Opening Keynote – Brian Clark – @coppyblogger

What is your company’s story? Everyone is telling a story.
We see life through stories and relate to them. “Think like a media producer”

Recommended books: The Writer’s Journey. Managing Content Marketing. The Lean Startup.

Make the prospect THE hero and, in turn, your company will be A hero.

Don’t strive to create customers, strive to create fans.

Example: Subway & Jared: Jared took a hero’s journey and that is something that people can relate to. The story is real and relatable and thus the reason he does so well.

At the end of the day, you have to set the customers up to be a hero and not feel like the storm trooper that got tricked – Those were the droids we were looking for.

Pillars:

1)      Know your audience – start by figuring out the story to tell)
What resonates with people as an attraction to you?

2)      Pivot from feedback. Be nimble. Talks about iterative content creation. Based your new content on how well or poorly your content is performing. How many shares, hits, reteweets, likes, etc is your copy getting? Look at the good stuff and start creating more of it.

3)      Accelerate – New products, new partnerships, new media empire. Every year launching new lines of businesses based upon needs.

“Not a good idea unless it meets a need”

Sales Cycle – Educate people that they can take a path with you to accomplish the goals they want to achieve.

Next session: Make Small Big – Mike Merrill – @mikedmerrill

We are all missing consumers.

1 in 3 mobile searches result in a purchase.

Must think about how consumer behavior has changed. It is now so easy to ask for a referral online makes it that much more urgent to move towards social recommendations and engagement.

Reputation management is key. Your online reputation is key in local search results. Drive people to your Google Places pages and request them to review your company.

Mobile searches are indicators towards purchase intent.  Have mobile optimized results with phone numbers and conversion strategies.

Not only about driving content. Brands perceive their agencies and internet marketing teams are doing local search optimization but many are not. Idea for developing more content: Take words that are said about you and use that as content generation opportunities. Add the city and state and word review and use that for new content.

Benefits of local optimization:

1)      Search discovery

2)      Social discovery

3)      Brand engagement

4)      Reputation management

5 Steps to Fuel Your Web Presence

1)      Claim and optimize your local listings and directories

2)      Create and optimize content

3)      Publish content across social outposts

4)      Monitor, listen, and engage with consumers

5)      Track Your success

Be sure to directly engage with consumers and listen for opportunities to engage.

1)      Google Places, Bing, SuperPages, YellowPages, DexKnows, Yelp

2)      Optimize Content

Be sure to directly engage with consumers and listen for opportunities to engage.

3)      Google Places, bing, SuperPages, YellowPages, DexKnows, Yelp

4)      Optimize Content

5)      Dail 2-3 tweets. Weekly blog.

6)      Directly engage.

Optimize your listing.

1)      Add photos

2)      Make sure categories are correct

3)      Drive reviews – on a consistent basis over time

Next Session: State of Location Based Marketing – Aaron Strout & Adrian Parker

By 2013 mobile phones will be the most common device used to access the internet. Source: Gartner
79% of users rely on smartphones to Help with Shopping.

Radio Shack started out with a 30 day test to see how the networks would perform. Recommended making your “Brand a butler” … focus on providing outstanding service at the point of need.

Consumers are using Geo-location as a receiver – a small minority of users are actually using the applications to broadcast information. As a butler your brand must enhance the experience. Make sure there is something for everyone. Not all users will be checking in, some will only want to see tips or get advice. Make sure to provide value to those as well.

A question often becomes: How do you do GeoLocation marketing when there isn’t a physical location for the brand (such as for software companies or products that are sold in other’s stores)… Adrian Parker suggests targeting influencers and events that are centered around your product / service. He also recommended having people check into “moments” of their life. For instance, Quickbooks encourages people to check-in when they are using their software when filing their taxes.

Tag: Progress over perfection. Reminds me of the adage, don’t let perfection be the enemy of good. Start using, testing, and analyzing your results now.

Jackie Bese on Google+