Web Designer Vip held its 3rd Annual Digital Marketing Trends Forum this year at the Gansevoort Park Ave Hotel on September 16-17. In the past, the event has only been one day. However, due to a large RSVP count this was the first time the seminar was held for two days. The forum’s speakers were compromised of the Web Designer Vip team and special guest speaker, Jon-Michael Durkin, who is the Agency Development Manager at Google.

The overall focus of the seminar was to bring to light the importance of optimizing one’s conversion funnel to find the niche audience that your business can convert to long term relationship consumers which can dramatically increase your digital marketing ROI. Broken down and explained step by step, the topics ranged from finding the right leads by using Google Analytics and driving them through the conversion funnel to personalizing your online marketing through marketing automation, optimized SEO, and online advertising beyond search.

Below you can find photos, videos, and presentation slides from our forum:

Finding the Right Leads: Engaging with Digital Targeting

Jon-Michael Durkin, Agency Development Manager at Google

Durkin described the state of the consumer market in today’s world. The consumer is oversaturated with advertisements as, “the average person sees 5,000 ads every day,” Durkin said. Because of segmentation of different consumers with different needs, wants, and purchases, he explained that it wasn’t enough to market and hope for sales leads from an overarching demographic anymore. Using Google Analytics and smart insights, Durkin demonstrated how a business’ market audience can be segmented and narrowed down to a consumer profile.

Driving Leads though the Conversion Funnel

Christina Shaw, Chief Marketing Officer at Web Designer Vip

Shaw gave a deconstruction analysis of how reaching visitors earlier rather than later in the conversion funnel process could help boost sales. Despite the fact that “most websites are targeting people that are ready to buy, but lose people that might not be quite ready yet,” she pointed out that these potential buyers just need to be nudged into learning more and trusting your business. “Blogs, infographics, and quizzes are all great when buyers are still curious and learning about your brand,” she said.Shaw finished with an example of how Web Designer Vip helped make the website and landing pages of PEX Card more inviting and less forceful to potential conversions. “Web Designer Vip built out more top and middle of the funnel touch points for PEX Card and it’s starting to work.”

Using Marketing Automation to Grow Your Business

Joe DiNardo, Director of Paid Media & Social Media

By likening marketing automation with an illustration of a consumer sitting in front of a computer that was bombarding him with ads, DiNardo revealed how marketing automation should actually be called ‘marketing personalization.’ He stated that creating a marketable website with only a certain sales lead objective in mind is like having a finely, tailored suit that looks perfect to the business owner, but won’t fit or match the needs and wants of consumers.Rounding out his presentation with some eye-popping statistics, DiNardo said that, “20% of leads websites generate are sales ready. Marketing personalization can result in 50% more leads at a 30% lower cost and can lead to a 113% increase in sales leads.”

Designing Your Site for Optimal SEO Results

John Marcinuk, Director of SEO & Content

Marcinuk began his presentation with the 4 crucial key ranking factors for a business website’s SEO: visibility, usability, engagement, and authority. Having an up-to-date website isn’t enough to build and maintain high search rankings. He spoke of how potential buyers might be looking for your business online, but that it could lose out to competitors who have optimized their site for SEO more thoroughly. Despite the notion of the technical complexity of SEO such as keyword research, Marcinuk said that “keyword research is the backbone of good SEO, but it’s also the backbone of good messaging.”With the broad range of search engine optimization, he emphasized some important avenues for businesses to focus on like tagging images with meta tags, link building, and optimizing your website not only for desktop but for mobile as well.

Online Advertising Beyond Search Ads

Ashley Kemper, Senior Marketing Strategist

With the heavy competition and rising prices of search advertising like PPC, Kemper discussed how other forms of digital advertising were more cost efficient and made it easier for your company to reach out to potential consumers. “Search marketing is projected to hit $25 billion in revenue next year,” she said.Kemper showed examples of how investing in other advertising options such as display, social media, remarketing, mobile, and video were proven to be very effective. By comparing the vastly different commercials of Dyson, Kemper showed how online advertising should sometimes steer away from being so sales-oriented and serious, and instead appeal to the pathos of our human sides.