Digital Summit Philadelphia, from August 23 - 24, was packed with dozens of speakers, including digital marketing experts, CEOs, data scientists, SEO gurus, business owners, and even a comedian. Five members of the EZMarketing team ventured to the two-day event and learned far more than can be written in a single blog post - but we wanted to take the time to share some key takeaways from the many sessions we attended in our Digital Summit Philadelphia 2016 recap.
Content marketing strategies
In a roundtable discussion with Michael Barber of barber&hewitt, Purna Virji of Microsoft, and Amy Lavin of Temple University, they discussed how content marketing isn't something you can do "on the side." You need a team, but they can't just be developing content - the team should also be doing SEO, Facebook, PR, customer service, and whatever else you need to deliver the right message.
They talked about having more impact when you have something to say instead of just posting content just because you have a schedule or feel that you should. This goes back to Rand Fishkin of Moz when he talks about the need for "10x content" - content that is ten times better than anything like it.
A tip they gave on finding the right content to put in front of your audience is by looking at the analytics and seeing what devices get the most actions and conversions, and the keywords that surround them.
An interesting stat that Purna Virji said was that about 1/3 (or 34% to be exact) of PC searches are now using Bing. We will need to confirm what source that is from (besides Microsoft, where she works), but it makes sense that people are using the default Bing search when using their new PCs and tablets with Windows 10.
Moving forward with their predictions on the content platforms: they feel that mixed reality, holograms, virtual reality, personalized messaging and conversational search are leading the way. So virtual reality headsets, Amazon Echo and their trio of voice search products, and social messaging for customer service are the next big way to get content to your target audience.
Marketing to millennials
One of the hottest topics in today's marketing world is how to reach millennials with powerful marketing messages that cause them to convert. Anne Gherini, the head of marketing at StumbleUpon, had some great advice about reaching this must-have demographic. The key here is content - but it's the way that content is delivered that makes all the difference.
First, let's establish some key facts. Although their consumption habits are different from their parents', many of them - fully 40% - are now parents themselves. This 80-million-strong demographic doesn't watch nearly as much broadcast television as their predecessors, but they spend hours every week consuming online content across multiple devices. On average, they use at least 2 devices and check their mobile device first before then moving to a tablet or computer. Gherini calls this "constant partial attention."
Millennials also have a trillion dollars in purchasing power, so they can't be ignored anymore when it comes to purchasing decisions.
Add it all up and it becomes obvious the mobile advertising is the key to capturing millennials. However, the banner ads of the past simply don't work for them (about half of all mobile ad clicks are accidental). Enter native advertising, which gets about 53% more clicks than banner ads.
As it turns out, millennials don't care if content is sponsored or not. They simply care if it's good. When web content is built for mobile, not merely optimized for it, and when it gives instead of just taking, the result is a long-term relationship that will keep them coming back again and again.
Using humor to elevate your brand
Who doesn't love funny? The use of comedy in marketing is as old as marketing itself, and big brands have experienced huge success doing so.
Philadelphia-born comedian Michael Albanese was the emcee for the event, and also led a session on using the power to make people laugh as a resource in your marketing. One of the things he emphasized up front is that, when brands decide to use humor in their marketing, it nearly always comes with some level of risk involved. "Safe" humor isn't really humor at all.
Albanese quoted George Carlin to emphasize the point: "It's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
His advice to marketers considering the use of humor in their strategy is to go a little further than you're comfortable with, and not worry too much about risking offense.
He calls this the Ladder Method:
Start by producing the craziest, off-the-wall content that you can conceive of, and then "come down the ladder" until you find a place where it resonates with your target audience.
An example he used was for marketing smartphones that were waterproof. All they had to do was drop a phone in the beach, a pool, or even the toilet and make something funny out of it to show that their new smartphones are waterproof. Instead of doing that, Samsung (in this example), had rapper Lil Wayne constantly pouring champagne onto his smartphone to get the point across in a different way. And it worked.
Some other points he made when you want something entertaining and funny for your brand:
- Go a little further than you think you want to - and it will work
- Comedy is high risk, but it's also high reward
- Don't force it - if it feels unfunny, it probably will be
- If you think you're doing the wrong thing, you're probably actually doing the right thing
- Know your audience because they know you
- Be willing to be vulnerable - don't fake it
- Know you'll offend someone
- Leave some skin in the game
- Expect both positive and negative feedback
- Keep responses to feedback relevant to humor
Create personas that drive digital success
Buyer personas are the first step in putting together your documented marketing plan. You should already know your target audience and demographics, but creating buyer personas for a few of your top targets is a great way to personalize your content that is driven for those personas.
90% of companies using personas create a clearer understanding of who their buyers are. It isn’t enough to just have a website anymore - the experience needs to be geared towards your target customer.
We are designing websites for people and not internal processes and audiences so we need to have buyer personas that we can deliver that message and experience from our websites. We should also be creating the content on our websites to satisfy your buyer personas, not to satisfy what your boss wants to see.
