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What to look forward to at Benchmark 2018

Jul 6th, 2018

Benchmark – the premium conference for in-house search marketers in the north of England – is returning for its fourth year on the 5th September, we’re giving you a few things to look forward to at the conference

After months of working on the speaker line-up, Benchmark’s quota of the best and brightest speakers in search is now complete, and the delegate list is filling up quickly for what promises to be the best event yet at our new venue: The Manchester Hilton!

While we sort out the loot that will make up the delegate packs, we thought we’d do some name dropping to let you know what you can look forward to.

Sabrina Garufi – Google

Last year, she was able to give Benchmark attendees an advanced look at Google’s new attribution options, letting our attendees gain a six month advantage in preparation over their competition. While we can’t reveal the content of the talk just yet, we know that Sabrina has her finger on the pulse of all things PPC, so we can guarantee an informative talk from our favourite Googler.

Sabrina is currently an Agency Development Manager at Google, helping UK agencies on all aspects of their digital activity, with a particular emphasis on growth. Prior to working with agencies, Sabrina was a Consultant for the specialised Global Expansions Team, helping Google’s largest advertisers craft and execute their international expansion strategies.

With a background in Finance, Sabrina began her career in banking, working for five years as a Corporate Cash Manager. A native of Montreal, she completed her MBA in Berlin before moving to Dublin to join Google.

Ellie England – Bing

Making her first appearance on the Benchmark stage, Ellie England will represent Bing at this year’s conference. With Bing’s paid search offering improving by leaps and bounds over the last 12 months, it will be incredibly interesting to see what insights she can deliver in to what is happening and about to happen with Bing Ads.

Passionate about search, women in technology and making a lasting impact, Ellie began her career in sales working in an inner-city secondary school ‘selling’ the importance of modern languages to disaffected teenagers. She got into the world of search working for Google for 6 years, before eventually relocating to Manchester and joining Microsoft. As a Sales Director for Bing Ads, Ellie has been spearheading the continued investment in the North of the UK and leads a growing team of search account managers.

James Rowland – Thomson Reuter

Search Manager, Financial & Risk at multinational mass media and information firm Thomson Reuters, James’ extensive experience should make him one of the most popular speakers at the conference – with knowledge that bridges the many subsets of search, both paid and organic.

James is the Search Manager for the Financial & Risk division of Thomson Reuters. As part of the Digital Marketing team, he drives the Global strategies for SEO, PPC, Programmatic and Native advertising. With over 7 years’ industry experience across both agency and client side roles he has a big interest in the power of content marketing to drive ROI. James started his career focusing on SEO and expanded into paid channels as the years progressed.

Colin Woon – William Hill

Returning to Benchmark after a few years away, during which he has become the Global Head of SEO for bookmaking giants William Hill. Colin has more than a decade of search knowledge and his engaging talks have seen him take the stage at Brighton SEO, the Czech Marketing Festival, KP Morgan in Rome and many more.

His position at William Hill, amongst many other things, sees him take technical SEO ownership across multiple e-commerce and news publishing platforms managed through audit, discovery and prioritisation planning. He also led the 11 individual migration projects for the brand, including multilingual e-commerce sites and editorial sites across 10 different platforms.

Shyam Dattani – Searchmetrics

First gracing the Benchmark stage when he was but a humble Digital Strategy Specialist, Shyam returns the Searchmetrics Director for the UK and France. With a tremendous level of search expertise under his belt and speaking on behalf of one of the world’s most highly respected search marketing tools, Shyam is a speaker guaranteed to deliver impressive insight for gathered delegates.

Shyam is a marketer that places data at the heart of everything I do. He specialises in top to bottom Corporate Digital Strategy with a flair for SEO. He’s a passionate, confident, public speaker and all around coffee fiend – so catch him at the free refreshment stand between talks!

For more information on previous Benchmark Search Conferences, you can check out the last three years here, after which you can apply for your ticket here.