We’re just 7 days away from the SES NY the next Search Engine Strategies conference. The show runs from March 17-20th in New York City, and what better way to celebrate than to interview Matt McGowan, Vice President of Marketing for Incisive Media’s Interactive division? Matt is spending more and more time taking properties like ClickZ and Search Engine Watch global, so he is rapidly acquiring a great sense for how international brands are thinking about SEM and SEO. Read on to hear how search marketing differs from country to country and what kinds of challenges and opportunities this poses.

If you’re interested in meeting Matt in person, come to SES next week. As further enticement, here is a code you can use to get a discount, courtesy of Compete (20SPKRGUST – 20% off when you register online). Jeremy Crane, our head of search, and I will be speaking at the conference; come by and see us at booth 102.

Share with us the reverse chronological order of your career and how it led you to be one of the key guys at Incisive Media.

I recently gave a run down here that said let me give you a little more detail…

I have been with Incisive Media for about two years now as the VP of Marketing for the Interactive Division, responsible primarily for the 10 year old Interactive News and Search Marketing sites, ClickZ.com and SearchEngineWatch.com and their subsequent event series ClickZ Events and Search Engine Strategies.

Prior to Incisive, I was instrumental in growing the online auction house, PropertyRoom.com, to an Internet Retailer 400 company. As the VP of Sales and Marketing, I ensured that there was always enough product for sale on the site, gathered via a very unique supply chain of Government and Law Enforcement found, lost, stolen and surplus property relationships and more than enough customers bidding on it. Yes, we engaged Search Marketing techniques, in addition to e-mail, public relations and other more traditional vehicles.

Earlier on in my career I worked for Charles Schwab & Co and Pearson Plc and I have a MBA from the University of Oxford.

You’ve got a great vantage point on SEM and SEO globally. What are the big trends you see for the next few years?

With the adoption of Blended Search behind us, there are quite a few trends developing that have yet to fully play out…

1. Blended Search will continue to evolve – the only guarantee is that SERPs will continue to change as the Search Engine’s (SE) learn to include more relevant information on them.
2. Social Media will continue flourish – the majority of web surfers start their online experience at the major Search Engines, that said more and more are heading directly to the MySpace’s and Facebook’s of the world.
3. Mobile Search is a massive opportunity – there are more mobile devices than computers out there. As wireless technologies evolve people may forgo the computer. This is partly what the Cloud Computing phenomenon is all about.
4. Analytics will be key – test, test, test… decision makers will increasingly go to the data to make decisions. The era of the thumb in the air approach to decision making is on its way out.

How would you describe the growth of SES in Europe? How is it evolving?

As expected. The Search Marketing industry is growing at a faster pace in Europe than it is here in the States.

Our SES London Conference and Expo almost doubled in size last year, from about 1,200 delegates to over 2,400. Now in its 9th year, it is now firmly positioned as the premier Search Marketing Conference and Exposition in Europe.

This past January we kicked off our continental European SES Forums, now in their 3rd year, with SES Paris. With 250 people in attendance we have constructed the SES Forum events to be more about intimate learning and networking. Delegates will find each event offers a relatively equal education on Paid Search (known in Europe as SEM) and Organic Search (know as SEO) in their local language, no exposition hall and networking events around sit-down lunches and evening cocktails.

SES Paris received a large amount of local praise and support, both the quality content and the quality of the delegates exceeded expectations, and we are now planning similar forums in Hamburg and Milan for later this year.

Let’s also not forget that we also hold a SES Tokyo forum and we plan to announce addition events in other parts of the world shortly. Stay tuned!

Since SES now operates in multiple countries, what are the ways you engage the local search communities in those respective countries?

Launching a product or service in a foreign country is no easy task and over the last few years we have been operating abroad in Europe and Asia we have adapted our go to market strategy based on our experiences abroad.

One of the most important pieces to the puzzle is finding the right partners – both from a marketing and an editorial point of view.

As the events are localized, they are held in the local language and focus on case studies, strategies and best practices taken from the local market, producing the conference agenda is no easy task. Under the direction of Kevin Ryan, VP and Global Content Director for SES and SEW, we have identified credible thought leaders in each of the markets we are operating in who we can invite to speak and work with to identify new talent.

On the marketing side of the equation, we have identified the local Search Industry trades and associations than can help us spread the word. We reach out to these groups and offer up cross promotional deals to engage them. In addition to the contras, we are also leveraging our Search Engine Marketing expertise to one, launch effective paid campaigns and two, optimize our site for local SEs.

How does each country present its own unique challenges - cultural or otherwise? Any funny stories you can share here?

Each country does present it’s own unique challenges and in order to do business in these markets one must acquire quite a bit of local knowledge – customs, language, industry specifics and alike.

How have you thought about new “social media” tools when marketing SES? How are you making use of newer tools to make London SES more accessible?

All the time… for instance we have launched LinkedIn and Facebook groups, in addition to YouTube and Flickr channels. We are also quite active on Sphinn, an SEM specific forum launched by Danny Sullivan.

Back on home turf, I’ve heard that registrations for SES New York this month are currently tracking double of where it was last year. Apart from stellar marketing, any other particular reasons why?

SES New York is tracking quite well and it will be a great event. Search Marketing is still a very hot topic, one that also is becoming increasingly complex. While title tags, content and links are still very important the most successful marketers are doing much more than that – for instance the integration of Social Media, Mobile Search, Local Search and the more traditional disciplines of TV, Radio and Print.

Over the last couple year’s we have therefore seen increased integration between Search Marketing and the traditional marketing suite, that said there is still a long way to go. Many executive level decision makers, the men and women who make the final decisions on budgets are really just starting to notice the effectiveness of Search Engine Marketing. As this awareness grows so too will the need to educate these high level decision makers and their teams.

Between the increased interest vertically within large multinationals and the increased complexity in getting your pages to rank – more and more people are turning to Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch for Search Marketing education.

What’s your perspective on the evolution of search, with Google having rolled out universal and blended search? How has this changed your approach for online marketing for SES?

Blended Search, or Universal Search as Google calls it, changed everything when it was introduced last year. Basically it has given marketers such as me that opportunity to utilize multiple doorways in our efforts to get listed on the SERPs, especially within those first 10 listings – videos, blogs, images and alike are more relevant today… hence, the YouTube and Flickr channels.

Another adaptation we have made is to treat the blogger community in the search and digital industries in the same manner we treat traditional press (we are the only Conference Series I know of that does this). The press has always been able to access our event, including all the sessions, for free via the press pass, and now the bloggers can too. I do not think a day goes by in which the SES Conference Series and our content sites, ClickZ and Search Engine Watch, are not mentioned on a blog somewhere.

What hasn’t changed? Keyword discovery for one… it is still very important to carefully select the keywords you are optimizing around. E-mail marketing continues to be an extremely effective tool as well, as does select display campaigns and let’s not forget paid search.

As online marketer for an online marketing company, what are your favorite tools that you use to hone your craft? What tools would you like for someone to invent?

This is going to sounds a bit self-promotional, that said, I have been reading ClickZ.com and SearchEngineWatch.com for many years now and I truly don’t not know how any online marketers can effectively execute on their day to day and stay up-to-date on best practices without reading both sites daily.

Who should we get naked with next?

Don Shultz or Seth Godin

Analyze more domains: + +

Done reading? subscribe: To get an automatic feed of all future posts subscribe here, or to receive them via email enter your email address in the box in the right column.

Link to This Post:     

Posted under: Interviews | Trackback Link | Permalink |