On 31 January, we had an insightful and informative day at the Figaro Digital Marketing Summit, held at the Emirates Stadium. Experts (and Arsenal fans) from across the digital marketing industry came together to share their latest strategies and innovations. Alongside an agenda of varied presentations, covering current topics ranging from video content to programmatic advertising, 1-2-1 meetings were also being held between the agencies, related tech companies, and brands at the forefront of the industry.
If you were unable to attend the summit, or would just like to watch the presentations again, you can catch up on all the talks on our website. If you would like any of the slides shown in the presentations, please email slides@figarodigital.co.uk.
How To Create A Winning Video Marketing Strategy
It is without doubt that video is one of the most effective ways for any marketer to meet their marketing objectives. The attention grabbing combination of visuals and sound allows video content to effortlessly raise awareness of your brand and increase engagement with your content. But how do you harness the emotional power of video storytelling? Jon Mowat, Managing Director at Hurricane and one of the UK’s leading video strategy experts, spoke at the Figaro Digital Digital Marketing Summit on this very subject. Having swapped his camera and Kevlar vest (as a producer and director of documentaries for the BBC in some of the world’s most dangerous environments) for video marketing there isn’t much Jon doesn’t know about how video works and the science behind our positive responses to it.
In his presentation, Jon provided delegates with a theoretical and scientific understanding of the power of video, the increased power and “dopamine pump” effect of video on a mobile device which is an extension of self, and the Ganglion cells in human eyes reacting to movement in video as our prehistoric ancestors would have reacted to snakes. (Snakes are a recurring theme that you will just have to watch the presentation to understand, trust me.) Understanding the science behind how video works allows Jon to divulge practical steps for delivering better results with video content. Watch Jon’s presentation to discover how to develop your own brand story to engage your audience emotionally and get results.
Watch Jon’s presentation here.
Future-proofing Digital Experiences In An Omni-channel World
In recent years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has blossomed. There are more channels than ever before and an explosion of digital touch points through which to reach and engage customers. While this has created new opportunities, it has also brought new challenges. Digital architectures are evolving to accommodate the more flexible – headless CMS, API first, microservices, CaaS, and many more than fit into the headless “buzzword”. Headless CMS and commerce platforms are key when delivering digital experiences in an increasingly omni-channel world, but what is headless CMS and why do we need it? In his presentation at the Summit James Cannings, Partner at Be Heard and Co-founder of MMT Digital, explained how headless platforms can help deliver solutions, quickly and at scale, to all your digital products to deliver real business value.
What we, as marketers, think of as modern content management systems (CMS) are really WCMS, explained by the Gartner Magic Quadrant (MQ) for Web Content Management. Gartner define the MQ system as the ‘competitive positioning of four types of technology providers, in markets where growth is high and provider differentiation is distinct’. There has been an abundance of new CMS or WCMS over the years, all differentiated by their widely varying offerings and ability, or lack thereof, to interact and work with each other. This has resulted in companies ending up with giant monolithic platforms that are highly structured, difficult and costly to amend, and often require wholesale rebuilding. In his presentation, James suggests that the move to headless CMS signals an industry-wide and cross-sector move towards a “microservices architecture” where companies don’t rely on one platform to rule them all (one platform to find them, one platform to bring them all and in the website bind them). Badly written Lord of the Rings puns aside, by showcasing Uber and Vodafone as examples James reveals how headless CMS and the move to a microservices architecture allows speed to market, enables innovation, improves flexibility, opens up the possibility of implementing the latest tech, improves ease, and lowers the cost of website changes or rebuilds. Watch James’ presentation to find out more!
Watch James’ presentation here.
Strategic Insight For A Competitive Edge
Adthena helps enterprise organisations understand their competitive landscape and overcome challenges with Strategic Insights. In her presentation at the Summit Lorna Gill, Marketing Manager at Adthena, showcased how major brands Carphone Warehouse and Volvo have successfully relied on Adthena to steer their digital strategies. Carphone Warehouse came to Adthena with the goal of driving traffic to the Carphone Warehouse website, increasing revenue through sales of the new iPhone XR, and maintaining strong market share throughout the launch. However, through analysing the data and gaining insight into the search landscape surrounding the iPhone XR launch Adthena conducted gap analysis of direct competitors and their behaviour. They found that Apple had completely dropped out of the market for their previous phones – choosing themselves to focus on iPhone XR focused keywords. This allowed Carphone Warehouse to pivot their strategy by capitalising on a profitable market segment originally overlooked – bidding on previous iPhone keywords at a significantly reduced price. By ensuring data and insight is at the forefront of your search strategy, you can meet your goals without spending a fortune on in demand keywords by circumnavigating the sector.
Watch Lorna’s presentation for the results of the Carphone Warehouse case study and to find out how Volvo used data and insight to inform their search strategy, resulting in them dominating the market for hybrid and electric car terms. And listen out for top tips on how to approach researching, deploying, and measuring strategic strategies for the growth of your organisation using search.
Watch Lorna’s presentation here.
Advanced AdWords Audiences
It goes without saying that knowing your audience is absolutely paramount to a marketers, and a businesses, success. But with competition stronger than ever and the digital output of businesses rapidly increasing, you now need to know exactly who your audience is, what it is they want, exactly where in the world (or in relation to your brick and mortar shops) they are, and when they are engaging, or are likely to engage, with your digital content. It may feel as though this is easier said than done, but in his twenty minute presentation Gareth Morgan, Managing Director at Liberty Marketing, revealed how you can get ahead using Advanced Adwords techniques and how to get the most out of your Pay Per Click budget.
In this presentation, Gareth outlined 10 targeting options in 20 minutes to show you how you should be spending your money on targeting and how you can optimise your use of the incredible targeting options Adwords offers. These ranged from utilising ready-made affinity audiences to bid modifiers – using location, device, and time of day to modify what you are willing to spend on an ad. This is important for marketers working in the retail sector in particular, Gareth explains: when someone is in walking distance of your store within store opening hours, it is worth modifying your bid to optimise your PPC. For more functional examples of how to utilise Advanced Adwords in your marketing strategy, from universities advertising during the clearing period to targeting people before major life events, watch Gareth’s presentation and revolutionise your PPC.
Watch Gareth’s presentation here.
Programmatic 10 Years On
The ten year challenge. We’ve all seen it in our social feeds recently and whether you love or hate it, there is something fascinating about the difference a decade can make. (I for one am glad to be rid of my extreme, mid-2000s side fringe and red skinny jeans.) More importantly than the drastic changes in my sartorial choices, programmatic advertising is coming close to its tenth birthday and for their presentation Tom Wright and Mikael Boecasse, Head of Trading and Head of Technical Operations respectively at Tomorrow TTH, explored programmatic from 2009 to 2019. By looking at the successes and challenges faced, Tom and Mikael were able to offer predictions for the next 10 years ahead.
From how programmatic trading changed online display advertising and the age of the acronym (DSP, SSP, and DMP), to where are we today with DOOH, DTV, Audio, persistent ID, and personalisation, Tom and Mikael raced through the past and present of programmatic. However, it was their predictions of what to expect from programmatic that really caught our attentions. These predictions ranged from the use of machine learning to improve programmatic trading through statistical methods enabling machines to improve with experience to cross channel and prediction advertising. Watch their presentation to find out more.
Watch Tom and Mikael’s presentation here.