8 Reasons You Should Join us at SearchLove London 2018

We’re closing in on SearchLove London - it’s on 15th and 16th October - in just a few short months time. We’ve been running a conference in our home city since 2009, and I’m as passionate as I’ve ever been about making our events stand out.

You can still get a ticket for under £800 - the classic all-access pass costs £779+VAT - and get access to the whole conference as well as after-show entertainment on both nights.

JOIN US FOR SEARCHLOVE LONDON 2018

Here’s why we think our show is special:

1. Quality

The combined outstanding and excellent ratings from a recent conference.

I obviously don’t generally get to see all the feedback other conferences get, but I’d bet ours is right upthere. At one of our recent events, our eight best speakers were all rated outstanding or excellent by over 9 out of 10 people in the audience. Even our twelfth-best speaker was rated outstanding or excellent by 4 out of 5 people in the audience. I’ve never seen another conference where the bottom quartile speaker ratings are still getting into the ~65% outstanding or excellent range.

Speaker quality and consistency is our top priority, and the most common complaint about conferences generally. With our conference being a single track show, we know everyone will see every speaker, so they all need to bring their A game, and they know it.

2. The speakers

We"ve invited some of the best speakers from Boston and San Diego to London 2018.

Speaking of the speakers(!) I’m so grateful to all the people who put such an incredible amount of work into preparing their talks - if you’ve never done it, you have no idea how much work and pressure it can be.

This year, we have:

• Exceptional speakers: we often invite back speakers who do an exceptional job at our other conferences. Running events on both sides of the Atlantic might bump up our travel costs, but it lets us see great speakers with our own eyes before inviting them to our big stage:

  • To come in the top 4 at our San Diego conference this year, a speaker needed to get over 90% of the audience rating them outstanding or excellent. At this London event, we’re bringing 3 of those top 4 speakers back to wow you, including one speaker who scored a perfect 100%! (*)

  • In Boston earlier this year, our top 3 scored 90+% outstanding or excellent.

• Returning favourites: 3 of the top 5 all-time best SearchLove speakers (looking at average scores from speakers who’ve appeared multiple times)

• Brand new speakers: 12 of our 17 speakers have never appeared at SearchLove London before including our 3 community speakers. We’re confident they’re going to will blow you away (see below for more on our prep process)

(*) the other top-4 speaker was Rand Fishkin (DistilledU members can see the videos here). It looks like we need to get him back over to London soon!

3. A great venue

The Brewery adds to the SearchLove London experience.

As a speaker, I’ve rarely come across a stage as good as the one at The Brewery. It’s a huge widescreen, with extra massive screens partway back so everyone can see my slides, the stage is huge, my face is projected far too big alongside the slides giving great trolling opportunities when I pull stupid faces, and the audio / visual setup is top-notch. I trust the A/V team to make me look and sound good, and I get to concentrate on my story.

As a delegate, you get a seat with a desk, power, notebook and pen. You get wifi that works, and you get top-notch food and great coffee. Join us for structured lunchtime work at our Topic Tables staffed by the Distilled team, or just hang out and catch up with friends new and old.

4. A taste of London

Enjoy your time in one of the most vibrant cities in the world.

We know that many of our delegates travel to attend, and so we’ve picked our venues for the conference and entertainment to help you make the most of your trip to one of the greatest cities on the planet.

The Brewery is in The City of London - the historic Square Mile - so you’ll get a taste of the traditional. The entertainment is conveniently nearby, and you’re within easy walking distance of the buzzing Old Street technology hub (with its great hipster coffee) as well as Clerkenwell with its spectacular restaurants and fancy bars. Even in the time I’ve lived and worked in London, I’ve seen a dramatic improvement in the food and drink scene - all great excuses to make the trip to an incredible city.

If you want to spend a bit of time visiting London either side of the conference, you can be anywhere in the centre of London within 20-30 minutes by public transport, whether you want to see the tourist sights or do some shopping. If you want to extend your trip to the rest of the UK, you’re close to the Kings Cross and Euston stations that connect you to almost everywhere north of London (and even to St Pancras for Paris and the rest of Europe).

JOIN US FOR SEARCHLOVE LONDON 2018

5. Access to experts, and the chance to meet friends old and new

We work hard to make networking with fellow attendees as enjoyable as possible.

