Dave Lloyd at Adobe: Learn & Stay Nimble at Share13

Share13 has hit new heights with over 500 senior level executives and practitioners offering attendees an opportunity to hear from industry thought leaders and interact with highly accomplished marketers and brands. Last week I managed to catch up, alongside my colleague Nag Patta, with Dave Lloyd from Abobe.

About Dave Lloyd

Dave Lloyd is Senior Manager of Global Search Marketing at Adobe Systems where he leads a global team delivering Organic & Site Search strategies. The team’s charter is to deliver industry best practices, drive KPI-focused goals, integrate with all marketing & web disciplines, and alpha test Adobe Marketing Cloud products. In his prior role, he oversaw Cisco’s Global SEO Strategy and previously worked at Apple, Openwave, NetSuite, Palm, & Handspring. He is Google-certified, with 12 years in Digital & Search Marketing, and a Business degree from U.C. Davis.  

You were a speaker at Share last year. What made you come back?

Everything BrightEdge does is first-class and innovative and as a result they attract smart, sophisticated, and thoughtful marketers in a casual and intimate environment. Looking at the agenda, every session has the potential for valuable takeaways for any enterprise-level search marketer. Compared with last year, the emphasis is shifting toward the future of the Digital CMO, the role of Earned Media, and the growing emphasis on Social, Content, and Technical strategies. The high caliber of the presenters will help deliver that message.  

What was your favorite experience or session at Share12?

The keynotes last year gave me a clear view of the company’s vision and where the industry is going.  Any veteran of conferences also knows that a few shared experiences and nuggets of wisdom in the hallway can be invaluable – I had numerous experiences last year like this.  My two favorite moments last year were hearing the caliber of questions & responses asked during every session and then during lunch when a half dozen of us challenged each other on the latest innovations in search and which were worth prioritizing.  

What is your advice for new attendees at Share13?

Meet people and follow up - Bring 20 business cards and make it a point to get 20 back – and then find a way to develop a connection.  This could be through a LinkedIn connection, sending valuable articles, inviting them as an outsider to a team call, or sharing valuable contacts and insights. Ask questions - Take advantage of lunch and downtime between sessions to follow up with speakers and attendees on your specific use cases. Debate issues - Few things in enterprise web marketing are clean cut and often best strategies come through thinking through all viewpoints.  You’ll find a great opportunity to engage with attendees. Take action - Keep good notes, summarize relevant points for you, and integrate into your future plans.  Knowledge is truly only power when it’s acted upon.  

What sessions are you looking forward to this year?

Our team regularly looks to the future to find ways to share the Search Marketing message better with executives so I’m very interested in the The Digital CMO Wednesday panel and Search Engine Opportunity Friday panel. Given our data-driven focus & alignment to business goals, I’m expecting the Search Forecasting and Business Impact session to be useful.  And knowing the work & sophistication of my Adobe colleagues, I’m planning to attend the Metrics & Analytics, Bringing it All Together, and Aligning Content and SEO sessions.  

You have a session on global and mobile SEO. Can you share a preview of what you will be discussing?

I’ll be sharing a strategic framework to perform better against global & mobile challenges. You can read more detail on the Strategic Innovations and SEO post of the Adobe Digital Marketing blog. 

The premise is understanding why customers are coming to your site – what unique tasks are global and mobile users trying to accomplish? Once core markets are understood, it’s critical to define your team & company’s unique value to deliver to those markets. From there, it’s about maximizing opportunities through developing resources & capabilities plus strong stakeholder engagement. Lastly, how best to maintain competitive advantage – this could be through developing distributed teams, innovation in strategy and process, expanding team capability, and create synergy through better business partnerships.  Throughout the session I will share select case studies with specific global or mobile application.  

The focus on global and mobile SEO is driven by growing personalization of search results. How should marketers deal with this challenge?

There are many practical solutions.  Some include customer-driven Content Marketing to create relevant content, alignment with Social teams to enhance synergy and extend Authorship markup - testing & targeting on your domain to improve visitor personalization - and clearly sharing results to account for personalization.  Also important is how you continue to train people on practical tips and communicate context to key stakeholders interested in personalization.  Like with many issues in Search, it’s a question of what do you control vs. influence – and picking the right battles. In this case, though personalization is here to stay, I believe it’s best addressed long-term through identifying those levers where a search-driven solution has the most influence possible and then controlling for personalization & testing further on your corporate website.  

What has changed most since you started out as a search marketer?

I often say a great search marketer must be a strong business person first, a marketer second, and a search professional third.  This hasn’t changed and though common sense, it’s not always common practice. The biggest changes to me are: 1. The pace of change 2. The necessity of search marketers to strategically align & communicate regarding business unit and product team objectives.  Change is the only constant and as customer behavior changes, and therefore algorithms, so must the role of search marketers.   We must become more aligned with business strategies, more attuned to overall digital marketing levers, and better at reporting and storytelling in order to clearly convey our value.  Adapting to change becomes a question of leadership & business-savvy in order to partner well with key stakeholders to drive transformative SEO plans.  

In general, what is your approach to managing the dynamic nature of the search landscape?

Keep learning, stay nimble (use Agile), go first to build & influence key relationships, and practice ruthless prioritization always. Share13 is in San Francisco on August 22-23 Share13 is the industry’s premier digital marketing event focused on organic search and digital marketing. Share13 is packed with content from leading brands and hands on practitioners on what is working in their business today. Unlike many other user conferences and public tradeshows, share is exclusively for search and digital marketing practitioners at leading brands. Attendees learn best practices from leaders, share their own expertise and make connections that last a lifetime.

Information and registration: http://www.brightedge.com/share13 Follow updates on Twitter @brightedge #share13