5 key takeaways from ICEEfest's panel on digital marketing

The mobile revolution and content marketing were at the forefront of ICEEfest‘s panel on digital marketing, running through the first half of ICEEfest’s first day on June 12th. Representatives from Facebook, Sizmek, Forbes and other noteworthy companies tried to get across the message that advertising is content, but content needs to engage the customer, not just deliver information.

There is no future for offline marketers

Marcin Brus, head of CEE at Facebook, kicked things off by saying that “there is no future for marketers that don’t understand the online world”.

There are 5 million Facebook users in Romania and 2 billion worldwide so the audience is clearly there. The focus should be on mobile platforms because potential customers carry their phones with them constantly. We check our phones before we go to sleep and first thing in the morning, 39 percent of us even browse the Internet in the toilet. Users are always connected.

But simply knowing this is not enough. Tej Rekhi, director of innovation strategy for Sizmek, warns marketers that people have a different mindset when using their smartphone at the office and when using their smartphone at home. Relevancy is not simply a matter of understanding technology, it’s a matter of understanding online habits. And they are far more complex than just logging on or off.

“Content may be king but context is the queen” – Ilyan Kovatchev, Founder and Creative Director, Ilyan.com.

Technology is becoming invisible

Ilyan Kovatchev goes further and tells us that marketing is entering “an age of femininity”, with the focus leaning away from technology, from what it can do. We are no longer amazed that we can use the Internet on our phones. We are no longer amazed that we can play games on our iPad.

Technology has in a way become invisible because it is so ingrained in our daily lives. We are moving beyond the technological, looking for the emotional connection.

“The boys have played with their toys and now the girls are going to make sense of it” – Ilyan Kovatchev says.

Multiscreen digital campaigns

A digital campaign needs a strategy for including different platforms.

“Never forget what you are working with: data”, Tej Rekhi tells us.

20 percent of digital campaigns in the last year were multiscreen campaigns and in the next two years that percentage will grow to 50 percent. Your campaign needs to connect with the customer on his smartphone, his tablet, his smart-tv etcetera.

“We already have the technology, we need to change the business model”, Tej Rekhi goes on.

One part of the business model that needs to change is the over-reliance on banner advertising and its metrics for success. Pageviews are the simplest way of measuring traffic, traffic is the easiest way to sell advertising, and selling advertising is the easiest way for publishers to make money online. But while pageviews (and their cousins, metrics impressions and click-through-rates) are still effective in judging direct-marketing campaigns, they are useless when it comes to brand advertising.

Bitesized content

Smartphones may be getting thinner, tablets may be getting bigger, but content needs to get smaller. On the one hand there is the very pragmatic approach: data traffic is expansive. A smartphone user will look at each kilobyte of traffic, knowing that it costs money.

On the other hand, digital space is too fragmented, too many people are saying the same thing,.

“90 percent of the world’s data was created in the last two years” – Lee Odden CEO Top Rank Online Marketing.

Advertising needs to stop interrupting content and become the content that customers are actively looking for.

“We want them to be angry because we haven’t posted because our posts are so cool!” Marcin Brus, Facebook.

What customers are looking for and respond too are bitesized bits of content that deliver a big impact: a single tweet can be retweeted millions of times like in the case of the Oscar selfie, a 3-minute video can be watched 2 billion times on Youtube (Gangnam Style). It’s more and more common that people are very stingy with their time and attention on Internet, so you need to cut the clutter and say more with less.

Content shock

There is too much content on the Internet and everybody is giving it away for free. The state when the amount of content supersedes the human’s ability to perceive it is defined as content shock.

As publishers, you have even more to worry about than marketers. There are a finite number of people in the world, and they can consume only so much content that is already given for free. So how can publishers and brands work together to reach an audience in a relevant way that would also lead to sales.

Jacquelin White, CEO Daily Secret, encourages brands to work closely to the publishers to “tell a story that matters”, and gave the example of her online website’s collaboration with the National Greek Tourism Authority. Daily Secret sent out a newsletter to their subscribers to ask them “what kind of traveler are you?”: adventurer, romantic, indulger etc. Based on their replies, they received specific travel recommendations for Greece. The objective of the campaign was to transform Greece into the primary summer destination for North American readers of Daily Secret.

It not only engaged the users, but delivered to the client a noteworthy database regarding travel habits.

Charles Yardley, CEO EMEA Forbes Media, offers the example of BrandVoice, an online platform which allows marketers to publish content directly into the Forbes site, flowing through the editorial streams and revealed in all the same ways and places as our editorial content.

Diana Petrescu

DMCA

PROTECTED