this, although a few answered it wrong.  An attendee from CarStar said We are in the business of reducing stress.  Good one.  Another one answered We sell telecom equipment to our VARs (value added resellert) which was more along the lines of what Tom was after.  Tom said you aren’t in the business of selling something, you are in the business of solving a problem.

Tom then went on to show us how to set up an actual email marketing acct in MarketVolt.  He showed us how creating an entirely image-based newsletter was a big no-no.  Other tips included:

• Introduce your staff. Make the newsletter more personal
• Tell your audience how you want to help them solve x
• Use a few pictures to break up the content, and use a nice looking email template.

Session Eight – Mobile Marketing

The last session of the day was presented by Steve Kelley of the Mobile Marketing Institute.  Steve told us why many businesses aren’t yet using mobile, and along with sharing some great campaigns that various businesses have used, Steve also showed us how texting coupons, sweepstakes and other offers can increase sales.  He mentioned the great success of Groupon, and the part that cell phones have played in their popularity.  Steve said that smart phone saturation is currently around 33%, and should be well over 50% before the end of 2011.  Mobile marketing is coming folks, whether you want it to or not.

One thing I heard several people mention afterwards was that they were really impressed with the idea of ‘telling’ your cell phone about a product that you want, and that when you get somewhere close to where that product is, your cell phone will text you about it.  Pretty cool stuff.

Steve also gave away a few prizes, all through the magic of texting, and even Bob Sommers got in on the act.  He sent his first-ever text message!

Conference Wrapup and Q&A

With the last sesson complete, Bob asked all of the attendees to take a moment to join the MSMC Facebook page and post a comment or review of the conference.  It was a terrific tie-in to all the things we learned!

He then invited all the speakers up to the front, and dismissed the crowd.  Attendees were welcome to hang around and ask the speakers any follow up questions they may have had, and many took him up on that offer.  There was quite a buzz in the room and people finally started filtering out about 5:15.

Overall I think the conference was an outstanding success.  Bob and Adam at Main Street Marketing Community really put together a solid lineup, kept the show running on time, and had plenty of breaks to keep the crowd awake and refreshed.  The food was terrific and there was plenty of coffee for me.

All of the speakers will be offering various Java Gyms over the next few weeks, and several of the speakers had some free or hugely discounted offers (including me!).

Lastly, if you attended the event and want to find out more about me or my services, check out my monthly SEO meetup and sign up for my newsletter!  If you want a link to my SEO Audit offer, email me – I’m not publishing that page publicly!