The loudest message I heard at the conference was TESTING, testing, testing. I tried to attend sessions that focused on Ads as much as possible, but found myself in sessions that focused on organic search as well.
You would expect testing to be discussed in the “Ad Testing: Research and Findings” as well as the “Landing Page Testing and Tuning“, and they of course did. At “Converting Visitors Into Buyers,” Brad Geddes and Brian Eiesenberg both talked about testing. In “Ads in a Quality Score World” Andrew Goodman, Jonathan Mendez, Brian Boland, and Clay Bavor all referred to the importance of
testing. Testing was discussed in “B2B Tactics” by both presenters, Patricia Hursh, Paul Slack. Even Cindy Krum talked about the importance of testing in the “Mobile Search Optimization” session.
Test test test. Someone who didn’t know the business might think that we’re idiots for always testing. I can just hear one client ask “Why do you have to test, isn’t this your job? Don’t you know what you’re doing?” Wow. But yeah, even when we are professionals and we do know what we’re doing we have to test to find just the right mix of what is going to work for each individual client. We test because that’s the job!
On a side note…
The test we ran by wearing our Pole Position Marketing shirts passed with flying colors. I know you’ve already heard how everyone loved our shirts. Since Matt McGee was kind enough to take our picture at the Google Dance (and post them on his flickr page), I can share it with you. Pretty darned professional don’t cha think??
Now get back to testing!