July 11, 2017

By Intrigue

This past week, six members of the Intrigue team made the long trek to the West Coast and attended Unbounce’s fourth annual Call to Action Conference.

What is the CTA Conference?

If you haven’t heard the buzz yet, the CTA Conference has grown into one of the top digital marketing conferences in North America. Hosted by Unbounce, creators of an industry-leading landing page building platform, the conference has a heavy focus on conversion rate optimization (CRO) — although you will find speakers on a range of subjects including PPC, SEO, email marketing, copywriting, design, and much more!

Thanks to the amazing Unbounce team, you can access all of the CTA videos and slides here.

Did you have a favourite presentation from CTA Conference? Let us know in the comments below if you think something we missed deserves a mention!

To recap the conference, I asked a few of my team members to share their favourite presentation and explain what they found valuable. You can read their answers below!

1. Data Driven Design — Oli Gardner

The CTA Conference kicked off with a presentation from Unbounce co-founder, Oli Gardner, on Data-Driven Design (3D). Oli’s talk explored the relationship between marketers, designers, and copywriters, looking at the tension between these roles and emphasizing the importance of healthy collaboration.

Our Google Adwords specialist, Melanie (a fellow data-lover), highlighted Oli’s talk as one of her favourites for the conference.

Oli’s passion for post-click optimization is invigorating! I immediately started using some of the tools he introduced in his talk, including the 3D Playbook.

Oli also took it upon himself to mend a few marketing ‘trends’ for good — like above the fold design, explainer videos, and those ubiquitous stock photos that everyone in the SaaS industry seems to use. Did we mention that Oli was also the best-dressed speaker at the conference?

CTA Conference- Oli Gardner- Intrigue

2.SEO Gentrification — Wil Reynolds

Wil Reynolds brought everyone to life after lunch on Day 1 with his presentation on SEO Gentrification. After talking about his own experience switching between PPC and SEO roles, Wil explained why he believed teams can benefit from breaking down digital marketing silos and encouraging communication.

Wil was also full of quotable moments:

  • On choosing CRO over SEO: “Computers have learned to recognize disappointment.”
  • On the goal of content: “Search is used to solve problems.”
  • On what’s wrong with most landing pages: “Get in my funnel!”

Our web developer Chris was a big fan of Wil’s talk and how it highlighted the importance of CRO for future SEO work:

I really enjoyed Wil’s perspective on coming out of our comfort zones and being newbies again — trying to learn new skills and take on new responsibilities.

3. The PPC Performance Pizza — Johnathan Dane

Johnathan Dane is the founder of KlientBoost, a California-based PPC management agency that helps their clients with landing page design and CRO. Johnathan’s talk was full of tactical details for optimizing campaigns.

Intrigue co-founder Paul DeMarco has been playing around in the Facebook Ads space recently and he really enjoyed the concrete tips in Johnathan’s talk. Here were his two key takeaways:

Get people to micro commit. People’s most coveted information is their email and phone number, so asking for this right away can usually turn people off. If you ask them to take a small step first, before asking for this information, they are 80% more likely to give their email and phone number.

People often run their ads to cold audiences on Facebook. The best success comes from exhausting all custom audiences first. Create a lookalike audience from your current buyers and also use any custom audiences that you can.

4. Super Advanced Content Marketing — Andy Crestodina

Andy Crestodina, co-founder of Orbit Media, is well-known in digital marketing circles for being a master when it comes to creating SEO-friendly content. In his presentation, Andy shared a few advanced tips and tricks for getting your posts to the top of organic search rankings:

  • Collaborate on content to reach a larger audience
  • Update existing content to improve rankings
  • Get backlinks to the articles that need it most

Our SEO specialist and content writer Alex has been learning from Andy over the past few years through webinars. He was pretty excited to get to see Andy present in person and briefly chat with him over lunch:

Honestly, Andy has revolutionized the way that our team approaches content writing. His talks have provided so much insight into the inner workings of semantic search and generated massively increased traffic for many of our clients. It was an absolute pleasure to hear Andy speak again (in person, this time) and get a few ideas for future content!

A big thank you goes out to the team at Unbounce in Vancouver. They put on a fantastic event and we look forward to seeing them next year!

Intrigue is a Canadian digital marketing company delivering solutions to help businesses get noticed and found. Guided by a commitment to empower leaders to strengthen communities, Intrigue offers website design and development, branding, online advertising, content marketing, graphic design, video production, SEO, and analytics. Take your marketing to the next level and Get Noticed. Get Found.® intrigueme.ca

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