Why I attended Indy’s MBO Conference

I was really fortunate to have been invited to Indy’s MBO Conference (Masters of Business Online) this past week as a guest of Chantelle Flannery, the co-author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies. To be honest, I was not sure what to expect. My fear was that it was going to be overly corporate, and this was the one time that I am glad that I did not wear shorts. The style was very ReBar Campish, I am sure a lot of conferences do it that way, where they have 3 sessions going on at once. However, I am growing weary of having 2 or all 3 killer sessions at the same time and try as I might. I cannot be in all 3 places at the same time.

Thankfully, I feel that I hit the best sessions at the right time and most presenters are putting their slides up on SlideShare. I made sure that I got there early enough to get the free breakfast and to get  a good seat for the keynote with Mark Roberge, the VP of Sales with HubSpot.

My tweets from Mark’s talk were:

• that the “buyer is in control, they are searching for…are they finding you"
• googles job is to deliver the best results, if they don’t they will go out of business
• think beyond search engines…Facebook, Twitter & Linkedin all have search built in
• never let your blog visitors guess what to do next

The owner of Bee Windows, George Faerber, continued in the big room talking about the cost of his companies web generated leads as compared to those that were generated by TV and his old newspaper ads. His company has done a good job, but we all can do better of increasing lead quality and monitoring ROI. I don’t know this to be true of Bee, but I know most home improvement companies strive for the one call close. Get in talk needs of the client, highlight those need with your product and close the deal, that is easier done if the person researched online and found the majority of their answers on your site. It really does improve lead quality, they are on your site for a reason, Give it to them.

My tweets from George’s talk…

• $0 on newspaper funnel nearly all that back to online
• they came to your site or your store for a reason..Sell it to them.
• You really have just one chance at building trust online, you lose that trust it is hard to gain back.

Don Schindler…My only gripe with Don is that he works for Notre Dame and when he talks about ND it makes it tough for me dislike them with me being a Boiler and all. This was the second time, that I have had the pleasure of being able to hear Don speak and he has informative and entertaining each time. He talked about how to make a good story. A story that sells. He showed some video clips of what they are doing at ND and it is some pretty amazing stuff.  Oh, you also learned when not to flush a toilet on a submarine and certainly not to do it twice.

I was able to make it to a few more presentations, but I wanted to highlight these and I want to break down the one that I was the best that I had gone to in a separate post. I was highly impressed at the quality of attendance, who were clearly there to learn and network. I really liked having a separate session to just do that. I have not been disappointed with the connections that I have made when I go to Indy and MBO was truly no different. I am really hoping that I can get that tandem Indy car ride around the Speedway.  If you are a small to large business looking to increase your online presence and learn how monitor it correctly then MBO in Indy is for you.

I can really sum it all up in one tweet…

Dave