Most digital marketing keynotes go one of two ways: a vendor showcasing their platform, or a futurist talking about trends so broad they apply to nothing specific. I try to do something different — a practitioner talk that treats the audience like intelligent adults who want to understand what is actually happening and what to do about it. No slide with a hockey-stick graph and no pitch at the end for a tool I happen to sell.

Who This Keynote Is For

The digital marketing keynote format works best for mixed business audiences: a room where some people run marketing departments, some are business owners who do their own marketing, and some are executives who need to make budget decisions about digital channels. The talk does not assume deep technical knowledge, but it does assume that people are serious about their business outcomes and can handle real information.

If your conference is marketing-heavy with an experienced practitioner audience, a more technical session might be a better fit. But for general business conferences, association meetings, or company-wide events where marketing is one of several agenda items, this keynote is designed to land across a wide range of backgrounds. I have delivered versions of it to construction association meetings, healthcare administrator conferences, and franchise owner summits — audiences with almost nothing in common except that all of them touch marketing decisions without living in marketing full time.

What the Keynote Covers

Every keynote I write is original — I do not travel with a single deck that I swap the title slide on. But the themes I return to, because they are genuinely important right now:

The shift in how people find businesses online. Search behavior has changed faster in the last two years than in the previous ten. AI-powered answer engines are answering questions without sending traffic to websites. Social search is growing. Zero-click results are the norm for many query types. What does this mean for a business that has been investing in SEO and content? I walk through the actual mechanics, not the hype.

What still works and why. Amidst a lot of noise about what is changing, the fundamentals of building online authority are more durable than the panic suggests. Content that genuinely answers questions. Technical infrastructure that makes content accessible to crawlers and AI systems. Schema markup that communicates clearly to machines what your business does and who it serves. These matter more now, not less.

How to allocate attention and budget. For most business audiences, the practical question is: where should I put my limited time and money? I give a framework for thinking about this honestly, including what to stop doing, what to double down on, and what to monitor without overinvesting.

A plain-spoken assessment of AI in marketing. Everyone is talking about AI. Very few people are talking about it usefully. I give an honest take on where AI tools are genuinely useful in marketing workflows, where they create real risks, and what the current state of AI in search means for visibility.

How the Talk Actually Plays in the Room

I get asked ahead of time what the ‘energy level’ of the talk is. It is not a hype keynote — there is no countdown clock, no chanting, no fake urgency. What tends to land instead is specificity: naming an actual algorithm change, showing an actual before-and-after schema example, walking through an actual client decision and why it worked or did not. Business audiences who sit through a lot of generic content tell me afterward that the specificity is what stuck with them, more than any single big idea in the talk.

My Background as a Practitioner

I have been doing digital marketing professionally for over 14 years. Before that, I served in the US Navy. I run Salterra Digital Services, a full-service digital agency based in Tempe. I teach advanced SEO through SEO University in live six-week cohorts. I co-host the SEOST conference in Chandler, AZ, which brings together SEO practitioners from around the country.

What that background gives me on stage is credibility from doing the work, not from talking about it. When I say something about how Google handles structured data, it is because I have built and tested schema systems on real client sites. When I say something about content strategy, it is because I have watched content strategies succeed and fail across a range of industries. And when I talk about AI search, it is because I am running that experiment on client sites every week, not reading about it secondhand.

Customizing for Your Audience

Before any keynote, I ask for context on the audience: industry mix, size of company represented, how sophisticated their existing marketing is, and what problem the conference organizer is hoping the talk solves. A room of construction business owners needs different examples than a room of in-house marketing directors at mid-size companies, even though the underlying principles are the same. I build examples specific to the room rather than relying on generic case studies that could apply to anyone.

That prep call usually surfaces something useful the organizer did not think to mention upfront — a recent industry disruption everyone in the room is already talking about, a competitor that just had a public misstep worth referencing, or a shared frustration the audience carries into every conference they attend. Working that context into the talk is a small thing, but it is the difference between a keynote that feels tailored and one that feels like it could have been given anywhere.

Virtual and Hybrid Sessions

Not every engagement is in person. I have delivered this keynote as a live virtual session for conferences with a distributed membership base, and as a hybrid format with an in-room audience plus a remote stream. Virtual delivery changes the pacing — shorter segments, more deliberate pauses for chat questions, and slides that carry a bit more of the information since body language and stage presence read differently through a screen. If your event is virtual or hybrid, I adjust the format accordingly rather than delivering an in-person talk unchanged through a webcam.

Keynote Format and Logistics

A standard keynote runs 40 to 60 minutes, with optional Q&A. I can go shorter for a tight conference schedule. I use slides, but I am not reading from them — they support the talk, they do not replace it. I can provide a talk abstract, a bio, and a headshot well in advance of your promotional deadline.

For conferences that want a deeper dive beyond the keynote, I also offer half-day workshop sessions. The digital marketing workshop format gives attendees hands-on work rather than just a listen. The small business marketing speaker page covers how I adapt this material specifically for entrepreneur audiences.

Q&A and Post-Talk Engagement

I always build in time for questions, and it is often where the most useful part of the session happens. Business audiences tend to hold back their most specific, most relevant question until they can ask it directly rather than raise it during the main talk. I have had post-keynote conversations that turned into hour-long hallway discussions about a single attendee’s actual website problem — that is a good outcome, and organizers tell me it is part of what makes the session feel worth the time slot rather than just a scheduled interruption between coffee breaks.

For events that want it, I can also do a short pre-recorded video message for promotion, or a brief interview with the organizer’s marketing team ahead of the event to help drive registration. None of that is required — plenty of conferences just want the talk itself — but I mention it because organizers do not always know to ask.

What Organizers Tell Me Afterward

The feedback I hear most consistently is not that the talk was entertaining, though I hope it is that too. It is that attendees left with something specific they could act on the following week — a schema fix to check, a question to ask their marketing vendor, a way to think about AI search that replaced a vague anxiety with an actual plan. For a conference organizer choosing between keynote speakers, that kind of actionable takeaway is usually what separates a session people remember from one that blurs into the rest of the day.

Booking

The right starting point is a short call where you tell me about your conference — audience profile, agenda context, and what you want attendees to take away. I will tell you whether what I do is the right fit and, if it is, how to structure the session for your format.

Visit the SEO speaker page for more on how I approach speaking engagements and what to expect from the process.