We know that much of the value in attending a conference comes from meeting speakers and other delegates so we set up plenty of opportunities to do that:

• VIP ticket-holders join the speakers for an exclusive pre-show dinner.

• We have chosen to have a single-track event, with our main speakers getting a full-length 40-minute session (our community speakers are getting 20 minutes each) - this means that every other delegate has seen the same speakers you have, and so you’ll have plenty to chat about, and all our speakers will be very familiar to you and super-approachable

• Plenty of opportunities to mingle and meet people - including structured and unstructured lunchtime sessions, regular breaks, a fantastic party on the first night and industry meet-up on the second (which even non-delegates can attend so invite your other London friends)

6. Past delegates would urge you to come

You might have noticed that I’m a bit obsessed with feedback. As part of the conference feedback, we ask our delegates to tell us how likely they are to recommend our conference (out of 10). From this, we calculate a Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS ranges from -100 to +100, with anything over 50 being excellent. Last year’s London conference rated a 55 with almost half the delegates surveyed (44%) giving it the top possible score of 10.

7. Coming from overseas? It’s cheaper than ever

Without getting too political about it all, our currency has been fluctuating a bit over the last year, and so right now, our tickets come in at only:

• EUR 869

• USD 989

There has to be some silver lining, right? If you’re coming from the US or Europe, the exchange rate has never been more in your favour. Your money goes further!

8. We’re working hard to address all the criticisms we’ve seen of marketing conferences

It turns out good coffee is high on people"s conference priorities.

Last year, I put out a call on Twitter to ask for everyone’s common complaints about marketing conferences because I want to make sure that we are doing our very best to avoid them - whether they’re big complaints or small details:

• We take our code of conduct very seriously and work hard to make our events welcoming and inclusive for all - and I’ve heard good private feedback about our efforts:

  • We remind speakers about it during our prep calls

  • It’s emphasised during our MC’s intro

  • All our staff know what to do in the event of witnessing or receiving a report of a violation

• We"ve got sessions on hardcore link building and deeply technical topics - we’ve got plenty on content and social, but we haven’t forgotten our roots

• And a load of details:

  • The food is great - delegate comments:

    • “the general organisation and food etc. were top notch”

    • “really good food”

    • “great food”

    • “great venue and food”

  • The wifi works

    • “good wifi”

  • We have great coffee

    • “coffee was awesome”

  • Complaint: lanyards can be hard to read or flip over. Our lanyards have names printed on both sides - hopefully big enough to read easily

But of course, by far the most common issue people have is with speaker and talk quality. I talked a fair bit above about our speakers but we are by no means assuming that we’ve done all we need to do - we continue to run a speaker selection and preparation process that involves:

1. Detailed research, including watching previous footage, reviewing past decks etc

2. Discussion of topic ideas that the speaker has new and interesting ideas about

3. Content calls with me or a senior Distilled team member to set expectations, discuss the outline, and share information about the conference and audience

4. Where appropriate / for any speaker that wishes: review and feedback on actual talk outlines and draft decks

We also encourage first-time speakers to review footage of past top-rated sessions and speakers.

I asked a few of our speakers for their thoughts on our speaker prep process. They said:

Emily Grossman:

"The SearchLove team really sets speakers up for success. It all starts with initial planning brainstorms where we talk about the best topic-fit for SearchLove. Will, Lynsey, and the whole team are very open about what works and doesn"t work for their audience. As a speaker, this helps shape how I"ll approach a certain subject and allows me to really tailor both my topic and my deck to the SL crowd."

Greg Gifford:

Your prep process is awesome! Helpful without being intrusive or preachy

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) September 25, 2017

Sam Noble:

As a first time speaker at SearchLove this year all the info I have been given if incredible. The fact that you care so much about the...

— Samantha Noble (@SamJaneNoble) 26 September 2017

... topic and the content is different to other events. You know your audience and you help guide the speaker to deliver the best talk...

— Samantha Noble (@SamJaneNoble) 26 September 2017

What are you waiting for?

There"s still time to pick up your ticket, but time is running out. Click the link below and pick up your ticket today. Reply in the comments if there are any last-minute questions you"re burning to ask.

Join us for SearchLove London 2018

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