Get Simplicated is a web log by Simplicate Interactive
about finding simple and elegant solutions to interesting web development and interactive marketing challenges.
How to Successfully Design, Develop and Promote an Killer Marketing Conference Web Site
| Mar 07
Last week I had the chance to attend the Art of Marketing conference in Toronto featuring Seth Godin, Mitch Joel, Sally Hogshead, Max Lenderman, Dan Heath and Jamer Othmer. The conference itself was fantastic and I plan on writing more about it later.
Over the 2 months leading up to the event I had the pleasure of working with the organizers - The Art of Productions - to put together the web site and some of the interactive marketing strategy for the conference. In this case study I've outlined a couple of things that we collaborated on together that I think worked out well for them.
Before I get too deep into this case-study, I'd like to briefly mention that the guys at The Art of Productions are some of the smartest and easiest to work with clients that I have ever had the pleasure of working with. Their willingness to listen, understand and experiment with new things made them a treat to deal with on a regular basis.
Now on to some of the steps we took to put together and promote a great site which sold-out the 1600 attendee event in less than 60 days.
Test your design before you move into production
A limited time frame isn't an excuse to ignore performing useability tests on your designs before moving from PSD to HTML. There were two primary tests that we ran that helped us fine tune the design before launch.
- We ran some written feedback tests using FeedbackArmy.com that helped us get some ideas about what people seeing the site for the first time thought about the content and the messaging. Their reviews proved to be very helpful in moving us forward in the direction that we wanted the design to take and made sure that every site visitor could find what they were looking for easily.
- We also ran various versions of the designs through FiveSecondTest.com which helped us to quickly identify which parts of the site were drawing the most attention from peoples eyes and mouse fingers. This helped us to refine the design slightly so that people focused more on the things we felt were important.
Read more about some of the other inexpensive tools I like to use for testing a site.
Building buzz and reciprocal links quickly
Since theartofmarketing.ca domain name was brand new, we needed to get the word out quickly and get ranked in Google for the very common "Art of Marketing" name.
A couple of things helped accomplish this:
- A small "name only" AdWords campaign was run until the site reached number one on Google for the name "The Art of Marketing". This made sure that potential attendees always found what they were looking for at the very top of the search results page.
- All of the speakers were kind enough to link to the site from their blogs, newsletters and twitter pages. This let their fans know when and where they would be speaking (which generated sales) and also helped act as great in-bound links from several high-traffic web sites.
- A block of tickets was set aside for interested bloggers who wanted to run ticket giveaway contests on their own blogs. This also generated lots of inbound links very quickly and even resulted in residual referral sales after the ticket give-away contests were over.
- Templated emails were crafted and shared with all the partners, sponsor and media outlets so that those individual groups could control the deployment of messages to their house mailing lists. All partner emails that went out were tagged with additional Google Analytics tracking codes to track exactly where sales were coming from.
Offering incentives to get people interested
Two main incentives were used to either convinced people to buy a ticket or convinced them to talk about the conference after they had already bought a ticket. One additional incentive was used to help collect email addresses for a house mailing list.
- Unique promo codes were assigned to each partner, sponsor, sale person and media channel. These discounted promo codes were for varying dollar amounts depending on the code and allowed the team to track which online and offline advertising, sales channels and incentives were working the best. We even made sure that links could be shared that automatically applied the promo codes without the visitor having to remember to type anything in during checkout, which helped remove a barrier in the purchase process.
- Every visitor that bought a ticket to the conference online was provided with their own unique referral url that they could easily share on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any where else. This let attendees tell people about the conference and earn a free book by one of the authors whenever someone used their link to sign-up for the conference. Approximately 4% of the ticket sales were generated through this method and the people that visited via a link from a trusted friend was nearly twice as likely to convert as a visitor from an mass email campaign.
- In order to build the house mailing list, one of the sponsors (Sony), generously donated a free prize for anyone that signed up for The Art of Productions newsletter. This helped grow the house list even if people didn't purchase a ticket to the Art of Marketing event.
Being a good social citizen
It's never enough to set something free on the social web and hope that it will come back to you. A couple of additional steps were taken to help make sure that everyone one involved in promoting the event felt appreciated.
- An eye was kept on each of the bloggers give-away contests, and comments and follow-up emails were made when appropriate. This helped build more buzz and stronger relationships with the individual bloggers & their readers.
- An attempt was made to try and individually thank all of the people on Twitter that shared their unique referral links with their friends. This put the spotlight on all the individuals that shared their links and helped them get some attention from other Twitter followers.
There were a dozen more big things and little things that were a part of what made the marketing for this event successful, but I thought I would focus on just those few that I played a role in.
Thanks again to the Luca, Rick, Chris and the rest of the team at The Art of Productions for putting on such a great event and letting me be a part of it.