On March 27th and 28th the DigitalParade team was at the B2B Marketing Expo in London’s Excel along with 60,000 other like minded marketers looking for the future of marketing, advertising, automation, tech and audience engagement. We had our flag firmly planted in the ground during the two days, on show with our agency’s focus of ‘measurable impact’.
Our Director of Strategy, David Simpson hosted a seminar to a capacity audience titled ‘DO NOTHING…. unless you can measure it”. DigitalParade was also shortlisted for ‘Agency of the Future’ and our Director of Production laid out our views of the future of marketing and the central importance of measurement.
From all of the conversations we had with delegates coming from a multitude of industries, we picked out some common themes:
- There is a strong desire for a ‘complete view’ on how to effectively implement and measure campaigns, with meaningful metrics and ROI
- Large and small companies who have historically under-spent/valued/resourced the marketing function for their business are now awakening to the importance of ‘doing it right’ with proper investment
- ‘Have a go’ at marketing doesn’t work. Companies who are making the right approach towards a more sophisticated marketing approach are pooling from their own industry subject matter experts and enabling them to partner with marketing experts; hopefully the reason they were speaking with us!
During his keynote, David laid out some core considerations when approaching any marketing programme for your brand:
1. Learn who your audience are - don’t assume you know
Often as marketers we feel we know what our audience wants based on past behaviours or assumed knowledge of their needs and motivations; this isn’t always the case. David urged that we need to ‘turn off broadcast’ and ‘crank up receive’ to begin understanding more about our audience before we start piping our messaging through to them.
David mentioned some tools DigitalParade use to do this ‘listen and learn’ activity such as BuzzSumo to depict popular content themes, SEMRush to outline audience behaviour tracking and Followerwonk to understand who is influencing your target audience.
2. Have KPIs for every channel and the programme as a whole
It’s unrealistic to look at any single channel as the silver bullet to support your outreach, brand awareness, lead gen, conversions and CRM. Each channel needs to play to it’s strengths and ladder back up to the collective purpose of the campaign.
Begin by understanding what you want to project into the market about your company, verify if that aligns to what your audience want, make sure you are speaking on the channels your audience are spending time on, and ultimately make sure you have a clear view on what you want each channel to achieve for you.
3. Don’t restrict yourself to one tool for measurement
No single measurement tool will give you 100% accuracy of what activity has taken place on another channel. If you are using a mix of channels, use a mix of measurement tools too; ideally from the native channel in which you are sending your content out from. Aggregation tools such as Adobe Analytics and GA 360 are powerful, but may miss out on some of the crucial and timely detail you are looking for. Don’t be afraid to pop the bonnet of Twitter or LinkedIn analytics and blend it in with the data you’re getting back from Pardot to bookend your understanding of what your campaign impact has been.
David's Predictions
Based on current trends and the future trajectory of the market, David made the following predictions about how marketeers use of tools and channels will evolve in the coming three to five years :
- We'll continue to see more mergers amongst the big boys, following hot on the heels of the Adobe acquisition of Marketo to blend their workstreams
- Continued open integration of apps and plug ons similar to what we are seeing in the FMS market
- AI will stop being the domain of the seller, but actually begin to be the power play of the buyer also. The Selling and buying process will become 'utility based' and emancipate both parties from what will come to be viewed as an administrative task, freeing up more time for customer focus and brand/product development
- With a boom in channels available to marketers (screen, surface, voice, bio) the opportunity to reach out audiences will explode - the key will be ensuring we are spending our time and money in the right place with measured results
If you would like to check out the full keynote, you can do so here.
We’d like to thank everyone who came and chatted with us over the two days and indeed, we’re looking forward to continuing the conversation with many of you.
DigitalParade
DigitalParade will work with you to develop a creative platform and clear roadmap to deliver measurable success across your digital marketing mix.We specialise in using the latest technologies, within web and social app development, delivering bespoke solutions that not only look fantastic on desktop, mobile and tablet but also function seamlessly and aid the overarching strategy within your digital estate.
Learn more about how we can help you connect with your audience hello@digitalparade.com
