Dan has been helping his clients and friends promote their businesses online since Netscape emerged. He is the author of Search Engine Optimization Fast Start, one of the most popular SEO books of all time, along with The Search Marketing Kit from SitePoint Publishing.

As one of the earliest “search marketers,” Dan’s approach from the very beginning has been to combine SEO and paid search campaigns into a single strategy. He is also one of the first SEO practitioners to recognize and exploit paid search listings to drive traffic and build links.

When GoTo.com launched in 1998, Dan was one of the first marketers to run ads on the platform, and he has been running Google Adwords campaigns since 2001.

Today Dan manages a diverse array of campaigns for clients from retailers to local service providers. He is also a strategy coach for dozens of small marketing agencies and in-house teams through his PPC working group.

Dan’s popular “Core PPC” training program has helped thousands of businesses (large and small) win more customers, and its recent updates reflect the significant changes from Google and Bing over the past year.

Workshop Details

Essential PPC Strategies for 2017

In this 90-minute workshop, Dan Thies will focus on helping beginning-to-intermediate advertisers get up-to-speed to get campaigns running profitably as quickly as possible.

As Dan says, “the advanced practitioners are likely to catch a few ‘head slappers’ as well” because each section has a few golden nuggets for everyone.

Dan has divided this workshop into three sections. Here’s a brief outline of each:

1. Keyword Strategy and Budgeting

In this section, you will learn how to identify the top keywords, reverse engineer the keyword strategy of competitors, plus how to forecast the likely ROI for each keyword.

Discussion will include significant pros and cons of using Dynamic Search Ad campaigns for keyword discovery. Google pushes them hard, but not everyone should use them.

2. Targeting Locally – for Local and Non-Local Businesses

Local advertising via Adwords and Bing is one of the most complex and poorly understood subjects in all of marketing.

In this section, Dan will cover the top 4 ways to rapidly improve the performance of local campaigns. Attendees will learn how to analyze geographic differences to squeeze more appointments, leads, and sales out of a limited budget.

3. Winning the Retail Wars with Shopping Campaigns

For a retailer selling physical products whether online, locally, or both, running shopping campaigns via Adwords and Bing is the fastest and easiest way to make more sales quickly.

In this section, you’ll learn about a little-known strategy for targeting buyers who already have their wallets out – and avoiding searchers who are purely in the research stage. Retailers should not run Google or Bing campaigns without first possessing this knowledge.

Essential #PPC Strategies Workshop with @danthies of @mrktrbraintrust at #RocksDigital 2017!
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Erik brings 8 years of experience in the digital field with specializations in landing page strategy, PPC strategy, cross-channel attribution, and bid strategy automation. Erik has worked personally to improve ROI performance on clients such as Pep Boys, Wyndham Vacation Rentals, and Panasonic Healthcare, and showcases vertical experience in automotive, health care, restaurant, fitness, travel & hospitality, finance, law, and consumer packaged goods.

When not attached to his laptop, Erik can be found enjoying life with the fam – camping, smoking meat & tipping ales, and contemplating when it was exactly that LEGO sets became so ridiculously expensive. Also, Tom Waits is his spirit animal.

Workshop Details

Content Amplified – Crafting a Digital Conversation

You have a great product. You write about it every week. You filmed it, you animated it, you took great photographs. So, where are all the sales at!?

Our content is king and our creations are precious – but truth is, content is only as powerful as its ability to get in front of the right audience at the right moment in their journey. That’s where amplification tactics come into play.

This interactive workshop will:

• Review how to assess existing digital marketing efforts for gaps in content and delivery
• How to begin crafting a solution for a full-funnel amplification strategy
• Explore channel coverage including press releases, paid & organic social, lead nurturing, and influencer marketing

This is one Rocks Digital workshop you will not want to miss!

Amp Up Your #Content in this Workshop Led by @VerticalMeasure at #RocksDigital 2017!
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Byron Ingraham

Byron is passionate about helping entrepreneurs design innovative strategies to create and transform the way they do business. Through these strategies, they are able to attract more clients, better clients, and increase their revenue. Through transformation, they are able to live the lives that previously they had only dreamed of.

Byron’s philosophy: “Don’t try to reinvent the wheel, just put a tire on it!”

Workshop Details

Rocks Digital Marketing Clinic

Read the workshop description and meet the other experts.

