by Katie Fetting and Scott Smith
A sea of lanyards and branded swag overtook McCormick Place, the Midwest’s convention capital, as hundreds of marketers attended Digital Summit Chicago on Oct. 24-25. Panelists dropped knowledge on everything from branded content and programmatic advertising to the Onion News Network and Beyonce.
We put our heads together and identified four lessons to emerge from the conference.
Lesson 1: Search is going to become device agnostic
iPullRank’s Michael King played a clip of the movie Her to answer the question of where he believes search is heading: way less scrolling through search results and way more Artificial Intelligence-customized voice search.
Future AI will learn a user’s habits, preferences and characteristics to serve up the single, most relevant answer for that user. Some of this is currently happening via Alexa, Siri and Google voice search, albeit in a more rudimentary form that relies on featured snippets and top results.
King explained our future will more likely resemble the Star Trek computer than the Minority Report screens. This will inevitably lead us to a world where voice search transfers seamlessly from cell to smart TV to Tesla.
Lesson 2: But effective content will be device (and platform) specific
The Onion’s Vice President of Marketing Joe Fullman spoke about its digital strategy, including the creation of “modular” content that can be recut and reused across platforms.
Planning for modularity becomes increasingly important as marketers recognize how platforms and devices are used differently, even by the same user. Now a piece of raw content must be recut based on audience, platform, device and stage of the customer journey.
The most cost-effective way to do this – and how we operate daily with our digital media property La Vida Baseball – is by considering these various subsets from the outset. One interview may render a long-form video, five short-form video pieces for YouTube or Facebook, 10 sub-60 second Instagram videos, a GIF, a written piece and countless graphic quotes. Making high-quality versions of each, however, requires a focus on multi-platform distribution and a strong understanding of the goal for each “cut.”
Lesson 3: Consumers will continue to trade privacy for ease (as long as it doesn’t make them uneasy)
Everyone wants a customized experience now. But how do you demonstrate you know what your consumer wants without making it obvious you’re picking up every digital bread crumb they leave?
Start with creating email that’s more useful and responsive to user cues. Nora Snoddy with email provider Emma talked up the need for a single CTA, a mobile-first design and providing value as soon as a customer signs up. She recommends creating triggered workflows to reward the consumer’s interest: a thank you email, then a case study or social proof followed by proven high-performing content before making a clear ask for data or a purchase in the 4th email.
This approach of taking advantage of that early-in-the-relationship-glow is preferable over the men’s shirt store that recently sent me a triggered email after I recently went to its website for the first time in a while. The copy essentially said “So we noticed you were on our website recently and thought you might want to get this deal.” Cool, that’s not at all like an ex emailing out of the blue. “Just wanted you to know I was thinking about you!”
Better still is an example cited by Melissa Metcalf from MailChimp, which created Freddie and Co., an e-commerce store designed to better understand the way people shop online. But they grounded it in empathy, pairing each limited-edition product with donations to local social service non-profits. Better UX and I made the world a little better? Yes, please.
Contrast that with the continued decline of useful display ads. At some point, retargeting was probably helpful. But to keep getting emails a month after I’ve already decided not to buy tickets to that one stadium concert seems creepy. No wonder data shows Gen Z is more likely than those before them to sporadically deactivate their Facebook pages, adopt apps with disappearing content or use an ad blocker.
Which brings us to:
Lesson 4: We’re better off with less talk about conversion and more talk about point of adoption
You know who talks about “converts?” Religious fanatics and cult leaders. Rather than continue to talk about a conversion funnel, let’s talk more about providing something of value at each step of digital adoption.
The most interesting talks at Digital Summit Chicago focused on making individual tactics better or providing a unique experience – usually something content-driven rather than transactional: a video, a look behind the scenes, a founder story. Why? Because they were focused on an immediate user need, not on where the marketer wanted the user to end up. Give me the best search results, the most relevant explainer, how will that shirt look on me?
Yes, most marketers know that David Ogilvy’s entreaty of “Sell, or else!” is an industry maxim for a good reason. But ultimately customer loyalty is built by renewing a brand promise at every step of the relationship.
The marketers who keep their work user-focused are the ones we want to hear more of at next year’s Digital Summit Chicago.
Katie Fetting is VP, Creative Director at TeamWorks Media and Scott Smith is Director of Editorial Content. Contact them here to tell them what you thought about this post.