We had an absolute pleasure sponsoring and attending Advanced Search Summit in Napa this March and are already looking forward to returning next year! The 1.5 day conference was very well organized, had an excellent speaker roster, interesting and actionable sessions that focused on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), content marketing, analytics, and paid advertising on search engines and social media channels.

In addition to the high quality education, the networking opportunities were impeccable and were held in a variety stunning venues, ranging from Merryvale’s cellar room to the Harvest Inn, and ultimately, Castello di Amorosa for the post-conference tour and dinner. We caught up with friends and familiar faces and made a number of excellent new connections. If you are looking for an intimate and unique opportunity to learn and make new business connections, look no further, as Advanced Search Summit will deliver.

Advanced Search Summit Napa sponsor logos including Conductor, Moz, AimClear, and AKvertise alongside a grid of speaker headshots

Unable to attend? Here are some interesting tips, facts, statistics, and quotes we learned that you may also find interesting:

  • “LinkedIn is a lot easier to optimize than SEO.” - William Sears of Disney
  • By default, LinkedIn browse map is on. Why would you want to advertise your competitors? Turn it off in your profile settings. - William Sears of Disney
  • “Negative reviews and aggregate scores are impacting buyers’ purchasing decision during the research phase.” - Joe Sinkwitz of Intellifluence
  • Did you know? When you cancel Blue Apron and put in your email and reason (e.g. takes too long to cook), they start serving remarketing ads to get you to come back with new 30 minute meal ads. If you cancel with reason being too expensive, they show discount ads.

Long dinner tables set among wine barrels in Merryvale's cellar room for the conference networking event

  • “Facebook is no longer an upper funnel tactic. It’s a strong remarketing play.”
  • “Over 80% of accounts on Instagram follow a business and over 200M Instagrammers actively add a business profile every day.” - Veronica Romney of LoSoMo
  • “Client Personas – know who your ideal client is to build the correct, most accurate targeting. Utilize any email list you have and make custom audiences.” -Veronica Romney of LoSoMo
  • “Know your specific goals – work towards a measurable goal that is tracked. Don’t spend money on ads you can’t measure. What is your goals cost per lead? Cost per acquisition? Are you measuring that against Google AdWords metrics?”
  • “Implement a Call-to-Action: Learn More, Shop Now, and Sign Up are more than buttons – use specific calls to action in your ad copy.”
  • “Test, test, test – the best Facebook ads don’t come from best practices by trying out new things.”

Stone courtyard and turret of Castello di Amorosa under a blue sky strung with string lights

  • “Think of retargeting from search by keeping the query alive for a latency period.” - Marty Weintraub of aimClear
  • “If you have an email list, do something with it.”
  • “Create personalized rich results on a users preferences and personal context.” - Christi Olson of Bing
  • “Intelligent agents are our connection between knowledge graph and our personal graph,” - Christi Olson of Bing
  • “80% of brands will use chatbots for customer interactions by 2020” - Christi Olson of Bing
  • “Facts tell, stories sell.” - Adam Singer of Google

Guests mingling beside a long candlelit dinner table in Castello di Amorosa's brick wine cellar

Interested in attending the next Advanced Search Summit event? Save the date and learn more about their upcoming search marketing workshop in Maui, October 9-13, 2018.