My interview with Matt McGowan, VP of Marketing - Incisive Media

I had the opportunity and privilege to interview Matt McGowan of Incisive media. Here is the Q&A dialogue that I had with him. He is a very accomplished person and I hope you enjoy the answers to the questions I asked him:

1. You have an impressive set of credentials from working at companies such as Charles Schwab, Pearson Plc and PropertyRoom.com in a variety of senior level roles. To what do you owe your level of success to?

I gave a quick run down on my career to Lee Odden of TopRankBlog.com in February and elaborated a bit more to Stephen DiMarco of Compete.com in March, neither asked however, what it was I owe my success to, interesting question though not an easy one.

 

1. I am told often that I “get it” – I understand how to leverage the opportunities that the internet presents.
2. I am approachable and I treat people the way I would like to be treated – I am surrounded by internet/digital marketers and the majority of my clients run successful businesses… I listen to them and ask them for advice. You could say I have a multi-billion dollar support network at my      finger tips.
3. My mom and dad – gotta give love where love is due, I am what I am primarily because they decided to invest in me.
   

2. What is your role at Incisive Media and why is it important to the overall strategy of the firm?

I run global marketing and business development for a few of Incisive Media’s major digital properties, specifically ClickZ, Search Engine Watch and the conference and expo series Search Engine Strategies (SES).

Incisive has made a massive investment digitizing its core businesses both through organic development and the acquisition of new businesses; in part to harness their technologies and IT infrastructure and in part to realize their revenues and profits.  Employees and executives with my understanding and experience help facilitate this process and guarantee synergies are found in the merging of these properties.

The knowledge base that is Search Engine Strategies, including the Toronto, Hamburg and San Jose events coming this summer 2008, facilitates many of the discussions around Search and Digital.

3. What type of industries do Incisive Media's clients come from? Is their a specific niche that your firm is attracting?

Incisive Media is one of the worlds, if not the, fastest growing B2B information provider disseminating award winning, original content across a range industries including, but not limited to, Alternative Assets, Business and Consumer Technology, Finance, Investments, Insurance, Legal, Real Estate, Photography and last but not least Interactive or Digital Marketing (that’s primarily where I and our SES, ClickZ.com and SearchEngineWatch.com brands come into play).

4. Have you attended a SES event before? What excites you about these types of events and what are you looking to specifically to get out of it?

I have attended more SES events than I can count, that said each one is so very different that I never get board. Because we have the opportunity to put events on monthly in many corners of the globe I find that each one presents me (and the other attendees) with new and cutting edge information – many times information that I can not find anywhere else as it sits within the minds of our many expert speakers and is only released to the public during their original presentations.

 
Why do I get excited about attending SES conference and expos? Well because, Search Engine Strategies (SES) is the leading global conference & expo series that educates delegates on search engine marketing (SEM), including optimization (SEO) and advertising strategies, tactics and best practices. SES Search Marketing Events provide instruction from the industry's top Search experts, including representatives of the Search Engines themselves. Thousands upon thousands of companies sent representatives to a SES event last year, being there to meet and network with these stars is an added bonus.

5. Are there some hot new trends that you and your firm have been noticing? Do you think this will be a hot topic at SES?

 At SES Toronto, which takes place 16-18 June 2008 in  Toronto,Canada, there are a load of new sessions covering some very hot topics. One I am particularly interested in is Twitter: Ultimate Time Waster, of Great Tool?

 

6. What types of wisdom would you offer to people thinking of attending but don't know if it's the right event for them?

Search Engine Watch published a nice piece on why executive decision makers, marketers, web developers and alike should attend SES Toronto, check it out here (same logic applies to SES events in other parts of the world).

In short, the internet is the present and the future. As we as a society move more and more online, business will one, need representation on the web and two, need to know how to get their business found on the web by customers. 95% of all online transactions start at the Search Engines with customers searching for a product, service, information… do the math, it adds up quite nicely!

Thanks alot Matt. I appreciate you taking the time to answer the questions, and I look forward to meeting you in person in the near future!

 

Comments

[Toronto real estate agent]

Very nice q&a dialogue Chris. I really enjoyed it. Matt McGowan is definitely very interesting person as a well as the whole company he is working for. Working as a Toronto real estate agent I am trying to implement some new strategies so I am collecting all possible information. It looks that Incesive media is becoming more and more active on the field of real estate.