SMX West - Day 1 Brandon Hess

As I write this post, I’m awaiting to hear a Keynote Speech on Search 3.0 by Dave Sullivan, the first of three Keynotes here at Search Marketing Expo West in Santa Clara California.  You might consider me amazing that I can be posting on our blog whilst I sit in a large conference room while the song Dani California echoes around me, but I assure you, the internet here in California is quite wireless.

I arrived yesterday, a day before the official SMX West began and had a chance last night to mingle with some of the other participants in this year’s festivities.  As I passed out a forest-worth of business cards, replying to questions regarding my NBA ambitions and the realization that I’m what some people refer to as tall, I was somewhat astounded by the sheer amount of diverse companies and industries attending a Search Marketing Expo.  Uttering the phrase Search Marketing Expo brings to mind people dressed in their best black turtlenecks, lugging around silver iBooks, their communication buried deeply in jargon and business cards referring to their positions within Web Development and Search Media agencies.

Oddly enough, the majority of people I’ve met neither work in the Web Development or Search Media industry.  The majority of people I met last night are here to learn more about an advertising medium they’re wanting to learn more about.  Maybe that fact alone doesn’t strike a chord with everyone but to me, it shows me two things.  One, the Search Marketing industry has gained some weight in terms as a viable advertising / marketing medium to where Marketing professionals are hungry to learn how they can best accomplish their company’s goals using it.  Two, that these Marketing professionals all seemed to share a unified lack of trust in regards of their current media agencies to provide them this information, mostly referring to them as the people they pay to run their campaigns.  Even more interesting to me was that when I would ask them what sort of Return On Investment their current efforts had yielded, my question was met with stares of awe and wonder.

Or maybe it was the fact they still couldn’t believe I’m tall.  When I get back, I’m going to ask Dale to add a line to my business cards, maybe see if my contact information can be printed on a tape measure, you know, so they can stop asking.

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