Q&A with Bailey Beeken, Managing Director, Senior Care Marketing & Sales Summit (SMASH)
How did the Senior Care Marketing & Sales Summit (SMASH) get started?
The original idea came to me about a decade ago when I was a conference producer in Senior Care. I had many of the same responsibilities in sales and marketing as those executives that now participate in SMASH. I began to see how the really fast moving changes in the digital and sales technology world were going to transform our industry. In looking at Senior Care and Housing through the conferences I was doing for Provider organization CEO’s at the time, and their high-interest in the few presentations that centered in sales and marketing, I felt as interested as they were. It was also apparent that this information might not be getting back to their sales and marketing executives in the c-suite. Thus, the idea of SMASH was born. I brought in a tremendous team, and we launched and ran SMASH in 2014. Since then, the conference has really taken on a life of its own as sales and marketing continue to shift and pivot in both tactical and strategic ways. Consumer thinking has evolved as well. The changes wrought by the pandemic continue to unfold in real time, and they have to be accounted for us as well
What are your thoughts regarding the evolution of Search Engine Marketing?
The split between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has become much, much clearer since 2014. While originally both included organic search, SEM, is now primarily focused on Paid Search Advertising. As everyone in the SMASH Community knows, consumers are now searching for answers, products, and services almost exclusively online. With this in mind, performing SEM (PPC) advertising, always in line with through the customer’s journey, becomes paramount. It’s a moving target and most often, requires specific expertise in how the complicated algorithms that serve up ads at the right time work, and keep up to on the critical information in regard to consumer privacy. Knowing what moves the digital needle and how that will change makes a huge difference, impacting the bottom line, as well as aligning budgets with ROI.
Can you share any closing thoughts?
There are all kinds of different and important moving parts of SEM that marketers need to think about when it comes to effective SEM, including A/B testing, optimizing landing pages and the end of third party cookies. All of these shifts are having major impacts and challenges, as well as presenting us with new solutions.
SEO has something of a reputation for being challenging to track. You can use keyword ranking positions and organic traffic metrics to demonstrate the value of an SEO strategy, but applying statistical SEO split testing is a really effective way to compare increased traffic on specific pages with increased revenue coming from specific URLs.
Many of these subjects will be covered in depth at SMASH, and companies like Canopy will be available to provide solutions and have the ability to talk through the changes and future of SEM.
SMASH – The Senior Care Marketing & Sales Summit, taking place Oct 18 – 20, at the Green Valley resort in Las Vegas offers 50+ high level sessions mixed with peer-to-peer networking, you just can’t find anywhere else. Register here, with a special Canopy Discount: AUG500 and save $500 off the $1595 Full Conference Pass pricing. https://www.seniorcaremarketingsummit.com/registration-2.html
