With our last early bird discount-pricing deadline fast approaching (Friday, February 8th!), the PPC Hero team wants to make sure you know all the facts about what to expect when it comes to the workshop portion of Hero Conf. For those of you who have missed it, Hero Conf 2013 will be taking place in Austin, TX on April 8-10. It’s a 3-day event this year, up from 2 last year, and will include two full days of PPC-only sessions! The workshop will take place on day 3. I hope you’ll check it out over at the Hero Conf website and we look forward to seeing you there!
Few activities are more beneficial for your paid search accounts than sitting down with someone who has never looked at your account before and asking them to show you what you’ve missed. No one’s account is flawless and the longer you’re in it, the harder it is to see the flaws. Add that in with Hero Conf’s main goal since inception of ensuring conference attendees leave with actionable information they can implement in their PPC accounts…and you’ve got the motivation behind Hero Conf’s 1-on-1 workshop session.
We wanted to be sure this wasn’t a group workshop, but rather something truly hands-on with attendee accounts to help progress performance based on peer experience.
What Was Covered?
At last year’s workshop session, we used a strategically loose schedule of topics for each workshop attendee and facilitator to cover. Those segments included:
- Company Background & Goals
- Account Overview (pain points, successes)
- Networks/Engines with Campaigns
- Basic Account Settings
- Account Structure & Keywords
- Ad Writing & Testing
- Budget & Bidding Strategy
- Take Aways & Projections
Who Attended?
We had account managers attend last year’s workshop from a variety of industries, account types, and budget ranges; all walking away with tasks they could filter in to their day-to-day optimizations as soon as they returned from the conference. Representatives joined us from ecommerce and lead generation accounts, with budgets in the 4 digits all the way up to over a million in spend per month!
How Did It Go?
Attendees sat down with PPC Hero team members, in addition to some incredibly well known industry pros; Matt Umbro, Brad Geddes, & John Lee to name a few! We’ll be carrying on that tradition this year, bringing the bright minds of PPC Hero along with other paid search gurus to match up with our 2013 workshoppers.
I myself got to work with a couple of PPC specialists from an online ecommerce brand who were having some general issues getting past what felt like a plateau in performance. We quite literally logged in to the account and start digging in as soon as the session started to determine low-hanging fruit that could be taken advantage of ASAP, on top of long term strategy ideas to improve conversion rates while expanding market reach. If memory serves me correctly, we filled up multiple pages of notebook paper with ideas for ad tests to queue up, interest categories to target and a plethora of other potential wins.
Did Attendees Like It?
I absolutely wouldn’t ask you to take my word for it, so we reached out to one of last year’s workshop attendees to let them give you their thoughts:
“The workshop portion of the Hero Conference was a great culmination to everything that had been touched on the previous day. Our workshop leader helped us to identify and analyze issues with our existing accounts, executing some immediate changes while also providing future action item suggestions. Ultimately, the combination of the knowledge gained at the conference along with the more action oriented, one on one workshop helped us to decrease spend and increase conversions. The workshop was also a great way to get some additional insider information and have some remaining questions answered. A must in the constantly changing world of PPC marketing!” – Alison Perrin (Detroit Trading Company)
As if the actual workshop itself weren’t awesome enough, the Hero Conf staff also took all of last year’s workshop attendees to a delicious off-site lunch at Harry & Izzy’s in downtown Indianapolis, where of course…PPC talk prevailed.
The PPC Hero team also took the time to check back in with our workshop attendees a couple months after Hero Conf wrapped to see how they were doing. We heard fantastic feedback and found out that most of the workshoppers were having trouble finding time to implement all the ideas they walked away with! In fact, a few made note to point out the price comparison of a typical PPC audit and the workshop. Generally, account audits can cost 2 to 3 times as much as the cost of the Hero Conf registration passes and you get 1-on-1 help for an entire day…and I’ll remind you again of the stupid-good lunch.
The feedback was clear: our workshop last year was a success and had to be a part of the 2013 program! We opened up the workshop session this year to allow for more attendees to pair up with the greatest in PPC, and given our new conference location of beautiful Austin, Texas…we are sure the second annual event will be even better and certainly one you don’t want to miss!
There are only 68 days left (fewer if you’re reading this after Thursday, January 31st!) before workshop day at Hero Conf 2013, so be sure to register today before spots run out! Hope to see you there!
