Marketing Week Live Trends

I attended Marketing Week Live for the Wednesday conferences to find out about new trends in social media, content strategy and innovation in digital. 

I have collated all of the information from my notes to share with you, and welcome any questions you have about my opinions on each subject.

Marketing Week Live: Key Trends

Attitudes Towards Brands

• People aren’t talking about brands the way we think they are (e.g. http://tpdsaa.tumblr.com)
• Focus on what people are REALLY sharing
• Brands need to worry less about the branding and visual aesthetic when having a social presence and executing campaigns. Most companies only define a very small part of their brand, and that’s what it looks like.
• There is a miss-match between the brand and the consumer and lots of negative assumptions based on the visual aesthetic. “It’s not ON brand” is the key reason for not doing things. Do people really care?
• We are breaking our own tactile activity - It’s not about acting like a brand on the web, it’s about acting like a person.
• Brands need to ask themselves what’s the worst that could happen?
• Social media causes visual rules to go out of the window, as brands are using someone else’s platform. Really it’s about who has the best content.
• Google indexes brands by who has the best reputation. If you are gaining fan interest by posting about crazy animals, then you will rank higher in search.
• The web is driven by ideas. People are looking for new ideas to talk about, not brands talking AT them.
• No logo can sometimes be a good thing.
• Build your brand by ignoring it. Smart brands online now realize that its not about them, its about their customer.
• Define things the brand shouldn’t be rather than what it should. This will make ideas stretch further. 

Social Media For ROI

• Marketers get caught up with the fact that on average only 2% of ‘likes’ turn into a social transaction, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
• Marketers say that they are social, but realistically they aren’t adding any value into online conversations.
• There is myth that social media is free. This may be the way for start-ups, however big brands with big heritage need to spend on strategy resource.
• Brands need to manage their social media in house. Agencies should just be helping with the strategy.
• The average marketing budget for social media is 0-10%, however strategy leads with dedicated team responsibilities.
• The key elements of a social strategy:

1. To know your subject and be passionate about it
2. To be transparent – stay away from ghostwriters, profile REAL people. Be the person behind your brand, be yourself.
3. Post frequently to keep the buzz
4. Add value. Make it memorable and ask for things.
5. Respond in a way that is engaging and ask them to complete an action.
6. Learn from mistakes by trying to do something different. Too much internal focus can isolate a community.
7. Have fun!

• The spectrum of online interest runs in 7 parts

1. Passive interest
2. Active interest
3. Sharing
4. Public dialogue
5. Private dialogue
6. Advocacy
7. Investment

• Strategy guidelines for social media

1. Strategy guide
2. Competitor analysis
3. Know your vision, mission
4. State your social personas
5. State your goals and develop your tactics
6. Ensure you have resources to achieve your goals
7. Plan and create your content
8. Publish and promote the content to your users platforms
9. Listen to your community
10. Measure and monitor your results
11. Modify and repeat

• Go where the community already exists.
• Be real about who your consumers ACTUALLY are
• Ways to monetize

1. Monitor conversations with relevant phrases, topics and key words
2. Join conversations and inform users of products and services.
3. Track and ask whether users acted on posts / recommendations.
4. Use paid advertising to reach out to the wider audience
5. Offer special promotions by using codes and URL tracking
6. Create amazing, sharable content (articles, interviews, infographic, videos, games).
7. Use social media as a retention tool
8. Use social as a customer service tool

• KPI suggestions include looking at drop off rates from social traffic, sentiment variation over time, the number of customer issues resolved via CRM, reduction in customer service calls, and improvement in search engine placement, and transaction value per customer. 

Personalization In Social Media.

• 72% of marketers know that they should be personalizing social experiences, however don’t know where to start.
• Understanding the different types of consumer groups and segmentation is proving to be difficult to understand.
• There are three types of consumer stages: 

1. The unknown state (already using but maybe for the first time)
2. The known state (already consumers but not necessarily loyal)
3. The name state (already loyal, marketers know exactly who they are).

• Personalization to be measured by the buyers purchasing behavior. You only have 3-5 clicks to catch someone’s attention (can be under a 20^th of a second to see if someone will stay on your site). 
• Remember that data takes time to build.
• Some brands are overdoing personalization (it’s unnecessary and stupid).
• Some marketers are lagging data and over-stepping the line between personalization, effective marketing and privacy.
• Better, richer, faster data that is packed with intent signals and a proxy for the real world is key.
• The first secret is understanding your customer:

1. Earn your access by asking for permission; (this will build a profile)
2. Focus on intent; (find a signal from the noise) and articulate what actually matters. You need to gain a human interpretation of what is actually being said by using neutral language processing and machine learning.
3. Make it real time: the nature of someone’s interests are changing by the minute. Tune as you go and learn to read the data right.
4. Use other data sources so that touch-points can be personalized.
5. Apply rules for each type of consumer: Segment the VIP’s, advocates, influencers, likely to churn, and ready to buy.
6. Don’t redirect, enable your consumers: (the high margin stuff vs. the stuff I want). 
7. Measure everything! Establish key metrics for signals (i.e. hovering over an image, scrolling below the fold)
8. Building a bridge to your content by matching content with consumer profiles (i.e. if someone has spoken about going to a party on social, then try to present them with party dresses).
9. Reach beyond each visitor: On average each consumer has a 140 people in their network. There is a real opportunity to gain extra awareness via recommendations by finding out those strong ties.

Experiential Marketing: Sense Marketing

• Experiential marketing is the most dynamic, effective sales and communication medium and has a 34% growth on investment year on year.
• 60%of marketers believe experiential marketing will be a big growth driver in the next 5 years.
• Key drivers:

1. The economy – shorter term planning, penetration figures, speed to react to visibility
2. Media fragmentation
3. Sales vs. brand equity
4. The changing behaviors of consumers towards media consumption
5. The challenge to disrupt reach

• The key principles holding marketers back: “what will consumers think about my brand, and how much profit will we make?”
• Sometimes the proposition is offline: use of “edutainment”, changing attitudes, variants of functionality, road shows, controlling the experience, making brands more accessible to new audiences and giving campaigns future life online in key. 
• The future of experiential marketing is dynamic, sophisticated and a credible option for brands. There is an ever-increasing pressure on high- level experiences to deliver commercially. The quality is in the execution.

Big Data: Turning it into actionable information

• The word big data is being used a lot by marketers, however not many know what to do with it.
• Carrying out a GAP analysis on your website and social channels is still key to gaining the information needed to improve your services.
• Identify fully and partially engaged personas and profile them, as well as the best consumers by demographic, email click through, purchase history.
• Develop a content matrix for your audience, allowing the audience to control the flow of content (via email etc).
• Put people in charge of their own data and let them specify how they would like to be addressed (whether this is via social or email etc).
• Turn actionable information into revenue by offering ‘bundles’ of your services, gifting, events, exclusive experiences, both online and offline content, and subscriptions on a time basis.
• Ask people to recommend your services.
• Give people the option to sign up to multiple channels at the same time.
• Use up-selling methods, and if necessary test short term free trials.

Innovation

• Innovation is the number 1 consumer purchase driver.
• The three leavers of influence are products, leadership, and communication/branding.
• Innovation isn’t necessarily about technology, but more-so giving the consumer an extra value proposition:

1. Cadbury – social media takeovers and interviews.
2. Heinz – producing Snap Pots that cook in 1 minute.
3. Santander – use of communications strategy to illustrate the human element and create spontaneous awareness.
4. LG – offering in-expensive 3D smart TV to the market.