My Journey to Pubcon Las Vegas 2019 – Day 4

Pascal Côté

5 years ago

Today marked the last day of the Pubcon Las Vegas 2019, it went by so fast! The last day is always a bit lighter in terms of content and schedule, the event ends sooner and the expo hall is already closed. Thus said, I did attend one of the most interesting session so far!

The first conference was given by Julie Ewald and Grant Simmons, where they were talking about agency growth and how to avoid typical mistakes. Even if Bloom is already a pretty well established agency, it’s always good to look at our current practices and re-evaluate ourselves.

"You need a tech stack." – @julieewald Talking about how client success needs structure and processes in place. #Pubcon
— Pascal Côté (@Axxurge) October 10, 2019

This is something I’m particularly proud about when I talk about Bloom. We were able to identify our current tech needs and develop custom tools. We even hired our own development team to make sure everything is 100% customized to what we do. It’s important to have technical specialists that know how to build custom solutions.

Great talk by @julieewald on how to properly scale and grow an agency. Great recap slide! #Pubcon pic.twitter.com/UHjiXTUKgB
— Pascal Côté (@Axxurge) October 10, 2019

When we say that an image is worth a thousand words, the above image is worth at least 4000. Julie gave excellent tips on how we need to nurture our clients and employees alike. I will check out Julie’s deck when I’ll get the email, there’s definitely potential for another article.

"Out think, not outspend." – @simmonet So true! A good strategy with a realistic budget has a higher potential of providing good ROI than simply having a big budget with little to no strategy. #Pubcon
— Pascal Côté (@Axxurge) October 10, 2019

There are still so many people that think that throwing money at the screen will give them better performance. While this may work if you want to scale an already successful strategy (with some caveats of course) it’s never a good plan to just spend money and hope to make more money. Managing budgets and numbers is easy, anyone can do it. The secret resides in how it’s done, not how much it costs.

"Listen, take notes, acknowledge and follow-up." – @simmonet Best way to manage an angry client and actually resolve the situation. #Pubcon
— Pascal Côté (@Axxurge) October 10, 2019

The amount of times I saw clients getting fresh leads and never following up is flabbergasting. Whether it’s an angry client or a brand new lead, it is critical to always follow-up with prospects. Time that users are allocating to you is extremely short and if you’re not the one taking it, a competitor will.

"One small gesture can lead to big, big results." – @simmonet when talking about how greed isn't going to do you any good. #Pubcon
— Pascal Côté (@Axxurge) October 10, 2019

At Bloom, we’re quite lucky that even after 12 years in business, many clients still come from referrals. It’s not rare that our team overachieves mandates because we “feel like it” and, as you can see, it pays off quite well.

"Communication is a key component to expectation management." – @simmonet Too many agencies neglect communications in favor of more production work. They're both as important. #Pubcon
— Pascal Côté (@Axxurge) October 10, 2019

We’re often wrapped up in production work and it’s difficult to get out of that loop. We think that investing more time in tactics and solutions will yield results when sometimes the client is explicitly pointing you in the right direction since day 1, but no one listened. Account managers are as important as campaign managers.

I also attended a session giben by Bill Hunt and Scott Hendison, but it went by so fast that I wasn’t able to take notes/Tweet at the same time as listening carefully to their insights. As I did with Julie’s presentation, I’ll wait to get the final slides and invest some more time into creating a brand new article.

Once again, a fantastic event happened this year. Conferences were very in-depth, relevant and specific enough to get good actionable insights. Speakers were motivated and clearly happy to be there. And the US Search Awards never had that many categories (35) in 9 years. It was an amazing experience and I’m proud to be part this industry.

SEO is dead. Long live SEO.

Read what happened on Day 3 of Pubcon Las Vegas here.