The Quality of Speakers at Marketing Industry Conferences is Shockingly Poor, Particularly in the SEO World

We’ve all arrived at a conference, ramped up and ready to learn, then felt deflated as speaker after speaker delivers no more than a glorified sales pitch. Then things get worse; ‘the big reveal’ is a tip from 2005, and speakers have been replaced by attendees with a year’s experience in their field.

That experience absolutely sucks. Yet tens of thousands of conference-goers are subjected to those feelings every year across our industry.

My opinion is that this stems largely from the fact that, much like much of the news media in SEO, online marketing and advertising, the content is aimed at the less-informed. Those who won’t pick up on the fact that so much that’s being shared is terrible, outdated nonsense. Those that will feel like they learnt something valuable, only to leave and wonder why it’s so hard to put anything into practice.

For that reason, a lot of this post will resonate with many of you with years of experience in the industry. Our reasons for going to conferences are very different to those ‘new learners’. We want to network, make connections, and occasionally learn something new. The fact that the content is terrible is less damaging to our experience. (Though it sure would be nice if it wasn’t terrible so often). However every piece of terrible content has an impact on someone, and hopefully I can convince most of you that we need to work hard to push back against weak conferences, and weak educational material for the good of our industry as a whole.

I was often shocked by the quality of the SEO news media, having come from a finance background where many magazines and conferences give exceptional insights and value to attendees and readers.

Warning Signs of a Dud Conference

Organizers With Little Expertise In Selecting Speakers

One that I’ve noted many times is that a particular community can put on a solid conference within their area of expertise but often fall massively short when choosing which guests to allow to speak.

Seeing just one or two suspicious topics being allowed or speakers with little experience sneaked in to either fill time, or in some cases outright sell to or misinform the attendees is a pretty big sign the whole thing could be a disaster.

What’s most sad is that these speakers don’t impact experienced marketing professionals. We simply skip them or use the occasion to make some new contacts. They sometimes send people out into the world misinformed, and lead to bad client work, which damages our reputation as an industry.

I was at Brighton SEO where one of the linkbuilding speakers, with less experience than some of my junior team (though creditably having started a successful business) trotted out tips from 10 years ago (egobait etc) as new advice. Poor vetting seems to happen even at well-regarded conferences so you should take extra care if you’re paying good money and there are some unknown elements on the speaker list. (Brighton SEO is exceptional value by the way — and mistakes like this are the exception, not the rule there).

Even if just ten out of five hundred attendees go out and sell fake SEO services to small businesses having been told that private blog networks (PBNs) are the new magic bullet in SEO, without disclosing the risks (because they don’t know them, they were told they were amazing at a conference they paid $1,500 for after all, and the organizers they trust did nothing to vet the contentious speaker, or even question them after the presentation), it damages all of us.

Rolling Out The Friends And Family Brigade

Some great conferences started out really tiny, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Maybe the main sponsors supplied most of the speakers and it was very much a group of friends and close business associates or even employees of the organizers speaking.

However, when that continues year-on-year without attracting new, innovative speakers, or genuine industry heavyweights it’s time to be a little suspicious.

Especially when all the testimonials are from within the same group. Or, even worse, few of them even put their name to it, and testimonials only come from the ‘new marketers’ part of the conference. We all have a tendency to overvalue things we already paid for, and newer people, having paid $1,500, flown to Vegas, and enjoyed a fairly upbeat couple of days are going to rate things unreasonably well when compared to the silently unimpressed experienced attendees.

A big warning sign that the ‘friends and family’ brigade has booked the conference is a lack of competent women speakers on the card. I doubt I’m alone in having sat through a day at a conference to find the only useful, insightful, and most importantly, actionable, advice has come from a female speaker. There really is no excuse for a competent, and well-organized conference for not seeking these professionals out, and booking them. A shout out here to Lexi Mills who is consistently exceptional every time she speaks.

Sold To Appeal Only To A Niche Audience

Bonus points here for spotting lots of hype like ‘takeovers’, ‘big reveals’ and ‘secrets’ that have ‘never before been revealed’.

Sure you’d expect a conference to focus mainly on the organizer’s product if the product is in the title and the attendees are all drawn from the userbase, or at least follower base of the product owner.

However I’d challenge you to compare a few presentations from a Django or Ruby conference in the more technical side of our industry, with some of the hype, nonsense, and motivational stories that make for a keynote in our industry.

It’s as if we have to be selling all the time, and forget that people have paid to be educated too. Some conferences are almost seen by their organizers as a ‘mugs list’ much like timeshare salesmen use. If you’re capable of being separated from $1,500 of your cash for a 3 day sales pitch, you’re sure to be more likely to spend $20,000 on the expert mastermind that follows if they flog it hard enough.

Fails To Attract Notable Outside Speakers From Connected Niches

A great sign is when somewhere like Brighton SEO attracts Rory Sutherland, of Ogilvy to speak. He’s notable throughout sales, marketing and advertising, and is a genuine big hitter. Seeing him at an SEO conference is a great sign that they put a lot of thought into adding value and broadening the knowledge and experience of attendees (notwithstanding the ‘mistake’ I noted earlier).

Motivation Over Substance

There’s no doubt that a small place in every conference must exist for something ‘motivational’. Three days of dry, tough, actionable tips would wear all but the most dedicated learners down.

However, when motivational stories form the bulk of a conference, it often leads to fantastic initial reviews, but adds no value to attendees beyond that. They may as well have watched a random motivational speaker.

I’ve left the hall after a well-known SEO speaker got the room pretty fired up about a ‘better future’ and ‘doing things right’ or something along those lines feeling pretty positive. Yet a mere day or two later, reflecting on the conference, it was clearly one of the weakest, and least useful presentations by a long way. Not a problem by itself — everyone enjoyed it, and I did too at the time, and it broke the day up nicely with some ‘high level’ thoughts instead of tactical advice — but a whole day of that would be tiresome.

Push For Change — Boost Our Industry’s Reputation

The only way we can really improve our industry, and our collective reputations, which are damaged by every weak speaker, every dozen ill-informed practitioners we allow to be sent out into the world is to push back.

Make sure people know not to attend the ‘bad conferences’ and participate in feedback and, even better, take time to meet and network with newcomers to the industry to help them find the best resources.

Play the long game, and do what’s right, not what will make you money today (networking with similarly disillusioned attendees at the bar), and you’ve done your small part in helping people understand why parts of the conference could have been damaging to them, and set their career off on a more professional path.

You’ll meet them again one day, at a better conference or event, or even see them speak and be glad that you did the right thing.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments — what are some of the best and worst conferences you’ve been to? I might see you at one of the best if you convince me to head along!