Learn from #Marketing Strategist @ByronIngraham at #RocksDigital Marketing Clinic 2017! #SMDay
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Mike has a level of passion for SMBs that only a select few can match. Since 2000, Mike has improved sales and results for brands all over North Texas and beyond. Mike is the founder of Status26 Inc., a digital marketing incubator.

Workshop Details

Rocks Digital Marketing Clinic

Read the workshop description and meet the other experts.

Get Expert Advice on Online #Marketing from @RealMikeStewart at #RocksDigital 2017 #SMDay!
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Lissa Duty

In 2009 Lissa discovered she had a passion for digital marketing – and a natural talent for leveraging social media platforms to brand clients and businesses.

Lissa speaks at conferences, chambers of commerce and various groups around D/FW about digital marketing, social media, and the importance of online branding. She does all this while balancing her many responsibilities at Advice Local, where her primary focus is spearheading company initiatives related to branding and marketing in the local search industry.

In her spare time, you can find Lissa behind the scenes creating content, playing in WordPress, and posting to the company’s social media accounts as one of the voices behind the brand.

Connect with Lissa on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn @LissaDuty. Google “Lissa Duty” to find an endless stream of information about her contributions to social media and the community.

Workshop Details

Feeding Search and Social to Drive Site Traffic

Today’s world is not search OR social, it’s search AND social! And when your goal is success you can’t just ride the fence. But how to make the right moves? Well, we have an answer for that …

In this workshop, Lissa Duty, will share the tried-and-true methods she uses daily to get search engines like Google (yes, the G-word) to serve up content she creates in their desktop and mobile search results.

Lissa will focus in on:

• E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness)
• Content Optimization
• Share-ability

Along the way, Lissa will share the multi-channel approach she employs with extensive content pieces – including infographics, research papers and eBooks – to increase awareness, drive conversions, and convert prospects to customers.

She’ll have something for all the techies too, so expect mentions of RankBrain, on-page, URLs, URIs, and other nifty technical jargon. But make no mistake, this presentation will benefit everyone from first-steppers to pros.

Want loyal fans and connected followers? Great! Lissa expected that answer. Attend this timely workshop and take your content marketing to the next level.

#RocksDigital 2017 Workshop Feeding Search and Social to Drive Traffic led by @LissaDuty will ROCK!
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Rocks Digital Marketing Clinic

Are you a DIY’er and struggling with digital marketing? Or perhaps you are a marketer and need to take in the highlights of something new. And what about trying to rank your business or a client’s business higher in SERPs, but everything you try just isn’t working?

Congratulations then, because you’re in the right place: New to Rocks Digital this year is the Rocks Digital Marketing Clinic! We have been lucky enough to get a smart-smart group of experts to answer your questions and provide support. This clinic is in a one-on-one format where you choose the expert you would like to speak with, and you get 5 to 15 minutes to pick their brain and get the answers you need.

Organizer Lissa Duty, Mike Stewart, Byron Ingraham and John Nosal will all be there to lend their expertise.

Meet the other experts – Byron Ingraham, John Nosal and Mike Stewart.

Join @LissaDuty at #RocksDigital 2017 #digitalmarketing clinic! #SMDay
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He is an avid digital marketing researcher, spending time experimenting with various tactics and strategies on Facebook as well as the Facebook advertising platform and its various incarnations.

Joe is cofounder of Digital by Dallas, an organization which organizes low cost quarterly events to educate the digital marketing and SMB community. All while the mission being to raise funds for local charities.

Workshop Details

Facebook Dominance for Less Than $100 a Month

Facebook has nearly 2 billion active users per month worldwide, and 1.23 billion daily active users with roughly 185 million daily active users in North America. Facebook has become the undisputed champion of Social Media and a marketing force that can no longer be ignored by mid-sized and small businesses.

In this workshop, Joe will share:

• How to create ads that capture attention and convert
• How to adhere to Facebook best practices
• How to get the most ROI out of a Facebook audience

Joe will dispel the misconceptions around Facebook Marketing and Advertising. Plus, you’ll learn how to get the most out of your Facebook advertising budget for as little as $100 a month.

Register and attend #Facebook Ads Workshop w/ @YoungbloodJoe #RocksDigital 2017!
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