That’s right, folks — no longer will South Dakota businesses be excluded from the type of primo professional development offered by Google’s “Seminars for Success.” (In fact, if you live in South Dakota, you’ve probably never even heard of Seminars for Success, because the closest they ever have them is Denver for the West River folks and Minneapolis for the East River folks.
Google Training for South Dakota Businesses? Check.
You probably didn’t know it, but one of the best Google-advertising resources around has been right here in your backyard for several years now. Born in Phoenix in 2001, StraightForward Media relocated to Rapid City in 2006. As one of the first pure search-advertising agencies in the country, we’ve been managing Google campaigns for clients worldwide since the inception of the Google Adwords program in 2002. We know Google better than anyone in this, or any adjoining state — period.
And we’re ready to take our knowledge on the road. Beginning in September 2009, we’ll begin showing businesses in our home state how to leverage Google advertising to find more customers and increase their profits. Like country stars Big & Rich, we are comin’ to your town (we will not, however, be saving horses or ridin’ cowboys).
The journey begins at the Hampton Inn here in Rapid City, at the American Advertising Federation luncheon on September 22 at 11:30. It’s a Google Adwords seminar called “Google: Friend or Foe,” and it’s an informative survey of the irons Google has in its fire, and how the Big G can be both a friend and a threat to your business (regardless of what type of business you operate).
After that, we roll up our sleeves and get going. In November, we’ve got “Google Advertising for Grasshoppers,” our beginner/intermediate course. In January, we follow up with “Google Advertising for Ninjas,” a more advanced course. In March, we finish the Rapid City season with “How I Made $572,000 With Google Adsense” — our personal (and pretty inspirational, if you don’t mind a little horn-tooting) story of making life-changing money with Google’s advertising program for publishers.
Each seminar will be at night, and for at least two hours (though if any students want to go longer, then I’ll go longer — if you’re gonna pay $30 to hear me talk, you deserve to get your money’s worth). Dates are forthcoming.
For the record, and mostly for our benevolent overlords at Google corporate, I’ll invoke Barack Obama and say, “let me be clear:” I am indeed a certified Adwords Professional and our company is a certified agency; however, I am not a Google-sanctioned Seminar Leader. I’d like to become one, and I can give you my personal assurance that I know as much or more about Adwords as those who are Seminar Leaders; however, Google isn’t accepting any new applications for Seminar Leader spots. I’m not sure why, but I can speculate — the Seminars for Success thing seems to be on the back burner for Google. It’s not well-publicized at all, even in the places where they have them. In any case, Google is aware and supportive of our efforts to create our own miniaturized version of the seminars, and we’re excited to get them off the ground.
Our plans are to hit the road in the fall, once we’ve drummed up enough interest to host a seminar in any of a number of towns across South Dakota . We’re looking at Brookings and Aberdeen right now, and will begin contacting businesses in those cities about interest and availability very soon. However, if you’re somewhere else in South Dakota and want our traveling Google circus to drop stakes in your town, just contact us, and we’ll be in touch.
Yours in Success,
Josh Barsch
CEO, StraightForward Media
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