Philadelphia Digital Marketing Summit Recap
Team Red Brick attended the Philadelphia Digital Marketing Summit on a mission to bring you back the most important knowledge bombs. We've got key stats, important data tracking changes, a round up of cool new tools, and findings you can put into action immediately. Let's dig into the recap!
But first, remember, when we talk about marketing we're observing "pirate rules".
Everything we share "are more like guidelines".
As you read this newsletter, keep in mind at the end of the day people are just people. Whether you ar B2B or B2C you are selling to people. If your brand accommodates it, loosen up and focus on appealing to people on a human level. We all like to laugh, we all like to learn, we all like pumpkin spice lattes (well, maybe not everyone).
Noteworthy Stats
Zero click content boosts reach 10x.
Toward Data Science estimates ~20% of browsers block GA tracking (more on desktop than mobile).
58% of Hacker News, Reddit, and tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics and Plausible shows that percentage rises to nearly 60% for "tech-savvy" audiences.
In 2020, 64.82% of Google searches were zero-click, 33.59% clicked on organic content, and only 1.59% clicked on paid ads.
73% of US adults use YouTube and Baby Boomers and Gen X are the fastest growing demographics on YouTube.
Video shorts should be 59 seconds or less. To stop the scroll, build them in 1-2 sentence increments and change the background every 2-3 seconds to keep interest.
People who watch videos about your product are 64% more likely to buy your product or service.
Keynote Recap
Okay - so this one wasn't super uplifting...The Death of Marketing Attribution...ouch right?
🔑 Many targeting and tracking tactics that we use in the US are not possible in the rest of the world. As we enter a new cookie-less world, we need to be prepared to change our perspective on targeting and tracking.
🔑 Google is automatically adding keywords to your CPC strategy that they think are relevant, making advertiser results worse and more expensive. If you've seen a drop in the effectiveness of your CPC strategy, this could be why. Less granular tracking is driving costs up for advertisers. Many marketers are investing more heavily in first party data to combat this.
🔑 The bottom line: forget about tracking individuals pre-login or pre-form conversion. Tracking organic touch points isn't going to be possible the way it once was.
💡Instead, focus on lead conversion, not traffic or vanity metrics. If you've been working with Red Brick you're in the clear on this one. We've always been focused on database growth through conversions so we've never been dependent upon third party data to track your success.
Dark Social
Many social networks show up as "direct" traffic in your analytics according to research from SparkToro. The chart below shows "dark" traffic from major social networks.
🔑 "Zero click content" (content on social, delivered in search results, etc) gets 10x the reach of "click" content because the viewer gets everything they need without the friction of a click. Marketers are increasingly creating zero click content to give users what they want, but now we've got to look to other metrics to measure our success in the absence of clicks.
💡Instead focusing on vanity metrics (impressions, opens, clicks) pay attention to where your audience is and work on converting those people into your database. Building and investing in growing your email list will help you develop valuable first party data that you can use to target your people. This has always been our strategic approach at Red Brick. Contact us if you want to discuss how to make this work for you.
All Things AI
Unsurprisingly, AI was a big topic this year. Here's a few pearls from the sessions:
When writing AI prompts, include the target audience role, industry, and audience pain points to optimize results.
Brainstorm with AI to help find ways to switch up your content formats. If you're working with us, we've got this one covered for you. But the point is only doing webinars might cause you to miss some of your audience. Feather in ebooks, quizzes, infographics, etc to make sure you have formats for everyone.
This isn't really AI, but use automation to notify contact owners of contacts who have viewed 15, 30, and 45 website pages. This can help you find engaged contacts that are ready to hear from you.
AI is a powerful creative co-pilot. Don't underestimate the value of having a conversation with ChatGPT.
Because Google has been using generative AI in search results recently, more companies have been worried about what will happen to their SEO rankings. Embedded videos and other accessible media in your blogs will help significantly. Try adding an audio recording of your blog post to allow visitors to listen.
Okay okay that's a lot of data. Let's take a quick brain break...
Alfred Yarbus found that when subjects are asked to look at images, their eyes wander widely across the picture. However, when asked specific questions about the image, their eyes target very specific things. Marketers are now using this study to help ask and steer reader attention in blogs and on social media. Here is a quick image from Colgate on this:
Traditional marketing communications are dead. Customers expect 1:1, 2-way conversations.
Resource Roundup
[Book] Lost and Founder, from the keynote speaker Rand Fishkin
Take Action Now
Start investing in building your email database. As cookies disappear, your first party data will only become more important.
Embed subscribe forms as banners in blogs instead of forcing users to click out to a different page to subscribe.
Spice up your CTAs to deliver the promised land. So instead of "download" try "make my life easier" or other CTAs that hit the audience pain points.
It’s okay to have a once-a-month social post that asks followers to subscribe to your newsletter.
Improve your "thank you for subscribing" email to get more out of new subscribers.
Viewers excuse poor video more readily than they excuse poor audio. That's right, you can shoot video on your iPhone, but before you do, CLEAN YOUR LENS!
Nobody cares who you are on YouTube. Skip the intro, get right into the meat of your topic.
If you are doing TikTok, do NOT use a personal account for business. We know it's tempting so you can access all the trending sounds but there could be serious copyright legal ramifications - it's not worth it.
Put a subscribe option in the middle of your YouTube video instead of the end and see a huge spike in subscribers. Use YouTube to build your email database (yep...first party data...again).
One of the easiest things you can do to boost your SEO is to go back to old blog posts and add cross links to newer blog posts.
Reuse older eBooks by whittling them down to their core. Take out the graphical elements and update them for a blog format. This long-form content can help you get found on Google. You can also track how long visitors read these long blog posts to understand where your sweet spot is for content creation.
Don’t forget about testimonials. These are an easy, free, and fast way to grab attention on social media and help lead people down the path to conversion on your website. Employee testimonials are especially powerful.
For those with teams or who are part of a marketing team, there was a session about confidence building and part of the discussion was creating a "Achievement/ Reflection Log". We snapped a picture for you below. This is a nice way to not only build confidence, but keep track of key achievements throughout the year.
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