There are some essential elements you need when creating your buyer personas:
- Demographics - Age, location, sex, household income, family size and more.
- Background - Background story is created for each persona which explains the circumstances surrounding their need to visit your site. Also, create the level of education they completed.
- Motivations and influences - Gives an indication of how motivated the persona is to use the website.
- Frustrations and barriers - Lists the reasons of what may stop or frustrate a persona during their online experience.
- Ideal experience - Outline persona goals including features and content that help them have a great experience.
These are just the essentials but there are more like defining their job role, what their typical day looks like, what skills they should have, what TV shows do they watch, what publications do they read, and much more.
Measurable goals
The digital world is always changing as social networks adapt and algorithms update. Marketers are constantly looking for the newest trends and tools to stay on top of it all.
Setting goals with clear metrics by reaching your audience on the right platforms with the right content allows you to avoid the coolest new social platform.
Tiffany Starnes calls these new and big platform shiny objects, so she made a shiny object checklist to keep you on track with your goals.
- Is your customer there?
- Is it intrusive depending on what they are doing?
- Does it align with your goals?
- Growth
- Reach
- Engagement
- Web traffic
- Lead generation
- Sales
- Do you have the content and resources?
- Can you measure success?
She quoted John Munsell, CEO of Bizukka, with a great reminder on content:
"Content is king and conversion is queen."
Pulse of creativity, data and future of brands
Mitch Joel, President of Mirum, held a great keynote on the future trends of the internet and how we live our daily lives.
He made the point that years ago no one would let strangers into their house or into their car, but now we have AirBnb and Uber that everyone is using. He points out that consumers are getting good at importance, access, and sharing.
When it comes to content he said content is useless unless you have the right platform to place it. He also believes that content isn't the future - that the network it is on is the future. Augmented reality and virtual reality are the future platform.
He also predicts, along with Jeff Bezos of Amazon, that the web isn't the future. The internet of things and everything being connected around us is the future, which is why Bezos is investing so much in voice activated search products like Amazon Echo. Dot and Tap.
Technology isn’t something that is to be used - it is something to be on us and a part of us
Using content and design to increase conversions
What store are you telling with your website? Every page is a chapter of a book and needs a clear purpose.
Is there a beginning and an end? Does it all tie together?
When they land from Google are they confused when they get there? Does each page contain useful content with a meaningful call-to-action that takes them on the next step of their customer journey?
Get inside the heads of your visitors and align their journey with what you want them to do.
Some forms of utility content to help build a circle of trust with your visitors:
- How-to videos
- Thought provoking posts
- Tools
- References
- Studies
All about links
Jim Boykin, CEO of Internet Marketing Ninjas, stormed through some slides on data about links and how they've had success getting them.
According to Searchmetrics, 89% of sites that ranked 7 years ago are not ranking today.
2-3% of searches are commercial searches. Coincidentally when Google updates their algorithms it affects 2-3% of search results, which a lot of the time are the commercial searches.
He gave some tips on some link building techniques like using the wayback machine from archive.org for broken link building. Use the wayback machine link to find the old content and give it to a writer to make better content. He also said to grab your 301 redirect backlinks when analyzing all of your backlinks.
Social and search trends
In a discussion about the trends surrounding search and social, Facebook, Google, and Snapchat led the way in the conversation.
When it comes to Facebook live video, 44% of top brands have tried live video once but no one leads the pack since it's too new.
Local search is growing faster than anything else so Google is testing out paying for the top location in local search packs. Eventually, all positions could be paid which would not be surprising.
When it comes to Snapchat, on demand geo filters can cost as low as $5 for a few hours to target millennials and a younger audience in a location.
98% of LinkedIn posts with visuals get engagement, which is a very dominating statistic that can't be ignored.
Lastly, 9 of 10 companies are now active on these major social networks. So just about everyone has caught up to being active on social in some way.
More traffic with existing content
With an interesting technique from Quinn Whissen of Vertical Measures, she is claiming to take your already existing content and make some tweaks to optimize and rank for more keywords and get more traffic.
The trick she is suggesting is instead of having your keyword in the content 2-5% as we have grown to known as SEOs, but instead replace some of those keywords with semantic keywords. It gives your content more visibility as Rankbrain can decipher between semantic keywords and their meanings so you get more traffic out of your content while ranking for more long-tail keywords.
She also suggests routinely doing a content audit using Screaming Frog to consolidate similar content and make sure all of your pages are optimized. Sometimes you want to update the content and keep the same URL, and other times it may be as easy as rewriting the title using a targeted keyword.
Conclusion
There were so many speakers and discussions going on at once that we couldn't get to everything, but overall there was enough great information that we could bring back to the office and start implementing with our marketing strategies. We are hoping next year that one of us will be able to present at this great event.
Next conference stop for our team - Mozcon!
