The Marketing to the Max SDMA Conference got off to a great start with a presentation by Debra Aho Williamson, Senior Analyst, eMarketer.

Reality - Marketing Dollars Shifting from Traditional to Online
- Marketers say they are reducing traditional (off line) media by 47-60% depending on who you talk to.
- Online ad spending is trending upward - the largest growth of any media type. Double digit gains in spending last year (11.6% growth) with another 8.9% in 2009 as estimated by eMarketer.

Strategy #1 - Get with the Accountability Program
- How does your advertising work with your overall marketing?
- ROI is perceived as too difficult to measure, but you need to.
- Only 47% of marketers/agencies say they use analytics to measure their online campaigns.
- Break down the media channels: search vs online, direct vs brand,

Strategy #2 - Keep Doing Search and Do More of It!
- Highly trackable, highly accountable, highly manageable.
- 51% of online marketers say that search offers greatest ROI
- 2009: 14 Billion in spend with 87% in paid search and 13% in SEO

Strategy #3 - Don’t Forget the Top of the Funnel - Awareness and Branding
- The anti-search, ie Display Branding, is important to create awareness.
- Display and search working together improve overall performance.
- Brand advertising creates the intent that search pays off.
- Atlas study shows a 22% increase in lift when brand and search work together

Strategy #4 - Stay Close to Your Customers
- Engage in social media channels.
- 44% of internet users will visit social media sites in 2009.
- 75% of teens will visit a social network site on a monthly basis.
- 23-73% of marketers use social networking (depending on organization)
- 1.29 billion dollars on Social Media spend in 2009 (estimate)
- Listen, Learn & Engage
> Listen to how people talk about your products, services and brand
> Learn from the users and what they are doing with and doing for your product. Use social groups and forums as focus groups on steroids. Find and feed the online champions.
> Engage in a light, transparent and positive manner.

Strategy #5 - Engender Trust with Consumers
- Trust in advertising professionals and ads is declining rapidly. Consumers think false.
- They trust each other more than they trust you. Brands endorsed by communities are much stronger.
- Make your product and customer service as strong as they can be.
- Emphasize listening over speaking. Put down the megaphone and start listening.
- Allow customers to review and rate your products and services.

Strategy #6 - Engage with Online Video
- 84% of online users will watch video of one sort or another every month.
- Much more shareable.
- Non-skippable online video ad has much higher recall than tv broadcast ads.
- Online video advertising will be around $850 million this year with rapid growth in next 3 years.
- Broadband video ads allow for greater measureability, targetability and shareability.
- Put videos of your own product on your own sites.
- Put videos of your products on other sites (YouTube, Hulu, etc.)
- Buy ads on videos: pre-roll, interstitical, post-roll
- Make the videos engaging. Blendtec, Honda (Power of Dreams) - combine entertainment and information.

Strategy #7 - Testing, Testing, Testing
- Take the opportunity to try something new, refine and DO
- Set up a testing and optimization strategy for your product and services
- Invest in the future while competitors are hunkering down.

I’ll request and post the slideshow from this presentation - lots of great stats!