Internet Marketing Conference Live Blog: Good Morning

Read all of my IMC posts and view my Flickr photos

This will officially be the earlier live blog I have done and also probably the longest. The eight annual Internet Marketing Conference is taking place in Vancouver today and tomorrow, featuring keynote speakers, panels and many talented people in the realm of business on and offline. I announced this week that sixty4media is a media partner and as such I’ll be covering as many sessions as I can with a live blog.

At 9:00am the IMC will begin with a welcome by John Hossack (IMC Vancouver Chair), Lennart Svanberg (IMC’s founder), and Lars Johansson (IMC director). You can check out my blog post on sixty4media for a small interview with John Hossack, who offers some insights into the International IMC.

Today I’m looking forward to many of the presentations including the chance to see Darren and Julie of Capulet again, Jon Husband of Wirearchy, Tom Leung of Google, and Jonghee Jo of Victoria’s Secret.

The live blog will begin around 9:00am on this post although I may start new live blog posts throughout the day.

Update: 9:10am – After coffee and a croissant (and discovering the wifi password thanks to Monique), John Hossack welcomes the group and gives a quick overview of the IIMA, the International Internet Marketing Association.

Side note: Monique will be liveblogging for Techvibes today, you can head there for her coverage and I also ran into Rodney from Reachd who will be taking some video at the conference.

Update: 9:15am – Keynote with Eric T. Peterson, “Web Analytics Demystified.”

“If you’ve ever struggled with your digital measurement efforts, either because you didn’t trust the data, didn’t understand the data, couldn’t get the data you actually needed, or couldn’t use the data you had been given, come see Competing on Web Analytics.” Eric’s talk mentions a lot about data, analytics and information that a lot of people collect but have no idea how to use – or how to take action using that information for their business.

“Businesses can create a sustainable and strategic competitive advantage online by investing in web analytics.” Eric backs up a little to explain what exactly web analytics are and shows off a few (big name) case studies. “It’s not about the data – it’s about how you USE the data.”

He offers various tips to managing web analytics in your company. The first, is to have a “playbook” – you need to have a game plan and figure out your objective and how to obtain it. This point includes “the teenage years,” nurturing your plan and also “how NOT to screw up,” which is a fabulously blunt tidbit of useful information.

Another tip is “Manage your talent,” how to have a team, drive awareness, know what questions to ask ie. what’s our conversion rate for that widget? Have a point person, a real pro that management, marketing etc. can turn to at the helm of analytics.

Being aware of the right data and the right systems is key.

After many case studies and examples Eric also busts a myth that these numbers and success in tracking can only be managed by large mega companies. “Small business can compete.”

Eric closes out his presentation by giving a shout out to social media and mentioning his Twitter info (so of course I just added him and sent a tweet his way).