This past Thursday, September 8th, 2001, the 2nd Edition of the Vancouver Affiliate Summit Meetup took place at the Charlatan Restaurant in Vancouver, BC. We had a good turnout and almost doubled in size since our inaugural meetup back in May 2011. It was an awesome evening, albeit a bit warm, full with great presentations from Mark Holder, Lindsay Viscount and Sarah V Bundy. It was definitely good times, good info, good food and great people! Thank you to all of those who attended and to The Charlatan Restaurant for having us.
Here’s a quick recap of the evening:
The night kicked off with a brief networking session for all attendees to get some drinks, food and to meet each other and for others to catch up with some old friends in the industry. After the networking session, we dove right into the presentations with Mark Holder of Hootsuite (Director of Developer & Affiliate Relations) starting it off.
Mark’s presentation was very informative, as he discussed the Hootsuite dashboard and the multiple functions that it provides its users. Along with explaining the different streams and list that can be added to your Hootsuite dashboard, Mark also introduced us the Hootsuite Affiliate Program and the different levels of Hootsuite (Basic/Free, Pro, Enterprise).
Next up was Lindsay Viscount, owner and Creative Director for Longevity Graphics in Vancouver. Lindsay is a seasoned veteran in the Pay Per Click arena and her presentation on “PPC: How it can work for you”, was a definite indicator of that. Lindsay did an awesome job of explaining the different strategies and uses of PPC to monetize your website and really target traffic to the proper pages. In addition, she also went into analytics and how to measure the success of the campaigns that you have running.
To close out the presentations, Sarah V Bundy, CEO and owner of All Inclusive Marketing, went over her 5 Steps to Writing an Effective Internet Marketing Plan. From early Situation Analysis to Financial Analysis and everything in between, Sarah discussed the importance of having a plan and how to execute it successfully. Here are the steps and some points from Sarah’s presentation.
- Situation Analysis; Market Analysis, Identification of Target Groups
- Competitive Analysis; SWOT, Suggested Value Propositions
- Positioning and Main Messaging; Brand Messaging, Main Messaging
- Online Marketing Channel Strategy; Market Channel Analysis and Selection, Competitive Analysis
- Financial Analysis; Sales Projections, Budgets
All in all, the presentations went really well and I think that everyone left with something that they could take home. Special thanks to Mark, Lindsay and Sarah for volunteering to do the presentations; you guys are gems!
To close out the night, most attendees decided to stay a while longer and continued to network and got to know each other a bit better. As for myself, I was able to get some good feedback from some attendees and get an idea of what they want out of these events and the direction that we want to go in. This won’t the last time that we all get together and I’m already planning the layout of the next event, so stay tuned and if you have any feedback or suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment below or contact us directly.
Thanks again to everyone that came out to show their support and contribute to the affiliate community in Vancouver. See you all soon!
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