Digital marketing has given us some clarity with measurement but those are all vanity metrics. We are driving traffic but is that actually turning to revenue and measureable results? Don’t just put wind in the sails, help guide the ship.

• ROI was never supposed to be used for marketing. Reframe the conversation to explain our value better. Marketing ROI = Change in Revenue + Insights + Change in Assets
• Net profit / investment is what we are asking to prove but it doesn’t’ make any sense. If you are not driving the customer you’re getting customers who are not the right fit. Help them self-select out. Consider the diminishing value of cookie pools. Are you educating your stakeholders and helping them make smart decisions. Brand awareness is an asset that depreciates at a variable but rapid rate. It is as memorable as the experience it creates. 6-12 months and those memories start to fade. How strong were your connections? Need to report back status of your brand.
• Create a Marketing Statement Report. 1. Revenue Generation: For every opportunity hand off X (from marketing activity), I get Y Realized Revenue (include lifetime value). Revenue Enhancement: e.g. Reduce close time, improve close rate and increase size of sale. 2. Insights: Who, What & Why. 3. Assets: Assign value to your assets, recognize that they depreciate over time, and report on maintenance costs. For each show prior numbers, losses, gains, and current.
• Identify the relationship between quality opportunities and revenue realization. All KPIs used to estimate generated revenue must have a quality threshold. Look backward 12 months. Rolling window of time and re-analyze regularly. Historical data is not enough. Examine your customer roadmap and use control groups to determine exact impact. Split your audience at a touch point and see if it had an impact and led to the ultimate sale. Use insights to become a trusted advisor. The who should translate directly to a persona, what are their hot buttons and emotional attachments. The what should be a specific pain point you’re trying to solve. It states your problem, hypothesis and results. Why is this important? This needs to explain the impact of the results and how the organization will benefit. Consider giving your assets a value. What did it cost to build it or what is the replacement cost? Show a chart with aggregate value or size over time. Each asset (e.g. Known Audience) should have before, what is the natural decay, what you added, and what you have today.
• Experiment and Iterate. CUPS: Control Group, Uncontaminated Conditions, Pain Point and Hypothesis, Statistical Significance.
• Move in slow and measured ways. If you run it too long you’re increasing the likelihood of external factors influencing your data. E.g. Pay per click, run more than one at once to see which works better. Don’t continue to throw spaghetti at the wall. Try to get insights out of it. What is the probability that this is right/wrong. Is there enough data being measured?

Digging in to inbound marketing. Detail how you are spending your time. What should you focus on this quarter and in future quarters? Use provided worksheets to determine personas and campaign strategy. Work to match your buyer stage and persona with your content accordingly.

• Define goals, revenue targets, criteria for qualified leads, as well as a break down sales funnel. Inbound marketing spreadsheet and personas guide: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B1_dMhMCuLoLfjFYY3g4SjVWUnFMS1JoVWNyZzdfLXNZdWExcmVUWWpZQ2laQ2U2QmdSazg&usp=sharing
• Generally predict no more than two quarters in advance.
• How is your inbound marketing strategy adapted for TOFU Awareness & Lead Nurturing Post-Awareness, MOFU Consideration, BOFU Decision. Work to match your content to the persona and the buyer stage that people are in.
• Inbound marketing typically includes: content offer, landing page, thank you page, follow-up email, call to action, supporting blog posts, email blast, social promotion, pr / guest blogging, paid. Pre-written tweets are more likely to be shared. Create high-level persona buckets and break personas into primary and secondary. Look at demographics, what emotions do they feel before, after, challenges / points of pain. What challenges do we face in reaching each persona? How can we help and what are common objections? How long is each buyer stage and what types of content resonate with each? What are typical behaviors, research / info needs, and key search terms they use in each stage?
• Map out your content in detail. What are the conversion rates of existing and new content? For new content, focus on the primary persona in the awareness stage. They tend to generate the most interest and lead generation. Don’t forget about existing customers with upselling or cross selling. Also look to turn common objections into blog posts that become lead nurturing resources.
• Determine criteria to trigger workflow. Do they engage? When do they move to the next stage or into the backburner list?

