The Truth About Internet Marketing Conferences

Posted on January 19th, 2010.

By Terry Dean, http://www.terrydean.org

Terry writes: I’ve been disappointed by most internet marketing conferences I’ve attended…and I’m a speaker at them!

And I could not agree with him more. I even posted a comment on his blog page. His comments apply to many conferences. It is unfortunate that the hard sell ruins it for many of us who are into sharing content and not about hawking our services.

Often times, I hear from folks who do not know about us and they say, why should I attend your events when I will be sold too?

More from Terry Dean…and I welcome your comments too.

I remember a couple where the majority of presentations were simply sales pitches for products without delivering any content (even though it was constantly mentioned how great the content was).

In addition there are a couple of popular speaking courses that teach you step-by-step how to build an hour (or longer) “training session” with no more than a couple of minutes of real content. The rest being a covert sales pitch. How do I know that’s what they teach? I bartered for one and bought another when wanting to improve my speaking ability – only to find out I couldn’t use what they taught. <http://www.terrydean.org>

This weekend was different.

Mark Hendricks put on an excellent event which I spoke at yesterday in Orlando. There was a good group of speakers including experts like Willie Crawford, Doug Champigny, Elsom Elridge, Jr., Joey Smith, and others (please don’t anyone be offended for me not publishing a full list – everyone did a great job).

But Mark didn’t something a little different that helped create the tone of the event. He had each speaker do their presentation and then do a 20 minute workshop on a subject they discussed. During the conference, attendees wrote a press release, wrote a post for their blog, prepared goals in multiple areas of their life, scheduled their weekly plans, looked for potential JV partners, choose projects to outsource, and more.

They didn’t just sit and listen. They put what they learned into practice.

I’ve been at a few other workshops like this in the past (I remember speaking at 2 Joel Christopher did like this). Without fail, including this workshop element increases the value for everyone involved. It’s been true every time I’ve seen it used.

The workshop element with every presentation not only forces the audience to take action (and to see just how easy the actions really are), but it also forces the speakers to think in terms of providing a step-by-step system the attendees can follow.

I recommend attending workshops like this instead of just “seminars” because there is so much more value in this type of setup.
Another element I noticed is how the message stayed pretty consistent throughout the weekend.
Many of the speakers for example talked about how a WordPress blog (like this one) is the “center” of their business. Content is provided here. Products are sold out of the blog. Participation in social media is directed back to the blog. It’s your center of authority in your business.

Instead of promoting a dozen different sites (products and services you may offer), you focus on pulling people back to your blog site and getting them on your list. Then everything else flows out of here.

The other major core emphasis I could see was on quick and easy product development. Instead of struggling for months on products (like many people do in the beginning), get started quickly and test the market with quicker, easier products such as an interview with an expert. If that first product sells well, then expand out to larger kits and more complete elements…