The ICMA Office
was set up on the very rainy Tuesday, folders collated, badges prepared,
presentations photo-copied, speaker gifts wrapped and last-minute registration
changes handled with the help of Zsuzsanna Biacsko and
Melinda Boda from Inform Media as well as Jean-Paul Gaiser, our Audio Visual Guru and Bart-Jan Klomp Bueters, an ever so helpful husband later on in the week.
WEDNESDAY
Luckily the weather made a change for the better, which was a great
way to kick off the Welcome Reception. Rob Paterson, Group Managing Director of Friday Ad and Chairperson of ICMA welcomed
over 110 delegates from 30 different countries, introducing our eight new
members, first time attendees and thanking the exhibitors and sponsors for
their attendance (ISV, Joshua, Bluerank, Sensi Soft, X-Media, Fiare Oy, ATG and Matchwork).
There was a true buzz in the air as the mingling was in full swing!
THURSDAY
Rob formally
opened the conference sessions, first with a tribute to celebrate the life of
the late Craig McMullin, former Executive Director of the AFCP and a
long-standing partner with ICMA and on a brighter note to follow up with another
round of applause for proud new papa Ricardo Amaro
who’s son Vicente was born 4
days earlier (thank goodness his wife was willing to let him join us!)
Congratulations again Ricardo! Rob then opened with “How do we monetize
classifieds?” and highlighted that innovation and niche are a few keys to
monetization – Dogster, need we say more?
The Keynote
Address was given by Tomasz Józefacki, President OPA Europe and Vice President and Head of Internet Division for Agora in Poland. Tomasz touched on
what some of the greatest challenges are for online publishers - aggregators, free content, social sites and the
users advertising blindness and followed up with some recommendations on how to
overcome them. He also touched on how
Google is both and opportunity and a threat for classifieds.
After the
coffee-break, we moved into the Monetizing Model session in which Sebastian
Ross Managing Director for Strategy and International Business Development, Grupo Intercom, Spain who gave us an overview of a
number of new varieties of business models that online businesses can support.
The top four take-always being – 1. patience 2. go for the revenue that still
allows growth 3. micro-segment the users and 4. don’t over deliver; be sure to
distribute attention intelligently. Making Search Pay was the next session on
deck which looked at classified search and how to make money. Loren Dalton, President of PenySaverUSA.com, USA
gave an excellent recount of their experience with AdSence Optimization giving
some very useful and practical optimization tips and also expanding into SEM. Loren
stated that surprisingly their “no results” page had the highest CTR and eCTM. Next
up we welcomed Bill Fisher, Co-Founder of Work Digital Ltd/TwitterJobSearch.com
in the UK. Bill informed us that the social networks
will continue to play a bigger role in classifieds also mentioning that Google
doesn’t give a positive classified search experience for classified listings. Lastly, Katrina Gosek the Product Marketing
Manager from Endeca based in the USA highlighted the SEO
fundamentals, their forte being in sitemaps, url’s and landing pages. She
informed us that approximately 86% of users click only on the top three search
results. Excellent questions were asked and there was
much conversation about these presentations as delegates headed to lunch.
SHARING
BEST PRACTICE
The “Sharing
Best Practice” sessions, were once again extended to the full afternoon
sessions. In the Business Leaders session we had a record amount of data
submitted from 39 companies and a total of 55 participants – thanks very much
to Tomasz Odrobinski of Mascus as well as the ICMA committee members - Rob,
Josef, Pekka, Koen and Martha for facilitating each group’s discussions. The
overall score of nearly 93% satisfaction demonstrates how valuable participants
continue to find this session. We plan
to continue the SBP sessions with new and improved metrics for the Berlin GM. Please
send any suggestions to shay@icmaonline.org.
The sales managers
were not to be left out, an ever growing group, led by Rickard Peterson of
Mascus and Benny Kerkhofs of Koopjeskrant (a huge thanks to you both!). They dove into a series of sales-oriented
metrics with their respective groups have already offered up some excellent
suggestions for the Berlin SBP Sales session.
The evening thankfully stayed dry and we enjoyed a nice
walk through the main shopping street the Váci Utca, fortunately not losing
anyone to the great shopping! At
Karpatia we enjoyed a wonderful Hungarian feast starting off with the
traditional Goulash, with the main course of pork medallions served on pumpkin
seed-potato fritter and finished of with the classic warm Hungarian sour cherry
and apple strudels, all the while enjoying the festive Gypsy music, in which
all my tablemates will be able to enjoy time and time again after purchasing
the CD!
To ensure
everyone was truly awake and energized –Loren Dalton’s “Saver Time” video was
played to jump start the Friday session. A great kick off to The Great Classifieds
Strategy Debate where Rob Paterson,
Group Managing Director of Friday Ad,
UK started us
out by listing the top 10 reasons to go niche.
Felix Erken, Managing
Director of Junk Mail, South
Africa then spoke on the benefits of
sticking with the single monster property.
Jack Humphreville, Director of Acquisitions, Target Media Partners, USA
stepped up to moderate this heated debate in which some great questions were
thrown at the opposing sides and by a show of hands niche took it for round
1.
