The Figaro Digital Marketing Summit took place on 21 October 2015 at The Emirates Stadium, Islington. Here’s a quick round-up of the morning’s presentations, with insight from Brightcove, Liberty Marketing, Building Blocks, Teradata Marketing Applications, yReceipts, Red Bee and CrowdCat
Challenges and Opportunities with Video Marketing
Nick Greasley – Field Marketing Manager EMEA, Brightcove
Video has come into its own as a powerful and trusted marketing tool. But marketers are still missing some common opportunities in video marketing, says Nick Greasley at Brightcove.
“People treat video in silo. Video needs to be deployed and analysed as part of a holistic marketing strategy.” It’s an inherently shareable medium that is popular on social media, and marketers should be making it really easy for customers to act on the content and continue their customer journey from within social. Think about making your video shoppable on social and incorporate calls-to-action. At the very least, make sure you’re offering social sharing buttons on your content.
You want to be controlling the video experience. By simply embedding YouTube videos into your website, you risk losing users by taking them away from the branded website experience. Once they’ve been taken to YouTube, they might be distracted by the ‘Recommended’ video thumbnails – over which you have no control – or the irrelevant advertising at the beginning of your video. This could potentially end their experience with your brand. Always use a customised video platform which is accessible across all devices. And always provide your viewer with the opportunity to find out more.
Finally, make the best use of your analytics. You need to know where your viewers are coming from and at what point in the video people are dropping off etc. This will help you instantly edit your content in accordance with this insight. Whatever they might be, define your video metrics in advance.
Advanced AdWords Strategies
Gareth Morgan – Managing Director, Liberty Marketing
There are many new and overlooked developments in pay-per-click. Google Shopping, local inventory ads, bid adjustments, shoppable TrueView, Lightbox ads, Gmail native ads, remarketing, remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA), ad customisers and ad extensions are just some of the features Gareth Morgan at Liberty Marketing explores. One new feature is called Customer Match, which works by allowing the marketer to import data directly into AdWords and upload email addresses to create a custom audience base, which can then be targeted on Google, Gmail or YouTube, as long as the customer is signed into their Google account.
Digital Foundations: The Building Blocks of a Successful Digital Strategy
Gavin Holland – Lead User Experience Architect, Building Blocks
Gavin Holland at Building Blocks talks through three fundamental steps to conducting workshop sessions around your business’s digital offering. First, construct a simple roadmap of activity over time to understand where you are in terms of digital, and plan what you need to do next. Next, map audience needs by defining audience types and creating personas. Finally, measure digital performance and ROI to help encourage more digital investment from your business in the future. Gavin’s tips for the sessions: involve a mix of team members with different roles, including someone more technically-focused, to help generate a wider view of digital. Don’t agonise about the structure and format of the sessions, just make sure they’re organised. And write up the results quickly so that they are fresh.
Using Bricks & Mortar Data to Drive Actionable Insights
Josh Beale – Client Manager, Teradata Marketing Applications
Chris Hannigan – Business Development Manager, yReceipts
Joining the online and offline world and creating a ‘single customer view’ is one of the biggest challenges facing retailers today. Josh Beale at Teradata explores how marketers can unify the branding, experience and aesthetics of the in-store experience and online channels, and use actionable data to learn more about the individual customer. “Customer experience is the only differentiator,” says Josh. “If you can create a memorable moment for your customer, they’re more likely to come back to you.”
You need to be delivering relevant, personalised content to consumers at the right time and on the best channel for them. Collect purchase data to help you send tailored communications from acquisition through to nurture. You can even personalise newsletters with dynamic content based on customer behaviour. Take your customer through a preference centre so you know exactly what they’re interested in seeing, and overlay this with data about what they’ve been clicking on and purchasing in-store etc. Make sure this experience is mobile.
Cracking Social Video: How to Create a Great Story and Engage Your Audience
Michael Reeves – Business Development Director, Red Bee
The concept of TV has shifted from a box in the corner of the living room to, well, anywhere. And, just as broadcasters have had to adapt to that, says Michael Reeves at Red Bee, so must marketers. First and foremost, it’s important to recognise that video fuels social media. Platforms such as Twitter, which were created purely for words, have now developed their own video platforms. Unless you’re featuring video, you won’t be standing out in your customer’s newsfeeds.
Know your audience. You need to speak their language. Harness your superfans – or borrow superfans from other brands by getting in front of the people that have influence on social. Make your content entertaining or useful – the issue with only creating useful content is that your customers are only going to come to you to solve a problem. If you can entertain them, then they’re going to come back because they want to.
Build a story-world. Develop your characters, create backstories and, most importantly, immerse your customers in the experience. Be topically relevant and timely. But, even if you’re going for ‘spontaneous’ real-time marketing, make sure you plan. Real-time only works if it is well-timed and appropriate. You also need to play to your platform. Each one has its own idiosyncrasies that need to be crafted into your video production.
Do You Really Know Your Audience?
Richard Summers – CEO, CrowdCat
Brands can build up a wealth of interaction data over a period time, from which they can craft a detailed picture of their customer. But psychometrics, says Richard Summers at CrowdCat, is the best instant measure of your customer and their behaviour. The results of psychometric tests can tell you a lot about what drives their purchasing decisions and why they interact with your brand, which could help you predict how they’re going to behave in the future. From this insight you can create psychometric profiles and segment your customer base, tailoring your communications for each segment and building a more informed narrative around each customer.
Round-up written by Estelle Hakner.