Comments on: Online Strategy: Why is it So Hard for B2B Marketers?

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By: Jody Nimetz

Jody Nimetz — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 20:38:14 +0000

Hi Danny thanks for taking the time to stop by.
You are correct in that it is difficult to “judge” from afar and while I did not attend the SMX show I have attended SES shows in the past and found that the emphasis was on tactics as opposed to strategy. Lately it seems to be getting worse. We did have a few folks at the SMX show and they felt like there could have been a more strategic focus with some of the sessions.

I can appreciate that a mix of tactics and strategy would be a great mix and hopefully this is where you are going with the shows. If these shows are for industry professionals, when I attend, I would expect to be able to gather insight into things such as how SEO is going to be affected by personalization as opposed to learning about link building and writing meta tags. I look forward to hearing industry professionals like yourself speak at these shows, I just think that there is more to offer than just tactical advice. While finding this balance is tricky, I am confident that future shows will continue to improve. The examples of strategic value that you cited are great examples, we simply want more of this.

I will be attending SES San Jose which should prove interesting being that it is your final SES show, but I am really looking forward to attending a SMX show in the near future.

Thanks again for taking the time out to visit us Danny.

By: Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 18:12:17 +0000

Since you weren’t there, it’s probably hard for you to judge it from afar.

Gord said he felt it was a little too tactical:
http://www.outofmygord.com/

But then again, that’s a big difference than being only tactics.

SearchViews certainly found plenty of strategic value:
http://searchviews.com/archives/2007/06/in_good_company_at_smx.php

I think it’s important to understand that the sessions had a huge, huge amount of time left open to the audience. IE, it wasn’t “here’s a bunch of PowerPoint on tactics.” If the questions got tactical (one thing Gord noticed occasionally), that’s where the audience drove it. I can slap them around next time, I suppose.

Of course, the Duplicate Content session that I’ve taken the most heat over was from many people saying they wanted more examples on tactics to get around the issue. I continually kept explaining I was trying to move the industry, with that session, toward a new level. And, in fact, we got a lot of good ideas out of it:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/06/duplicate-content-summit-at-smx.html

So overall, there was plenty of strategy, and I feel more than with some other shows. But there were tactics, too. People do want a mix, and getting the balance is always tricky.