As music blared and purposeful guys equipped with Bluetooth earbuds navigated the gigantic booths at The Licensing Show (see below) in the Javits Center, a quieter but no less determined crowd was crammed into seminars next door, at Direct Marketing Days New York. Okay, so “Predictive Modeling & Customer Segmentation” may not have the pizzazz of Nicky Hilton touting her designs for Tweety, but if you wanted to get savvy about SEO and SEM, (Search Engine Optimization and Marketing), DMD was the place to be.
Though it’s taken time for direct marketers to recognize that they are now the go-to guys for web marketing and transactions, the result was a show that allowed attendees to soak up useful strategies and tactics that can be applied to any business intent on serving and tracking its customers online – and off. Panels brought together search engines like Yahoo, ad networks like Kanoodle, and publishers like Taunton Press to discuss how marketers could find customers, sell and upsell them, and then keep them loyal.
Kanoodle.com offers a particularly interesting adwords search alternative to Yahoo and Google because its search is based on third-party databases like MSNBC, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. An advertiser can bid on words in dayparts (see WSJ June 23), across subject, zip code, demographic or other categories, for ads based on contextual or behavioral topics. The mind positively boggles at the opportunities to tout DK‘s city guides or even the latest ripped-from-the-headlines thriller.
On an even more granular level, a group of experts from companies with names like TrueLocal and SiteLogic critiqued websites of audience members, including enterprises like Manhattan Fruitier. Neophytes were told that a “content rich page” in Google-speak should be about 250 words. Hyperlinked images should be accompanied by text, as only text registers with search engines. Yahoo’s http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/, where users can view the most popular pages from any site, and find pages that link to that site, seemed everyone’s favorite.
Contrasting with the broad-ranging advice being doled out in the well-attended conference rooms was the DMD exhibition hall, where retro envelope companies sat cheek by jowl with mailers and premium manufacturers. So eager were the exhibitors for visitors that one could have equipped an office with the pens, staplers, memo pads and mints they were urging passersby to grab.
The entire show – apparently drab, but packing a wallop of useful information and endless contacts – contrasted neatly with the larger, glitzier Licensing extravaganza, which had big, bold booths and little in the way of attendee education beyond “Licensing University.” Here attendees could find out about “The Ins and Outs of Celebrity Licensing,” and “Opportunities in Food Licensing.” Okay, so maybe music and wandering plush characters suggested a more festive gathering, but can you really beat “Techniques to Predict – and Stop – Customer Churn”?
