Technology for Marketing & Advertising - Day 1
We’ve been down to The Technology for Marketing & Advertising Conference at Earl’s Court to get up to date on the keynotes and the latest trends. The first keynote I attended was from Nicholas Cumisky, Industry Manager at Google Mobile. He talked about the development of mobile technology and showed how consumer behaviour is changing. For example, 23% of users access the Internet via a mobile device and 10% of search queries are done via a mobile phone, so we all need to pay attention to how our sites appear in mobile search engines! Excitingly, the statistics also show that there is still a lot of growth in mobile access and it goes without saying that one day someone’s access to the Internet will be primarily via a mobile device.
The amazing bit about mobile is that it’s both immediate and local. This means there are so many ways to drive footfall using mobile technology, be it adding a phone number to your search result when it comes up on a mobile device, to adding keywords so that your result comes up if you’re relevant to a specific area. We’ve long been aware that it’s important that websites work well on a mobile platform, but what about creating an app? Although there’s no point in creating an app for the sake of it, Cumisky argued that a mobile site provides instant gratification and a touch point to your brand, but an app provides a longer, more meaningful experience – both worth bearing in mind when looking to extend a brand on mobile. Of course, the keynote touched upon QR codes and Near Field Communication – both technologies that have been around for a while but are just beginning to find a foothold with the consumer.
Another highlight was the panel debate on the risks and rewards of social CRM. The panel was made up of a great mix, including Heather Taylor, former Social Media Manager at giffgaff, a brand that I find extremely interesting. One point during the debate that really stuck out to me is just how important crowd sourcing has become. The panel jointly argued that it is about co-creating ideas and content with the customer and making them feel engaged and important to your campaign. Taylor also made a very important point that I hadn’t considered before – consumers are more willing than ever to talk, and they will pick the forum or the platform of their choosing to do so. If the customer is happy talking on Twitter, they will voice their complaint or praise on it. They won’t look for a specific branded channel to voice their opinion. It’s up to marketers to seek out and find the conversations to know what’s happening. This is something giffgaff does extremely well – the average response time to a consumer query is 3 minutes on their online forum. I tested this out last week and I can testify this is true, I received a response to my problem almost instantly!
All in all, it was a great day spent over in West London and I left more clued up about digital campaigns and how important the customer is when it comes to creating online campaigns. Tom Cornfoot is heading there for day 2, so watch out for his update tomorrow!
