Worker Bees Blog

I spent Friday morning at another seminar, this time on Search Engine Marketing. And I learned a valuable lesson there. Unfortunately the lesson wasn't so much on the topic of search engine marketing, but rather on how to build credibility into your presentation.

Going to these things usually does two things: reminds you of the list of all the things you've been meaning to do with your site or your marketing efforts, and reveals yet another list of new techniques you should add to that list.

This seminar was no different.

But early on, what really took my focus was that this presentation featured some market research on search engine marketing, and then provided some different research that said nearly the opposite.

I was amazed someone would leave that in a presentation without actually having an answer as to why the results were so different, and which one was probably correct, and why. This little moment happened early in the seminar, and it took me a good long while to get over it and assign any credibility whatsoever to the speaker.

So, note to self: supporting your presentation with market research report data is good...but be prepared to take a stand if you find conflicting reports...or don't use them at all.

[If you're curious, the data was about what percentage of hits on a web site typically come from searches. One report said only 13%!!!!! Another said it was 70-80%!!!! That's a huge gap. If you believe the former, you might not worry so much about search engine marketing at all, huh?]