Latest trends in digital marketing showcased at 3XE Digital, review by Marie-Clare Byard

By Marie-Clare Byard. The recent 3XE Digital Search & Social Media Marketing Conference as always did not fail to deliver a diverse array of top quality speakers from home and abroad.

This event was popular with a packed house again in Croke Park. It was a very interactive day with workshops in the afternoon hosted by experts in their respective fields; giving you the opportunity to explore the area that interested you the most.

One of my favourite presentations at 3XE Digital was: Death to Marketing Bullshit – Here’s How To Actually Grow! ?By Louis Grenier. Louis is a very direct French man who says it like it is with no BS. He advises you not to treat people badly just to make more money,  there is a better way!

It was disappointing to hear that Marketers are not considered to be a trustworthy bunch, coming in at only a mere 3%, compared with the Doctors 49%, firefighters 48%, teachers 38%!

 

This reinforces why we need to be authentic online, show our personality and let our customers get to know and like the person first, then the brand we represent. Louis spoke passionately about the purpose of business, which is to create customers, make them come back, and that making money is a by-product. If you only focus on creating customers and making them come back, you will make more money than your competitors, guaranteed!

Marketing is about understanding people, if you understand people very well, you will be able to create stuff that they like.

Companies doing this have:-

• 38% more revenue
• 20% more people willing to spend more
• 90% more likely to recommend

If you focus on people, money will follow.

Be authentic to yourself and to others, show your true colours and people will trust you.

Focus on people trusting you; rather than making more money, as this will result in you making more money.

 

If people do not trust your business, almost half of them will never buy from you, and 42% will openly criticise a company online, which can be very damaging for your brand.

However, if people trust you

• Almost 7 out of 10 will buy from you
• Almost 6 out of every 10 will recommend you
• 41% will share positive opinions of you online

A few take away’s from Louis Grenier of Slice’s Consulting –

What is simple to understand it seems to be true – try to simplify things

• Treat people well – like your audience or traffic, they are people like you and me, talk to them, pick up the phone, meet people look at the real world – you won’t believe the insights you will get!
• Finally be your self, as that will result in people trusting you more and it will come back to you.

Wolfgang Digital gave us some insights into SEO/Link building

Google algorithms updates approximately 500 – 600 times per year!  We should be intimidated by them, some have changed the face of businesses overnight such as Penguin in 2012 which completely changed the face of SEO.

JC Penny’s were wiped off Google search, Expedia lost 25% of their organic traffic overnight because they were involved in bad link building when Penguin launched.

Now we are in a real time penguin update which looks at web spam, it shines a light back on the practice of link building, how we build links, what a good quality link is and what bad link-building practices are.

Now that it is running in real time you won’t have to wait for ages to find out if you have been penalised by Google algorithms. You are going to be penalised very quickly, and that penalty will be lifted quite quickly, unlike before when it took ages. All this web spam protection will happen instantaneously. It has taken Google a long time to get here.

In conversation with one of Google’s top engineers, Wolfgang asked what are the most important ranking factors, the top 2 are:

1. Content and Links
2. Rank Brain (Google’s machine learning A.I. which forms part of the algorithm)

There are 3 pillars of link building which Wolfgang use as their guiding principles:

• Link quality– not all links are born equal you need links from trustworthy sites. Also important is the domain author, identify the people who have given you a link, use open site explorer put it in any URL and work out domain authority, this is a really good indicator of the quality of the link.
• Relationship Building– You are going to have to ask for links in the beginning, don’t automate, remember when you are dealing with real people.
• Diversity – variety is the spice of life and also the spice of SEO, diversify back link profile, mix up the content you are using to get links, have a good mix of .gov’s .com’s .ie’s, understand how diverse your back link portfolio is.

Google look at 200 plus factors and signals before they rank your website, so if you are in SEO that is daunting, links are one of the most important factors.

The key message is, or rather the reality is an SEO strategy that is not underpinned by Link building, is not much of a strategy, it must include link building.

 BBDO Worldwide – From Creator to Curator !

BBDO Worldwide have been a leader in creating content, but just this month they have announced the opening of Flare Studios a sort of role reversal so to speak, as Anthony Quigley put it, “The Creator is now becoming the Curator”,

Ian Pearman, CEO, AMV BBDO said

 “There is an insatiable demand for video content, Flare Studio has been created to help our clients meet this exploding demand, and to demonstrate how BBDO can handle this increased volume, quickly, efficiently and with the highest level of creativity on a global scale, calling it curated crowdsourcing!”

The good news for budding film makers is that now, potentially anyone with a decent camera has the opportunity to create and submit to Flare Studio their content from use in social posts to big budget film that could be used by the world’s leading brands.

In summary of 3XE Digital, here are some of my key take aways:

• Videos is not the future – video is NOW!
• Think like your customers
• Never forget your call to action
• Adopt new tech ahead of the gang
• Mobile first moving to mobile only
• Build quality links for your website SEO

The next 3XE Digital Conference takes place, Thursday 9^th February 2017 and focuses on “Data, Mobile & Social Media”, click here for full details.

 

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