Engage with your audience and build relationships that are not just one way. Create a continuous stream of useful helpful targeted content. This will lead to a reliable reach and create a proprietary audience. Rich content doesn’t come from LinkedIn Updates or Tweets. The real opportunity for vast reach and to build authority is with Blogs, Videos, and Podcasts. Create content that is RITE: Relevant Interesting Timely and Entertaining. Provide an original viewpoint and be human. Don’t worry about searching for a target audience, allow it to find you.

• Human Interaction – Today we have an opportunity today to have the following: person-to-person, complete transparency, immediacy, word of mouth reputation, and primal need for connection.
• Continuous small interaction – Look for the Alpha Audience, the people that love you and are trying to connect. Content creates awareness that leads to engagement, which leads to trust, which leads to loyalty, which trumps everything. Create a continuous stream of useful helpful targeted content. We’re here, we’re listening, we care, we’re helping, and we’re connecting. Reliable Reach happens over time and creates a proprietary audience. Evaluate your metrics and consider adding some for things like how many times we’re tweeting other people.
• Social Media Mindset – We must change our mindset. It’s not about ads. 1. Meaningful content: content is the center, the catalyst that makes it all happen. 2. Targeted connections: with all the tools out there we can use it to our advantage. 3. Authentic Helpfulness: sell sell sell to help help help. Was this luck? Were any of us looking to sell something? Many benefits are qualitative not quantitative.
• Information Ecosystem – Understand how the content moves. Great examples don’t have to cost much, but if the word gets out, self-selected customers will get to your website which is where the business gets done. Create the relationships and content where they are.
• Power – The ability to create and share content has democratized influence. Content that moves creates power. How influential you are. Why me? Advocates: Nurture, acknowledge and reward them. The audience that cares may be less than 2% but that is where we need to focus.

Six questions that lead you to content marketing strategy
1. Can you answer this question? “Only we …” What makes you different? Why do people love you and keep coming back? Who are our customers?
2. Can our culture nurture and sustain a social media transformation? This has to come from the top. They have to understand and support it.
3. Are we a conversational brand? Or could we be …
4. What are our competitors doing? Where are our customers getting their information? Talk to customers look for unmet needs
5. What is our source of rich content? The opportunity for vast reach and to build authority isn’t from Tweets or LinkedIn updates. You need something bigger like a Blog, Videos, and Podcasts. There is a relationship between time required to create and the audience ownership level.
6. What does success look like? Build an audience. Twitter, LinkedIn, Other Blogs. Stick to a schedule. Become a blogger not a writer.

5 steps to scintillating blogging content.
1. Compelling headline (catchy, descriptive accurate, contains keyword, tweetable – short, lists)
2. Original Viewpoint. Gain confidence by: limit the time you work on a post. 500 word essay – one page double spaced. Write for yourself. Take advantage of coaching. Instead of searching for a target audience, allow it to find you. As you create content, put a stake in the ground but don’t obsess with niche. You will get feedback that guides you.

Aaron shared his journey of starting Search Experiences and how he came up with the idea of DigiMarCon Conferences. The marketing technology landscape has changed drastically from 150 in 2011 to nearly 1900 companies today. Search Experiences has found opportunities to innovate in search and pioneered a Branded Search Solution.

• We currently have content controlled web results in mainstream search engines. What if I could make my own customizations and get unbiased results in a personalized search engine? Currently search engines are generic, bland, impersonal, ‘one-size-fits-all’ experiences. This is an opportunity to provide a branded search experience tailored to my interests.
• Traffic comes directly or indirectly. If the search engine was themed around the brand the user would receive custom branded search page and search results. Custom sidebar content. Browser toolbar. Web enabled site search widget that can replace any typical website site search bar.
• Through normal user behavior, branded search solution can be activated. Everyone exits. Where do they go next? Behavior is search engine to website to search engine. Activate your branded search solution when the user exists and extend the time they are engaging your brand.

Today we need a strategy to store and manage stocks of files.

