Our Marketing Summit, on the 24th October, was a great success, with delegates from a large variety of brands descending on the London Marriott Hotel Regent’s Park for a day of presentations, 1-2-1 meetings, and networking. With a total of eleven presentations from thirteen expert speakers, there was a broad range of topics that were discussed throughout the day, from search to video, affiliate to referral.
Every speaker offered a unique insight into some of the hottest marketing topics, drawing on their experience and knowledge in their respective fields. If you missed the event, didn’t make it to every presentation, or just want to recap on the key points, read on to find out what our speakers had to say and follow the links to their full presentations.
How to Avoid Treating Machine Learning as a Black Box
Neill Horie, Associate Director – Technology Strategy at Edit, talked about machine learning and the importance of understanding it well. He stressed that machine learning isn’t able to do anything humans can’t do: it’s just far more efficient.
This means that if companies don’t properly understand their data sets then the machine learning won’t understand either and won’t perform effectively. Therefore, data should be reviewed to make sure they’re fit for the purpose they’re being used for.
Neill used examples from Google and Amazon to illustrate what happens when machine learning isn’t properly programmed to do its task and companies don’t understand it well enough to diagnose the issue. He offered tips for effective machine learning programmes and how to devise a strategy. Watch Neill’s full presentation here.
The Secret of Why 8 out of 10 Brands have Adopted Affiliate Marketing
Steve Bryant, Managing Director at ThoughtMix, outlined how affiliate marketing works and its key features. He highlighted the strengths of affiliate and the benefits it can offer businesses. He ran through the significant difference in cost between affiliate and PPC and how the business has the power to set the terms of payment.
Affiliate allows everything to be tracked, and data to be gathered on the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing campaigns. Steve explained that the money saved through using this channel frees up budget for other campaigns and also eliminates the risk of exploring new territories for business.
He shared tips on how to incentivise your affiliates to provide better results and the financial benefits your company could enjoy as a result of replacing some marketing channels with affiliate.
Watch Steve’s full presentation here.
Referral Marketing: Turn Your Happy Customers into Your Most Effective Acquisition Channel
Courtney Wylie, VP Product & Marketing at Mention Me, demonstrated the effectiveness of refer-a-friend campaigns with survey data on trust. Although influencer marketing is very popular, 75 per cent of people over the age of 40 don’t follow any influencers so cannot reach such a wide market as refer-a-friend campaigns.
Other limiting factors, such as GDPR, people’s decreasing trust in traditional marketing channels, and email providers creating new spam filters, have meant that marketing is becoming increasingly challenging. Courtney stressed that most people prefer brands to take a political stance and be transparent. She shared her predictions for the future of marketing and tips for both acquisition and retention.
Courtney explained the importance of the reputation filter and the relevance filter in referral marketing and why both of these models make the channel such an effective one. Watch Courtney’s full presentation here.
How to Create a Winning Video Marketing Strategy
By 2021 80 per cent of internet traffic will be video. But, although millions of videos are created every day, many aren’t in the right places or seen by the right people. Alex Jupp, Executive Producer at Hurricane, explained how you can create a video marketing strategy that will shine through the noise and provide results.
The key things to consider are who your customers are, where they are on their customer journey, and how to put emotion into your videos. When only three in ten marketers think their content is effective, Alex showed how you can be one of the three, rather than the seven.
He talked us through the digital sales funnel, the complexity of emotion, and how you can use this understanding to create a truly winning video marketing strategy. Watch Alex’s full presentation here.
The Future of Search is Understanding Human Psychology
Becky Simms, CEO at Reflect Digital, discussed the psychology that informs effective SEO and the issues that arise when we don’t have a good enough understanding of the way people think. She illustrated how important it is to use exciting language in written content, and provided tools to help you identify problems with your own content.
Becky talked about the role of emotions in decision-making and how essential it is to keep the human in mind when creating content and SEO. She walked through visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic language use in written content and the value in the three.
She offered early insight into the research being carried out by Reflect and provided ten tips for driving SEO performance. Watch Becky’s full presentation here.
Digital Selling Through Storytelling – a Sea Change at Ocean Insight
Dan Geoffrey, Client Partnership Director at Netcel, and Joey Moore, Head of Product Marketing at Episerver, presented the story of their work with Ocean Insight, global leaders in photonics technology. Ocean Insight, who specialise in health, safety, and the environment, wanted to move from being product driven to purpose driven, while creating personalised experiences for visitors to their site.
Because of the diverse range of individuals within their audience, a one-size-fits-all customer experience wouldn’t work and so developing a personalised customer experience was essential.
Dan and Joey emphasised the importance of customer journey mapping and offered a view of what a success model should look like. Together, Netcel and Episerver helped Ocean Insight to create a storytelling platform, tailor their content for different people, and present themselves as a solution driven organisation. Watch Dan and Joey’s full presentation here.
See part two of our Summit roundup here.