By Jonny Pomerleau, Placewise Account Manager
In a time where large gatherings and in person working has been limited, it was a welcome change to attend the Digital Summit conference in Raleigh, North Carolina in the town where they were founded. There were lots of amazing speakers in the marketing industry, and many attendees who were ready to leave this year’s Digital Summit with ideas that would energize their teams, and take their marketing results to the next level..
I attended 13 different seminars throughout the two-day conference, so much great content. All the speakers covered different areas of marketing, each offering lots of great ideas, tactics, and solutions, so I thought I would share some of my favorites with you.
Don’t Copy And Paste, Copy With Taste Instead.
FROM: $0 Marketing Ideas: How to Market to Millions Without Breaking the Bank – Jon Youshaei (formerly) of Instagram & YouTube
The idea here is it’s okay to take past ideas and take a different approach to reinvent them for your company (as long as you give proper credit to the original creator). For example, Jon Youshaei spoke a lot about Beyonce and how she’s stayed relevant for 30 years. Her iconic dance from the video “Run the World” was originally created by a group that goes by Tofo Tofo. This is a dance group that originates from South Africa, and Beyonce sought out this group by going to Africa and asking the original artists to teach her the dance, and she brought them on tour with her for her show. There are other moments in Beyonce’s career where it simply looks like she is just copying and pasting other people’s work, but each time she gets the original creator involved and she puts a new twist on the original work. This method has helped her career dramatically and has helped her stay relevant for decades.
TAKE-AWAY - Don’t copy. Be inspired by others, give credit, and add your own flavor.
Cut Out The Business Jargon
50 percent of adults prefer to read at an 8th grade level, and many readers are turned away from content when it includes hard to read words. Youshaei shows that if you take Investopedia’s definition for a NFT (non-fungible token), the reading level is at grade 14. if you use the website Hemingway App. This is far too high of a reading level for someone without prior knowledge on what an NFT is.
Before (Investopedia):
“Non-fungible tokens or NFTs are cryptographic assets on a blockchain with unique identification codes and metadata that distinguish them from each other. Unlike cryptocurrencies, they cannot be traded or exchanged at equivalency. This differs from fungible tokens like cryptocurrencies, which are identical to each other and, therefore, can be used as a medium for commercial transactions.”
After: Youshaei rewrote this description to an eighth grade reading level.
“A digital certificate of ownership of a unique asset such as an artwork or a collectible.”
TAKE-AWAY - Keep your audience engaged by speaking to them in a simple to understand way.
Credibility Is…..Well, Everything
FROM: The Psychology of a website: Mastering cognitive biases, conversation triggers and modern SEO – Matthew Capala, Alphametic
A website is the digital “front door” of your shopping center and the stakes for getting the experience right from the second they open your homepage couldn’t be higher. It is always easier to resist at the beginning than at the end when a user navigates your website, so it’s important to establish trust and remove objections when a person is becoming acquainted with your brand or shopping center. 75% of people leave a website due to credibility. Credibility , or more accurately a lack of credibility can be caused by many factors. Start with the basics, have you upgraded your websites look within the past few years? Many websites that look outdated, have misspellings, or are gimmicky can cause visitors to bounce. Once you have the basics dialed in consider including flags or badges to highlight “Best” or “Top” selling items, or include reviews on products featured on your website and promotions. As Matthew Capala said in the session “We want what other people want”.
TAKE-AWAY - Credibility is everything.
Get More Open(s)
FROM: 3 Ways to Revolutionize Your Email Open Rates – Emily Mcguire, Flourish & Grit
Email open rates vary across industries, and benchmarks are hard to come by. As a general rule of thumb, Emily says that anything that’s over a 20% percent open rate is remarkable, and anything under 10% is a number that can definitely be improved upon.
The first way to revolutionize your open rate is to clean up your email list. This can include creating a segment of people who haven’t opened an email in the past 90 days. You can then create a re-engagement campaign to hopefully get them to open your future email sendings. If you’re still unsure if these users want to be on your email list, either unsubscribe those users or move them to a suppression list.
The Second tip is to have an engaging subject line. The formula that Emily uses is “Benefit+you/your+when= ↑ open %% . You can find examples of how to use this by downloading Emily’s action guide .
The third tip is utilizing emojis in your subject line, if it’s relevant to your audience and content. Emily says emojis can increase your email opens, but they shouldn’t just be used for the sake of using an emoji. Know your audience. Would they find an emoji distracting, or would they find it entertaining and engaging? If it’s the latter, emojis might be something to consider.
TAKE-AWAY - Simple “no cost” changes can greatly improve email open rates.
Be Prepared To Pivot
FROM: Adapting Quickly in a Wild World: Social Media Tips for the New Roaring 20’s – Sonja Likness, Duke University
According to Paxton Gray, CEO of 97th Floor, a world leading digital marketing agency, “brands produced 3x more content over the past 12 months” than ever before. Publishing fresh social media content is a never ending process. It’s vital to stay organized and be able to shift when necessary to reach your audience. It’s likely there will be times when content you have created and scheduled won’t be what you end up posting. An unexpected event could change the meaning of a scheduled post. No one wants their brand to be seen as “insensitive” or their content to appear to be “in poor taste”. Sonja suggests being ready to “shift gears” by adjusting the tone of your scheduled post, or having backup content ready.
TAKE-AWAY - Be ready to shift, adjust tone, and know how and when to pull the plug.
I hope you find at least one low or no-cost idea to help you improve the financial and creative ROI of your marketing initiatives in 2022.