• Media today involves multiple touch points and multi-channel is a must. Also, More than 50% of all web traffic is coming from mobile devices. So one piece of media has to be modified multiple times. We’ve seen a huge increase in creative files. Store it, find it and use it. We also need to keep track of expiration dates, metadata, licensing issues.
• WoodWing provides a DAM Digital Asset Managing Strategy. Streamlining workflows for multiple users. Single source assets for multiple uses. Centralized repository. Not creative only. Presentations, reports and more. They also integrate with systems and provide single sourcing of assets.
• If you are considering a provider for these services, analyze the requirements. Workflow audit, ask yourself, what are we doing today, what works, and what are the limitations? Involve the target groups, identify internal and external target groups and discuss needs and expectations. Define the goals of your initiative. Think not only for today but for the future and ensure unlimited scalability for storage and users.
• Metadata, who what where when and why. Copyright and licenses to avoid legal issues. Do we need something new or can we use something we already paid for? Apply permissions and capabilities within the system
• Integration maximizes ROI. Versions, who has touched it, what have they done?

Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz, Moz
Everyone is doing the same things. Try to adopt early and invest in formats people are not using. Be a signal amidst the noise. If you do things that don’t scale you’ll stand out from the crowd. Think about all the things people are doing before they come into the funnel and create content in those area. Don’t undervalue what you spend on brand investments,1. The less accessible it is, the harder it is to get to, the easier it is to do it well. Everyone is using the same keywords. Google suggests common searches when you start typing. Google Correlate. Data visualization shows how many followers people have. The most followed people are overwhelmed and getting reached out to by us. How to break through – Perhaps we could look at who influences them. Or I could sort them by not just followers but by social authority. Likelihood that they are re-tweeted. Or scroll down to find those who’d be more receptive. Marketers are told to pursue stuff that scales. The beautiful thing about stuff that doesn’t scale is you stand out from the crowd.
2. Strategy. Try to invest in formats other people are not using. The easier it is to create the harder it is to stand out. The fastest growing social platforms are based on visuals. Visuals are often perceived as more trustworthy and accurate than text alone. “Stockneric” “Borprate” IIlledgeforgraphic” Authentic and amateur content often out performs polished and professional. Think about what are all the things people are doing before they come into the funnel and create content in those areas.
3. Adopt early while competitors delay. Facebook ads are reaching saturation. Mobile friendly is a must. Some are doing mobile first. Tinder is an excellent example. In 3 years from launch it has completely dominated the market. CNN stories experimenting with this. By noticing someone early you can get a sweet deal on ad space. Today’s news forms are tomorrow’s keyword demand.
4. Pay attention to correlation as well as causal inputs. Social Media correlation is well accepted. Correlation in SEO, people lose their minds. What is happening at a deeper level that the surface. Just because you implement with a SEO doesn’t mean you should rank higher. What are these sites doing that these are not doing.
5. Invest in the hardest tactic Brand. Web searchers are strongly biased by brands. One of the strongest predictor of whether people click isn’t the title or the description. It is the link. What is the brand. Drive up the association people have with us being an authority with the click thru rate. Then brand becomes a huge asset. Brand advertising may be a part of how SEO campaigns are done. Are people undervaluing what they’re spending on brand investments?

Free data tools available and a scientific approach to writing content.

• Data Science vs. Big Data Analytics. Data Science is a practice that you can apply to anything big or small. Big Data can provide a higher level of accuracy.
• Tools. Must be free or have a free tier. Must have widespread users so you can participate in a community. Must be easy to use.
  1. WatsonAnalytics.com – IBM’s predictive analytical platform.
  2. Rstudio (Cloud) Coursera has a free class

