PESA Conference 2012
I attended the PESA (Professional Ebay Sellers Alliance) Conference for my second time last week and I was blown away again with the quality of the speakers and the great networking opportunities. I thought I’d share with you a few of the gems I came away with.
Mobile Commerce
We’ve been doing a lot with mobile commerce recently. We’re running a lot more mobile adwords campaigns and getting clients sites mobile optimised. Paul Buchanan, the head of mobile commerce for Paypal shared some amazing numbers on the growth of mobile. As I pointed out last year mobile purchases are up 200% on 2010. Paul told us though that in a recent US survey 53% of customers standing in a retail outlet who are about to purchase, stop the transaction after some quick research on their smartphones. 53%?! That’s huge. No wonder retail is suffering.
John Lawson @colderice who always gives a fantastic dynamic presentation showed that there are some great advertising opportunities when it comes to mobiles. Although 23% of purchases are now occuring via a mobile device only 1% of ad spend is being directed at them. We’ve seen some fantastic wins for clients with mobile adwords campaigns. It’s a lot cheaper than targeting someone at the desktop and the conversions are amazing if it’s done properly. We had a car dealership that sold 5 cars directly through a mobile campaign and their cost per lead acquisition was $4! How does that compare to your TV, radio or print spend?
I met a couple of Melbourne guys earlier in the year at Channel Advisor seminar and I encouraged them to go to PESA. Turned they had already booked. When I caught up with them at the end of the conference they were blown away. They said it would have taken them a year to learn all they had in 3 days at the conference. Pretty good testimonial for anyone in online retail.
I also managed to catch up with Sheridyn Fisher @sheridynfisher who is the creator of Sheridyn Swim which has become an internationally recognised swimwear label. Amongst other things I asked her about Pinterest after she had just attended Justine Bloome’s (@inbloome) session on the exploding opportunities for retailers with the new image site.
My sessions at PESA
I had 4 speaking gigs at PESA, a video marketing workshop, a session on Google WebMaster Tools, a social media Gigglefest with John Lawson & Adam Burns and an SEO website review panel which I chaired. I have attached my webmaster tools presentation for those of you that asked for it. Or you can also check out last week’s video on the latest Google webmaster tools changes
Google Webmaster Tools PESA Presentation. A big thanks to Phil Leahy the organiser of the conference who has invited me the last two years to participate. If you are in retail don’t miss out next year.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
