Marketing Week Live 2017 - the best bits

Rawnet attended Marketing Week Live 2017. A mixture of practical, hands-on, expert advice, and inspirational case studies from some of the most disruptive brand marketing campaigns of the moment.

We packed our day full of sessions and spoke to a number of the exhibitors. Our overall impression was that the event was indeed insightful and we came away with new ideas and perspectives on our marketing activity. We have rounded up our favourite bits below.

The future of voice search

Chris Pitt 
Vertical Leap

Chris discussed the mainstream acceptance of voice search. Google are currently reporting that 20% of mobile queries are voice searches.

AI personal assistants, such as Google Now, Cortana, and Amazon Echo, are increasing the number of Conversational Searches performed. Conversational search means is affecting keywords in that long tail search terms will become the norm. A tech challenge for search engines is that they'll need to remember and recognise context. See the example Chris shared below:

User: “Where’s the Golden Gate Bridge?” 
Google: “It’s in San Francisco.” 
User: “Show me a picture of it.” 
Google: shows image 

“Show me a picture of it” means nothing as a standalone search term, so the search engine will have to apply context to the term using the previous search.

Brands need to be aware that this "conversation" takes place entirely within the search app. The user never touches your website. Google will only find and display content from your website, in this case, an image of the Golden Gate Bridge.

A hands-free future

Devices like Amazon Echo already enable us to search from anywhere, without the need for a screen. This means the future of the web searches may well be hands-free, voice-activated and truly mobile. In fact Google has been predicting screenless computing for years.

As marketers, we need to get ahead of the game and start building up a picture of how our audiences will be interacting with our brands when voice technology takes over.

Insider Tip: Bing is the search engine of choice for Siri & Amazon Echo so you’ll need to step up your Bing strategy in 2017.

Social listening 2.0

Marian Cramers 
Crimson Hexagon

Marian discussed the future of social listening, image analysis.

There are plenty of tools in existence that enable us to listen for our brand when it's mentioned in text form, but what about when someone shares an image on Instagram and doesn’t mention your brand in the caption?

Today, 60% of digital impressions are image-driven and 85% of social posts including logos lack any brand-relevant text. This means that queries based on keywords alone fall short of capturing all that’s being shared about your brand in social conversation - the insight that can be gained from these conversations could be the difference between you and your competition.

Image analysis is currently limited to logo recognition, but the future will reveal the context in which that logo resides.

The future of content marketing

Kevin Gibbons, CEO, BlueGlass 
Mark Thompson, Account Director, ITN Productions 
Gary Knight, Commercial Content Director, ITV 

Quality over quantity when syndicating content

Don't put out content unless you have something valuable to say or give to your audience. With fake news at the forefront of social media, it’s imperative for brands to build trust and loyalty through meaningful content. A brand can do stunts but at the end of the day the activity needs to resonate audience. People know when content is paid for on Social media and Google so in the long term brands will become short-term products if they don't stay authentic and relate back to their audience.

The story you tell is more powerful than the technology you use

Humans inherently enjoy storytelling. Your content should focus on creating connections through audience knowledge and related storytelling. Tech is simply a distributor that can enhance the experience and make it more powerful. Use tech to reach more people, more often and in a more dynamic way.

Collecting emotional data is more important than metric data

Human nature is to make decisions on emotion rather than logic. If you can gain qualitative data on your audience you will better equipped for conversions. There will be interesting point of time in the future where recommendations and algorithms will be able to look at emotional data (e.g. eye movement, facial expression, tone of voice). By collecting logical and emotional data on your prospects as well as your customers - the full audience - you can understand the motivations and drivers for purchase.

BMW sometimes target non-BMW drivers saying you probably can't have a BMW, but one day you might. This enforces their brand image and also makes current BMW drivers feel good about what they are driving.

Personalisation needs to be humanised 1:1 but not forgetting groups

Personalisation is essentially putting suggestions in front of you that might tempt you to interact further. Be careful of not getting too far away from mass audience connections, as people still enjoy experiencing things together e.g. sports matches, cinema.

There are 3 key pillars of a good content marketing strategy - content should either educate, inform or entertain

By understanding their audience and using technology, Expedia have created a campaign about movie characters and mythical creatures based on their audience's movie interests. For example, people who enjoy traveling with Expedia but also enjoy watching Game of Thrones can see on an interactive map, types of holidays they can go on that relate to their favourite movie. This has allowed Expedia to put their brand at the heart of the story.

This is an example of content that is not typically salesly. Instead, it relates to the audience in a new way and draws them in. It takes them on an engaging journey which could ultimately lead to a sale.

If you need any help planning or executing the insights mentioned in this article, get in touch