[stars]Tuesday’s ad:tech conference in sunny San Fran was a smashing hit, and this year’s event boasted a slew of impressive speakers – people from the highest ranks of Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon were all in attendance, and were booked for speaking engagements during both days of the highly-anticipated digital marketing conference.

One of the speakers at this year’s ad:tech expo was John Nicoletti, Google’s senior manager. In his presentation, Nicoletti detailed his insights about businesses and their customers online, and he mapped out how businesses can invest their advertising money smarter in order to maximize their return on investment for every dollar spent to market online. These tips are every bit as critical for independent Internet marketers as they are for large companies – perhaps even more so. After all, IM budgets are tighter since they’re often one-person operations. The following are the three main takeaways from Nicoletti’s presentation at the web 2.0 conference.

Win all the moments that matter

According to Nicoletti, “Ninety-six percent of visitors don’t make purchases on their first visit.”
He went on to explain that Internet users, on average, visit around 10 different sources on the Web before purchasing a good or service. This is why being the website that a customer visits during their “zero moment” – or the moment they decide to whip out their credit card – is so important. The solution, Nicoletti noted, lies in multichannel marketing. In Internet marketing, you only have the interest of visitors for a split second, if that. The Internet has created a population with collective ADD, and it’s up to you to cast your net wide and spread your message across as many online mediums as possible.

It’s also critical to find the right medium through which to speak to your particular audience. During his presentation at the ad:tech conference, Nicoletti gave the example of a company named Orabrush. Once they found the right kind of content for their audience – video, in their case – their online sales increased by 500 percent. Think about that! If your content isn’t converting, is that the kick in the butt you need to try out new stuff? If not, you can forget next year’s ad:tech registration. You’re in the wrong line of work.

Make better decisions, and make them faster

Nicletti spoke of attributing success where it belongs, and imputing the right data into your media channels. The big issue with online marketing analysis, he said, was that marketers tend to focus solely on the last step of the funnel; the last click the user makes before their purchase. There is a wealth of information to be unearthed at the top of the sales funnel as well, and Google is rolling out new metrics for its Analytics platform to help businesses make sense of this data in relation to their marketing efforts online.

Go bigger, faster

Finally, Nicoletti touched on his final point. It was all about automating as much as possible and moving as quickly as you can to keep pace with the rapid nature of the ‘net to make money online. This is especially important for solo IMers. You should outsource and automate as much as you can, use the right data, and test until you run out of tests… then test some more. According to Nicoletti’s ad:tech conference conclusion, the world is on an online shopping spree, and if you can figure out what consumers want, and be there when they want it… only then will the Web be your oyster.

Tags: ad tech registration, ad:tech conference, digital marketing conference, web 2.0 conference