Rob Hage Publisher of Farm Country Trader in the USA, was the lead panelist for the Dealing with the Dealers
session. Rob explained in detail the
AutoConx systems used for their ad management, track ability and reporting
tools. Next in line was Fredrik
Larsson, Managing Director of Mascus.com in Finland, who spoke on the
characteristics of Mascus dealers today and the world wide presence and premium media they
will need to continue future monetization. The final panelist was Paul Cruise Operations
Director from Boatshop24 based in the UK who focused on multiple their
experience of selling multiple listings – hitting on the media owners, the
customers, the sales person and the solution.
Another excellent session the attendees found to be very relevant. Community-building and social networks was
lead off by Frank Schultheiss, CEO of Deine Tierwelt and Director Internet for
der heisse draht in Germany.
The main message Frank hit on is that the communities are already out there so
the time is now to start engaging your customers! Next up was Suchi Mukherjee
whose energy and enthusiasm captivated the audience. Suchi stated that the global classifieds
market is estimated to be a $100 billon dollar industry and to tap into that
you need to build trust and go after what the users want. A truly cracking session with the questions
flowing, once again, into the lunch break.
WORKSHOPS
The afternoon
was taken up with three rotating round-table workshops on SEO (Advanced), Video
and Online Sales, of which delegates could attend two of the three.
SEO (Advanced)
was led by Ricardo Amaro, Internet
Director from Ocasião Classificados in Portugal who stressed that content
is key but the link is king. This
session was jam packed and one of the top rated sessions of the conference (we
hear you loud and clear J) there will be more to
come on SEO in Berlin.
In the meantime, feel free to check out Ricardo’s blog on SEO Development and
Internet Strategies. David Ingram, CEO
and co-founder of Brownbook.net in the UK led the Video workshop where he
identified and listed the issues and aspects of video and the discussion that
followed touched on who is making money from it and how. The third workshop on Online
Sales was led by Loredana Ghejan, Sales Manager from Inform Media in Romania
who got the delegates talking pricing, the pros and cons of self-service vs.
sold revenues, segmentation and the productivity of the sales force backed up
by a few case studies.
Friday night
was left free for delegates to make their own plans. Martha took the lead for a big group of us
who headed to DIO – which offered some inventive twists on the classic
Hungarian cuisine (many thanks again!).
And upon meeting back up at the Intercontinental bar (where else?!) it
seems that everyone else also enjoyed the local
flavours of
Budapest.
SATURDAY
The final day
of the General Meeting kicked off with Sahin Tulga chairing the newly named
Business Leaders’ Forum or BLF in short and Clara Llamas chaired the Business
Operations Forum or BOF respectively.
BLF
Sahin had
prepared a comprehensive programme (for those who haven’t
chaired a BLF, a great deal of work goes into it before the day itself.) Sahin began by covering the balanced scorecard which was an interactive analysis of finance,
customers, suppliers/alliances and operations.
He discussed how to approach a business problem by bringing best
practices from other industries, some proprietary methodologies. A very
theoretical beginning of the BLF sessions.
The second
session moved into the "soft" factors
which touched on the critical issues of employee and customer satisfaction,
online alliances and online marketing.
This session was driven by the members’ discussion hitting on the competitors
such as Gumtree whose presentation the day before was very well received.
The third and final session of the day saw the return
of the red and green hat’s to drive the debate – in which at one point, Pekka donned
the only red hat in a sea of green. Needless
to say, some very lively discussions took place. The comprehensive presentation by Sahin offered
some excellent take-aways for all the attendees of the BLF.
Felix Erken, Managing Director of Junk Mail was proposed by
Rob Paterson as chair for the ICMA
Business Leaders’ Forum at the Berlin General Meeting, and accepted the
nomination.
BOF
The Business Operations
Forum chaired by Clara Llamas, which focused on the three main aspects which
underpin our businesses: sales/marketing, technology and product
development. Five groups were given a
case study in which they were to start a transactional online platform
following 4 key operative areas: 1. product/platform development 2. marketing
3. sales and 4. customer service, time being the biggest constraint – as it was
tough to even get BOF attendees to break for lunch! The final session entailed
each group presenting their new business and with the vote for the most
innovative and feasible business ending in a tie between group 2 and group 3,
respectively. A very successful first ever BOF – thank you Clara!
BUSINESS MEETING
The Business
Meeting at the end of the afternoon was chaired by Rob discussing the
re-structuring of the Association and the changes that had been made over the
summer. All agreed the changing of the
revenue model has already shown a dramatic increase in membership and
congratulated the new committee on making the tough choices needed to ensure
the survival of ICMA. Rob highlighted the goal to market and increase
membership in 2010, which in turn adds a greater value to the membership. Also
planned for 2010 are a series of webinars and the continuation of the two General Meetings a
year. The 2010 budget was voted on and
passed as well as the motion to continue with BVVA as the accountants for ICMA
through 2010. Thank you to
those who participated in this meeting and we continue to welcome any feedback
and suggestions you have to improve upon the Association, please send to
shay@icmaonline.org.