  BigML

• Why combine digital marketing and data science? There is a massive explosion of data and marketing technology. Gardner survey 90% of organizational data goes unused.
• It’s all about timing right message, right time, right context.
• 1. Customer segmentation and journey analysis. What if I could define particular criteria for a very targeted consumer group. 2. Marketing campaign propensity. Understand the journey of your customer. 3. Content marketing optimization. Viral content. 4. Predictive attribution. 5. Churn and burn.
• 6 steps on how to apply data science. 1. Prepare your historical data. Buzzsumo, type keyword will list all the content with all the shares and more info. Download it into CSV format. Or use Google Chrome Scraper plugin. 2. Watsonanalytics. 3. Upload and analyze and look at initial patters. Ask interesting questions. What is the most popular blank. Charts and graphs. 4. Select the prediction criteria. Then you land on the prediction dashboard. And you’ll see the prediction accuracy. Focus on these things and you’ll get highly popular content. Drill down to prediction charts. Gives stats about categories and word counts, keywords, etc. Scientific approach to writing content. Flow charts will show the sequence of the popularity. Initially it was brainstorming. 6. Datacrackle.com

In sales, if I can get there first, I have a 1:3 to 1:2 chance of getting that business. We must adopt new technologies that allow us to redefine getting there first and provide the opportunity to influence their expectation.

• Proximity Marketing is location based, provides real time engagement, and helps catch an inbound marketing lead at near-zero point of decision making.
• Bluefield, Bluetooth RFID. – Some are very segmented. Very limited in adoption.
• Keep the adoption rate high. Qualcomm LTE Direct. 1. Universal application. In 2018 (similar to Bluetooth) it will be on all devices, 2. I can engage with others Wi-Fi independent 3. and no battery drain.
• This provides a new definition of responding first, provides potential to influence their expectation. Expect more competition. Generic messaging won’t be able to compete.
• Messaging should be relevant, have added incentive and a call to action.

Five years from now what will digital marketing look like? Today, data that doesn’t have email has little or no value. Similarly, moving forward, data not linked to social profiles will have almost no value.

• When a new media emerges, history repeats itself. Smart companies learn from history. Direct mail, email, marketing automation.
• Marketing should build an asset not just be a process. Collect data early and build data assets even if you’re not ready to put it to use. Think about the next generation and try to prepare to communicate with them.
• Is big data from social media the future? Will social media replace email to the extent that email has replaced direct mail? Email won’t go away, direct mail has not.
• Data in most databases include demographics. Social media profiles tend to be much richer and include info like personal interests, schools, etc. And it’s self-reported in that it’s very accurate and detailed.
• Include social profile links and connections in your ask. Use social logins.

This is not new, but it is vital. Enter the world with a Pay It Forward mindset and have the objective to serve first. Build real partnerships, a loyal fan base, and a community. This will put you in a place none of your competitors can touch because people want to help you. Do it authentically from a good place and good things will happen.

Mobile is not an option. It isn’t just about content consumption it is becoming the remote control to the physical space. Build trust by getting permission and delivering value. We have so much content and data that we need to think more about algorithms and smarter content.

• Adobe experience manager & adobe marketing cloud helps take great content and reach audiences that matter. Passionate about delivering technology that helps build digital experiences.
• Strategy Analytics, October 2014: 35 billion connected devices estimated to ship in 2020. Half of the devices in the next five years that will be available haven’t been created yet.
• Connected wearables, cars (turns into a living room), homes (meters are the rage at the moment. Consumer Reports article about privacy and connected devices.
• Where are we in the journey, innovate meaningful real-world applications. We need to rethink today to prepare for tomorrow.
• Smartwatch gives insight into what’s holding back adoptions. Burberry is melding physical and digital to create a truly personalized experience. John Lewis Partnership enhancing in store and online customer experiences -> Localz, a startup focused on location based. BMW Drive now, will let them unlock cars around London and rent them out. Disney My Magic+ Band looks to reinvent the resort experience. Those are examples of how people are looking at digital experiences beyond.
• What does that mean in terms of our investments? 1. Mobile is not an option. Precursor to internet of things. It’s not just about content consumption or as interactions. It is becoming the remote control to the physical space. How do you build out the app out that way? 2. You can’t build a business on anonymity. Build trust by delivering value. Don’t do the tactic without understanding value to the customer as well as their fears. Use this to drive demand. Convenience, preemptive customer service, shared customer insights. Permission is everything. Consent. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Think about more unique things you can do. 3. You need smarter content and data that takes action. This is about algorithms. We have so much content and data that we actually need smarter content. The ability to have tech that gives you insights about big data and to the point that it can also do those actions for you.

