Ad:Tech 2013

I popped down to Ad:Tech today to develop my knowledge on key trends within the advertising, marketing and social media industry. I have written up some insight from the different seminars I attended that include; social media strategic tips, communication methods, e-mail best practice, and campaign analysis metrics. 

Seminars Attended

Creative Brands: Boosting Brand Loyalty And Influencing Buying Behaviour

Content And Converged Media

Leveraging Engaged Communities Across A Global Entertainment Brand

Creating Wonder: Invention In A New Era Of Connectivity

Social Media 3.0 (Hosted By Facebook)

Social Media Insight

• Social media is a great equaliser; a fairly even playing field for all brands with different budgets. 
• Brands starting out in social media need to understand that activity and content should be tested and refined before receiving a real analysis of the core fan's engagement metrics. 
• The average person likes 43 brands on Facebook.
• Facebook can be used to build custom audiences by using their emails, phone numbers or user id's. From that, look-a-like audiences can be built to target groups of additional people with the same characteristics as those in the custom audience.
• Brands need to capitalize on the opportunity to respond on social media with impact.
• Brands know that they don't necessarily need to act like consumers friends any more, however it is key to have a two way dialogue as often as possible.
• Chasing likes is dead. Likes don't mean anything if the community isn't active or engaged. 
• Consistently monitoring content results should fuel insight into what to post next. 
• Community managers can now make judgements on the fly.
• The effectiveness of engagement is now reliant on ideas. 
• Skills are reliant on fine tuning (or reactive advertising).
• Fans aren't going to naturally check out brand's social pages. Instead, brands need to exist in the audiences social streams. 
• Building up a calendar of social content is key to consistent distribution.
• Brands can use TV to utilize the social conversation for products and stories.
• Personalised messages can increase positive consumer sentiment.
• Give all social fans a role for participation. This will make them feel valued (It's the people that make the show. The brand makes the stars).
• Use real life sentiment analysis when posting news. Cheering fans up is an added bonus.
• It is now appropriate for brands to churn content overnight. Being reactive to news and pop culture trends helps to engage users and give the brand some klout. 
• Owning and maintaining a consistent tone of voice also helps when capitalising on news. 
• Brands do need to have some constraint when creating content, remembering that is it about quality not quantity. 
• Brands need to have a responsive lab (community managers), ready to communicate with fans. 
• Posting 'social open letters' helps to engage many fans, when in fact, the message is seemingly addressed to just one person. 
• Brands could adopt the Disney approach to creating content by feeding into their staff and fan 'dreamers', 'realists', and 'critics' for review. 
• If content doesn't work on social channels within two hours, it should be modified before the next post. 

Advertising Insight

• Generally, people think that advertising is ok (tolerable), but feel a lot more positive about content. 
• £1 in £5 of a brands marketing communication budget is spent on owned media.
• There is a positive outlook on growth in 2014 for applications, SEO and email.
• Spend on original video content is growing fast.
• Brands should create content for representing their business, because consumers are looking for content, to leverage the entire social media calendar, to tell customers stories without implementing a big media spend, and to be original, realistic, unique and trustworthy. 
• Advertisers think that nothing beats paid media for brand awareness, and consumers think the same. 
• Advertisers think that owned media has the biggest influence on the final purchase decision, and consumers agree. 

Email Insight

• Brands need to know what their customers life cycle looks like. 
• Brands need to analyse the cost of an email address in relation to ROI.
• It is 67 times harder to gain a new customer then to retain a new one. 
• Major ISP's now monitor engagement in order to assign a reputation to all senders. 
• Brands need to set benchmarks for what they see as a positive vs negative action from a consumer receiving a branded email.
• Brands shouldn't let the negative responses stop engaged recipients receiving email.
• Email is still champion for ROI (it's low cost and profitable)
• Brands need to segment and target their lists accordingly based on rapport. 
• An email subject line is one of the most important aspects to determine whether the email is opened or not. 
• Sometimes incentives work. Especially when a recipient is trying to opt-out of email.
• Brands shouldn't be afraid to ask for data when a user is signing up. 
• The light box method is a successful way of increasing sign ups, however cookies should be used to ensure that recipients aren't being pestered when re-visiting the website.
• If email isn't working then ask users to sign up to social channels instead. Adding email sign up buttons to social pages can also increase interest. 
• Consider using a mixture of SMS and email.
• Sending more than one welcome email can help increase engagement. Additionally, post purchase love is key to retaining consumers. 
• Capitalize on feedback options. The data can be really valuable for further segmentation.