SEMPO Canada Search Summit Post-Conference Summary

Two weeks ago, June 29th, we had the first ever SEMPO Canada Search Summit in Vancouver organized by SEMPO Canada and Google Canada teams. We were discussing this idea with Google Canada team for several weeks, everybody was agreed that through the year Vancouver doesn’t have any major Internet marketing events except annual IMC (Internet Marketing Conference) in the fall, and finally we came with the date that was acceptable for both teams.

I was one of organizers of this event, mostly responsible for finding the place to host this event and setting up the venue. We had only three short weeks to set everything up and it put a lot of pressure on those involved in preparing presentations and venue, marketing and selling tickets for this one-day conference. With a help from Sophia Shakia, our volunteer event coordinator, we were able to get a great deal from Empire Landmark Hotel at 1400 Robson St., which offered us to rent a big ballroom with catering service for reasonable fee. We spreaded information about this conference through all local online marketing meetups, SEMPO Canada’s LinkedIn group, and our personal contacts and at the end we were had more than 100 people registered. This event was free for SEMPO members and Google clients in the area, for the rest of the public tickets were offered at $99 that included breakfast and lunch as well.

The main goal of SEMPO Canada Search Summit was to provide local search marketers with opportunity to explore new Search Marketing strategies through presentations prepared by both Google and SEMPO experts and let them opportunity to communicate face-to-face with Google team, ask questions, get quick reviews of sites and ad campaigns.

SEMPO Canada team made opening presentation with a quick review of SEMPO and SEMPO Canada working group, about organization’s mission and goals, global reach and recent activities here in Vancouver. It also presented 2011 State of Search Market report.

Google Canada team made several presentations about latest innovations in search introduced by Google, and latest trends in mobile advertisement and Social Media, just one day after Google+ social network was officially launched.

Q&A session in the afternoon lasted for almost 40 min. and everybody was given a chance to ask a question directly to Google team members. Some of the attendees were able to get their Google AdWords accounts reviewed on the spot

General feedback from most of the people show us that Search Summit was a great success, which we hope will become a regular annual event for search marketers working here in Greater Vancouver area. It was obvious how excited Google team was about the results of this event which makes me to believe we can expect the same event to be organized in other Canadian cities and here in Vancouver again next year.

SEMPO Canada team is also very happy to report about signing 22 new SEMPO members which is a great news for Canadian Search Marketing industry. We hope these new members will become an active supporters for organization. We are going to follow up with all new members soon to make sure they are informed about all local events organized by SEMPO Canada and actively participate in them.

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