LeadsCon 2011 Review from HasOffers

HasOffers attended our first LeadsCon in Las Vegas last week, and let me say, this is a great conference.  With only a couple thousand attendees attending the show for education, you are only getting people that are ready to do business.  We sponsored the networking lounge and had a booth for a much lower cost than most other shows (thanks to Michelle Troop running things smoothly), and I can probably say we shook hands with more new customers than any other conference.  Myself and the rest of the HasOffers team highly recommend you attend the next LeadsCon.  You’re silly if you don’t.

Exhibit Hall

With about 125 exhibitors at LeadsCon, there were plenty of companies to check out without getting bored.  There were so many valuable conversations going on at our booth and in the exhibit hall.  Some folks we chatted with that stood out were SponsorPay, Credit.com, Reboot Media, LinkShare, InsideSales.com, OfferMobi, Direct ROI, and SpinSix.com.

The majority of the booths were 10×10 spaces providing room in the the hall for more exhibitors.  #FreeHint – However, I couldn’t help but notice how many companies chose to sit behind a table in their booths.  Really? I’m a potential customer walking by and you’re leaning back about to fall asleep?  We all know that feet start to hurt pretty quick on the exhibit floor, but you should at least pretend to be excited about your company.

Here are a few of the booths that jumped out to us:

XL Marketing – These guys take the cake for swag.  They had a tower that you could plug your phone in for charging.  What a great way to get people to hang out for a while and get some juice.  They also had Dentyne Ice style gum with branding.  So much better than those mints you usually find and everyone is thinking about their breath on the expo floor.  Solid work from this multi-channel direct response marketing company.

Rimm-Kaufman Group (RKG) – This search marketing agency has some really intelligent stuff going on.  They’re tackling attribution with some leading scientists and professors and working to provide robust stats across channel to advertisers.  Their booth was sharp, with great lighting, and excellent print materials.

Underground Elephant – These guys win the award for elegance.  With a clean white background, the Underground Elephant logo was centered as a powerful icon (definitely that less is more). Friendly people with excellent taste.  Great job folks.

Speakers

LeadPoint did an excellent job wrapping up many of the concepts discussed in the sessions and on panels at LeadsCon on their blog.  Make sure you give it a read.  Here are a few of our thoughts about some sessions we picked up.

Keynote: Brian Wansick

It seems to be the consensus that the keynote was not very strong.  This professor from Cornell certainly had some interesting thoughts on the role of perception, but the level of engagement and collection of data didn’t seem to impress the crowd.  I would suggest that the keynote speaker should be someone in the commercial world unless they have something “breakthrough” to reveal.

Panel: People in Play

Moderated by Jeff Solomon of Leads360, this panel focused on the human elements that impact the conversion process.  It is all about optimizing the process around those human factors.  Paul Frantz, Director of Mortgage Comparison Ads at Google said that he has mortgage leads converting to funding at a rate of 20% because of their attention to these user habits.

Panel: Getting Social and Mobile

This group of panelist had some really hopeful things to say about the future of Mobile and Social.  It’s great to see people getting really excited about this because HasOffers is certainly seeing growth in these arenas.

Jesse Pujji from Ampush Media certainly stood out by pointng out some powerful ways companies have utilized Facebook while Dan Sommer of Caridan Marketing Labs, Inc. made a bold statement by saying that Facebook social commerce (their version of local deals) will give Groupon a run for its money.

The Mirage

I have to say that having the conference at the Mirage was really great.  I know that the Wynn is quite a bit shinier, but the Mirage has plenty of space, some really great restaurants for holding meetings, and the penthouse suites are really quite nice.  Plus, it’s extremely affordable and just one more reason the ROI on this conference is so great.

Partying at LeadsCon

We’re used to the massive parties of Affiliate Summit and Ad:Tech, but there was something about the after hours time at LeadsCon that was extremely productive.  Because there weren’t a bunch of competing parties, most people went to the same clubs on the open nights, and on the last night, the turn out for the official party at Tryst was amazing.  It wasn’t overcrowded, but it was teaming with people that were excited about doing business.  After a couple hours of great networking, we headed out to Surrender and surprisingly met up with some really amazing industry people.  Overall, the party time at LeadsCon was both a blast and extremely productive.

LeadsCon 2011 Twitter List

We put together a LeadsCon2011 Twitter List which includes all the sponsors and exhibitors we could find.  It also includes a few attendees.  Be sure to follow this list to get access to all these folks and feel free to tweet @HasOffers if you want us to add you to the list.

Photos by Tim Ash, thanks Tim.