Rethink how you approach website design. Consider applying growth driven design which will minimize the risk and allow you to continuously learn and improve.

• Build a team, request a budget, plan out a timeframe. Start mapping everything out. Traditional design is riddled with risk for being over budget, costing more, launching a hypothesis, and we don’t validate it at all. It sits with little or no updates until 2 years later.
• Growth Driven Design 1. Minimize the Risk 2. Continuously Learn and Improve. 3. Inform Marketing and Sales. This is continuous improvement.
• Phase 1: Strategy. Starts with goals and personas. Then we look at analytics. Where are they interacting and dropping off. User experience research. How can we best serve our customers. What is the strategy of each individual page. Goal is to create a brainstorm wish list. 70-150 things you want on the site.
• Phase 2: Launch Pad Website. What are 20% of the list that makes 80% impact. Nice haves vs must have. Then go thru the normal stuff, UX, wireframe, design, etc. Simple UX testing to make sure we’re moving in the right direction. Setup Data collection to make sure we’re getting everything we need. Launch quick.
• Phase 3: Then we begin putting things in buckets and coming up with wish lists. Boosting conversation – user path, testing value props, split testing. Improve User Exp. – navigation, blog layout, UI, mobile. Personalize to the User – Personalization, by interests, by device, by previous actions. Build Marketing Assets – Tools, marketing resources, directories / listings, seo focused asset.
• For each action item, we will create a hypothesis statement. Persona doing an action, we changing x into y will result in z. We believe this to be true because of A. Expected Impact + effort required + metrics measured + definition of complete. Then you can start prioritizing by expected impact of H, M, L. Then you can go into continuous improvement. Every action starts with a user.
• Planning. Performance vs goals. Additional data or research to make sure that we should be focusing on these? Learn – from marketing and sales. Brainstorm prioritize. Growthdrivendesign.com: all the details on how to implement this at your company. Develop – All hands on deck. Set up validation tracking. Learn – validate or kill assumptions, publish results. Transfer – take what we learned to improve marketing and sales.
• Smaller cost, launch pad website, validated results, continuous improvement

There is a ton of great data out there. Predictive Intelligence is based on the foundation of data. Intent data can be both inferred and direct. The key to this revolution is how you leverage it. Make sure that sales and marketing are aligned. Integrate the data into CRM systems. Create alerts and reports and automatic emails to sales.

Intent Data

1. Inferred Intent Datanyze and HGdata they diagnose the back end of the website. They can tell you when a snippet gets put on the website. Tells you when a company starts using a particular product. Pitchbook and Cap IQ. Wants to know every single time a company gets VC financing. Bombora used to be the backend for 100’s of publishers.
2. Direct Intent. Wanted analytics and burning glass scrapes job posting sites. If you’re hiring a sales rep or implementing X that is of interest to us. Every day we have a dashboard of companies looking for it.
3. Job Posting Data
4. Technology Install Data
5. Twitter Firehose Data
6. Financing Events

 

• They created a dashboard on marketing automation. Tell just the companies who are doing the most research on X. These topics are broken into intent on specific products or services.
• Created a segment based on Bombora data and linked those to topics to companies in market database. 1k emails for 1 lead. 3 leads for 1 demo. 5 demos for one opportunity. 3 opportunities for 1 deal.15k emails to get one deal. This strategy gave 549 leads and then they emailed them highly personalized content. 3 closed opportunities in 60 days and put the largest deal in their history in their pipeline. Couple the data with TRUE marketing campaigns.
• Integrate it into CRM systems. Create alerts and reports and auto email to sales. Intent Data to add data to marketing automation to your CRM.
• Account based marketing. Treat individual accounts as a market in their own right. 10 rules. Listenloop can be done within an ad. Terminus can do specific targeting just within a specific group. Create 1 to 1 C level campaigns.

