Adam Jewell - Search & Affiliate Marketing

Zumanity from Cirque du Soleil is probably one of the shows you think of when you think of Vegas. You’ve probably at least heard of it even if you have no idea what it really is. Up until yesterday I ws one of those people. I heard about it, heard it was a sensual show, heard some people felt like they were going to yak when watching it, heard it was hosted by a transvestite, heard you had to have an open mind to enjoy it, and if you like that sort of thing you’ll like it and if ya don’t ya wont.

Well, I’ve never been much of a fan of theater or cabaret or even given it much of a chance. Zumanity was the last of four shows I went to in two days and it really was an excellent show. It wasn’t the kind of thing I’d go to one a regular basis but was the kind of thing I’d go to again.

Getting tickets:

I tend to be somewhat frugal when it comes to some things. Why pay $150 for something you can get for $75 right? Instead of buying tickets for Zumanity or any other show prior to heading to Vegas, I found there are some places that sell discounted tickets the day of the show for up to 50% off just like the broadway deals in New York City. The one I went to tix4tonight.

When you call the number on the website, they give you a partial list of shows but don’t mention many of the better shows they have tickets for. In any case, I got lower orchestra Zumanity tickets for about $70.00/seat three rows back and a little to the right of the stage. Awesome seats! Not half price but still a savings of $30 or so. The theater where they have the show is pretty small so any seat would be a good seat but if you have the opportunity to get closer its worth a few extra bucks. You won’t get a bad set for Zumanity but you can great really good seats.

Review of Cirque du Soleil Zumanity In Las Vegas:

Well, I didn’t quite know what to expect. Before the show really starts, there is a guy who entertains the audience for a while, tossing out sexual inuendos, engaging and involving the audience along with a few voluptuous women. It’s humourous but tasteful.

There is a tranny that host the remainder of the show. There is a contortionist in the show which always makes me a bit squeamish but that was a small part. The whole show is an exploration of human sexuality. There are lots of acrobtics, innuendos, humor, sensual dances, a little person and some other people flying all over the stage.

If you’re in Vegas and you get the chance to go, check it out. If you are really conservtive, ya might not like it but then if you can’t handle something like Zumanity, what are you doing in Vegas?

Just got finished presenting on the panel - Defending Your Paid Search Budget Against Fad Ads and am now in the Avoiding PPC Pitfalls session.

Amy from Closed Loop Marketing is presenting the evils of broad match and advanced match with some prime examples of why you shouldn’t be running all your campaigns on broad match.

It is truely amazing how much liberty the engines take with broad match from related keywords, stemming, and liberties taken with geographical targeting on local targeted keywords.

General guidelines to deal with match types:

Build out singular and plural terms
Avoid broad & advanced match on broad terms
Build out an extensive negative list
Pull the search query performance report from Google
Buy the most valuable traffic first

Then use AdGooRoo to get more visibility into your online visibility and that of your competitors.

Up next - Addie Connor from Course Advisor

This presentation focuses on account structure geared toward streamlining reporting, improving quality score, and improving all around performance.

Considerations when setting up PPC search campaigns include:

Static vs. dynamic ads
Display URLs
Sales & promotions
Budgeting issues
GEO targeting needs
Content vs. search
Dayparting
Reporting format & needs

Develop the keywords and ad groups in tandem while keeping in mind the landing pages and ad templates.

What to do if the account is inherited?

Quality score is combinations of ad text and keywords so if you inherit an account and preserve that, then try to keep the keyword and ad text combinations.

One Other Dude - Clix Marketing

What to do about PPC content campaigns to make them perform for you.

Content ads on the engines don’t get matched to relevant content like you would think they do.
Content algo looks at a group of keywords and asigns it a theme - there are 594 of them in Google.
Your keywords should reflect the type of sites and content where you want ot apear.
These themes appear in the other targeting options in Google
Match types are irrelevant in content
Indiviual bids are irelevant
Content ads need to stand out
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Be more competitive to get more attention - free shipping, sales, % off
Quality score doesnt count as much in Google content - need to be in position 4 to get visibility

Remember waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the day, when SES - Search Engine Strategies shows had just gotten started? The conferences were of a manageable size, you had a sit down lunch instead of a lunch it looked like someone sat on crammed into a little box. They had speaker receptions. If you were a speaker you could sometimes get an extra pass so someone else in your company could attend.

Well, SMX feels like a throwback to the good old days. They had a nice little welcome reception for everyone (not just speakers) with a couple free drinks and some appetizers (crab cakes & some kind of skewers with meat & veggies). I ran into Danny right off the bat, he seemed jazzed about the whole thing. The SWAG (Shit We All Get) bag was actually a backpack this time instead of one of the usualy conference things that is more like a reusable grocery shopping bag that is a aukward to carry around a conference all day.

Being out in Santa Clara California makes it nice as well. Feels like its about 50 degrees outside with a nice cool breeze. The sights are great. There are lots of familiar faces out here and many new ones. The convention center where the sessions are held is a nice short walk from the hotel rooms which isn’t so common anymore.

The hotel is nice. The HYATT has a flat-screen TV, the beds are comfortable and there is a nice view out the window. There is a gym on the 3rd floor so I’ll actually be able to work out. Since there are only two elliptical machines, I had to settle for a treadmill for 30 minutes until an elliptical freed up. On the road or anytime, it always feels great to be able to get in a workout.

The presentation is tomorrow, there are some more networking events and there will probably be more people coming in as the week goes on. It should be a great show. Look for updates here as the week goes on!

So I didnt’ pay to much attention to the exact dates or the agenda for Affiliate Summit West. Affiliate Summit & SMX were cross promoted with discounts to one if you bought a pass to the other. With a speaking gig at SMX on Tuesday, all I had time to do at Affiliate Summit was register, pick up the pass and the SWAG bag, pop into the first networking thing, grab a few free drinks and head out to the airport on Monday morning to SMX.

There were a few familiar faces there, George Yuba - great guy from CJ, a few fellow CJ affiliates, some others I knew from CJU and WebmasterWorld PubCon shows. It would have been nice to be able to hang out for a while longer and see some of the presentations, find out what is new in the world of affiliate marketing but that will probably have to wait till CJU in September 2008 in Santa Barbara.

Maybe next time, they’ll stagger the conferences a little more to facilitate going to both of them. The RIO seemed like a decent place to have such a conference. The place is HUGE, has conference facilities right on site and seemed to have a number of restaurants and lots of casino floor space in the hotel/convention center as well. It might be a better all-in-one package than the Las Vegas convention center down by the Las Vegas Hilton and the Renaissance Las Vegas.

By the time I booked, the RIO wanted about $300/night so ended up staying at Planet Hollywood Las Vegas instead. Maybe if I had been able to go to the whole Affiliate Summit conference it would have been better to stay at the RIO but Planet Hollywood worked out great and was a really nice place to stay.

Since I’d been to Vegas 5 or times in the past and gone on a Grand Canyon tour once but had never been to a show, I decided it was time to make up for lost time and went to four shows - Blue Man Group at the Venetian - KA at the MGM Grand - Crazy Horse Paris at MGM Grand and Zumanity at New York New York. The shows were great and the Las Vegas discount show tickets were cheaper than buying in advance or a the box office!