How do you establish yourself as an authority? Brands have to become publishers. Perhaps the whole goal is to “own the conversation” around something related to what you’re selling. The most effective strategy involves dismissing the intermediaries and owning the audience yourself. Don’t interrupt them with content they don’t want. Engage them with valuable content that intersects the needs of the brand and the audience. Encourage them to share your contagious brand stories.

• First, unearth your story platform. It’s not a tagline or a product descriptor, not external facing, and not what you tell your customers. It’s the single unified thought that should be apparent in every brand communication. It is the core narrative you want to deliver in every story.
• Beach Nut: This is not baby food it’s real food for babies. Content for commercials is different than the web content. Recognizably core narrative that is played out in an authentic way across multiple channels. These are not silo’d experiences. This is about building a tribe around your product.

Facebook is where your parents are so it tends to be used less with Millennials. Instagram is a place for the best picture of the night. Snapchat is used for a behind the scenes look and is very good for sharing the inside story before and after an event. It allows for hyper engagement, and people who use it regularly are creating content constantly. At its core, Snapchat is a messaging app for one to one engagement and it feels different than other social platforms.

• o PopShorts uses proprietary tools across new mediums. The reason they focus on SnapChat. Kevin Jonas: 5m follow him on twitter = 100k impressions. 800k on snapchat = 250k impressions. Unique ways to get around the limitations. These are engaged people they’re not just scrolling thru.
• At it’s core it’s a messaging app for one to one engagement. It feels different. This is a bit more in the evenings and kicking back.
• A teenager’s view on social media. Why Millennials love SnapChat. It has a lot less social pressure attached to it. Andrew Watts, 19.
• Snapchat you post the before during and after. Hyper engagement, they are creating content constantly. FB clean. Instagram best pic of the night.
• QR code for SnapChat on his twitter background.

Use it to give insight into the backend of your company. Share, create and tell amazing stories. Stories feature. Tap feature to get to go to the next 10 s view.

1. Send snaps of them drawing on their thumb. Thumbwars.
2. MTV announced their entire nominations on SnapChat. Quick look behind the curtain. Native to the environment.
3. Mashable is always using it as an extension of the content they’re doing. Emoji challenge. Add emoji’s to your daily life.
4. Grubhub 40k sent and received. Everything sent was responded to in an authentic way. Hired someone full time. Coupons to only their SnapChat audience.
5. Three types: Celebrities rihanna, ryanseacrest, kylizzlemynizzl – Cross platform social personalities brittanyfulan jeromejarre casyneistat – Organic artist creating snapterpieces @shnduras, cyreneq mpatco
6. Challenge to jump it. Solution brought in artists to live snap for a full 24 hours from within Walt Disney parks. They made it all and then posted it all on the Disney page. 50k followers in 24 hours hugely positive response. It traveled to other platforms.
7. Snapoff between to popular artists. The audience voted.

The Voice snapped fans back individually with special valentine’s message from their voice valentine.

• Tap thru the story. Ask a q. did he get the acorn? People come back with whether he got it.
• SnapChat discover. You can work with any of 9 digital publishers. Users need to swipe to see new content.
• Creating discover content that users want to share taken from adweek. Give users an image they can decorate with an emoji. Tab and hold to snap.
• Have users fill in the blank.
• Overcoming SnapChats limitations. It’s hard to build a large following with disappearing content. No clickable links. Doesn’t allow for my brand to tell a complete story.
• Recruiting, long sales cycle, targeting influencers.
• The basics. What is Snapchat and how does it work? Demographics and usage statistics, trends, and best practices.
• Snapchat features. Direct snaps, Snapchat Stories, Snapchat Discovery, Filters, Geo-Filters etc. are all explained.
• Why teenagers love Snapchat, in the words of actual teenagers.
• Why Snapchat is the most engaging social platform ever, and why you need to get over the fact the content disappears.
• How to get around Snapchat’s $750k/day ad minimum and efficiently build your brand’s Snapchat following.
• The art of Snapchat storytelling. Real examples of brands using Snapchat right.

Adam and Kevin have presented on Snapchat to CMO’s, social and digital strategists at the world’s leading brands, agencies and studios.