We recently ran 5th annual Interactive Minds Digital Summit across both Melbourne and Brisbane! What a week! We had 16 experts sharing the latest digital knowledge and insights with over 600 marketers.

If I had to pick some themes from across the presentations this year it would be mobile, video, voice and data. All areas that keep changing whilst proving their value to marketers. Other highly discussed topics were customer experience and how we as Digital Marketers focus our energy and time. We all have a lot of tactical options, so we need to focus on the biggest bang for buck.

We had speakers from Amazon and Netflix, both from the USA, and local representatives from Facebook, Google, Asahi Premium Beverages, Clemenger, HCF (former), Wangle Technologies, QUT, Amplify, Xero (former), Deloitte, Showpo, Big Review TV and Edgelabs involved.

Event Outcomes

I see the main purpose of an event like this as being three fold:

  1. It should showcase what other marketers are doing so that you can learn from their thinking and experiences, get ideas on things to try and re-energise your activity.
  2. It should give you glimpses of what’s ahead so that you can plan and be ready.
  3. It should give you a chance to meet and follow up with peers to form valuable connections.

I hope that this event fulfilled on those objectives for everyone that attended.  I personally took a lot away from the day. Some items I knew but received a timely reminder, some new ideas and tools were mentioned which I loved and some information was a great reinforcement for what I’m already doing. Here is a summary of the takeaways that I’ve compiled to share.

A whole bunch of learnings/reminders/ideas:

  1. Mobile friendly is not mobile first. Responsive design should be the MVP. Customers want different things on mobile, how can you make mobile content different to your desktop version and tailor it around jobs to be done?
  2. Mobile should be about removing barriers to completing key tasks.
  3. Make sure you are building something worthy and test it by writing your press release before you start development. Make sure you and the team know what success looks like.
  4. Do 80% preparation and 20% execution says Mike from Amazon (about developing mobile sites/apps).
  5. Amazon have different apps for different purposes to make it super easy for customers. They know a customer doesn’t want to read a book and shop at the same time. Different tasks = a different app.
  6. Amazon have over 2,000 open mobile developer jobs at the moment. I don’t even know what you can build with 2,000 developers but it definitely shows us the focus we can learn from this global brand.
  7. Facebook has over 20,000 staff and half are engineers. That’s a lot of people trying to make the product more sticky and help marketers spend more!
  8. We spoke a lot about mobile because it is “undercooked”. We know it’s important but we need to keep evolving until it truly adds value to customers.
  9. Mobile viewing is high speed 1.7seconds (vs 2.5 seconds on desktop). Everything is faster on mobile. Heightened attention and heightened recall. How are we accommodating it?
  10. People who watch videos for 3 seconds are 70% likely to watch a video for 7 seconds.
  11. Using mobile: build vertical, design for sound off, capture attention in 3 seconds, test everything says Facebook.
  12. New methods and tools are exciting, but don’t be distracted by them at the cost of fixing the old. A great reminder.
  13. It starts with a big idea- but the big idea is not your solution – it’s the problem you're trying to solve.
  14. What happens when everyone has the same technology advantage? Creativity is the key to standing out.
  15. Think outside the box to stand out. BCF successfully used an “email retrieval” notice to get their inactive subscribers’ attention.
  16. Programmatic creative is the missing step in media buying – great BCF example
  17. Deep diving into your data is important, get beyond the dashboards to find what your numbers are really saying. Sometimes money can be left on the table.
  18. There are very few channels where you can do a proper test with $2.000. Don’t go too small if you want to see the difference in what works and what doesn’t.
  19. Don’t take on too much. Do 5 projects well, rather than 10 projects averagely.
  20. Showpo list every project for every department on their wall for everyone to see. This helps them to prioritise and stops them saying yes to new things that when there is no capacity. Love this concept.
  21. Don’t make your problems into your customer’s problems. The customer experience shouldn’t be held back by your issues.
  22. So much data is used to think about what has already happened. The real value is looking forward to see what will happen next. We are surrounded by thoughtful, descriptful analytics. This tells you what happened, but not why. It's important for marketers to focus on the variables they can change, not the fixed items that can't be shifted.
  23. Humans are better at strategic decisions (eg product, market etc) - but as decision parameters increase, machines/algorithms add value.
  24. Any metric on its own is very little use. You need a comparable metric in order to have context and understanding.
  25. Marketers need to think like a day trader. That one isn't working, shut if off, that one is working, double down. Don’t be the one trying to do it all.
  26. Marketers should be thinking about demand creation and demand collection. Create the demand, then collect the demand.
  27. Netflix are on a search for the factors that influence their subscriber number multiplier.
  28. Correlation is not causation. Don’t make assumptions. Test, test, retest.
  29. Remember latent demand. You can’t attribute advertising to the full % of conversion, only the difference in the pre-advertising conversion to post-advertising conversion increase.
  30. Plot your products on a graph of demand and conversions. Each quadrant will give you a different focus for different products. Some need improved products, some need more marketing.
  31. A/B testing has to be the basis. Ensure it’s randomized and consider correlations when analyzing results.
  32. What can you do with your audio conversations? Create a content ecosystem.
  33. The zero moment of truth suggests you need 11 hours or 7 touch points worth to convert a customer
  34. Combine audience data and social data to find out where you need to be and how to get there.
  35. Video, audio, mobile. Optimise them all, they are where our consumer’s attention is in 2017.
  36. Data is only good as the action at the end of it.
  37. What customers tell you they want (informed data) is often different from what they actually purchase. Use behavioral data to understand their circumstances, perhaps they are not buying for themselves.
  38. There is lots of third party data available. What can you find that will impact your results and add value to your existing data?
  39. Data can be transactional, owned online, external online, derived, & external services data. Look at each one separately and see what is there, what you have and where the gaps are.
  40. How do you combat an inaccurate CRM? Data is a pointer, not an answer. Bad data needs to be cleaned as a priority.
  41. 20% of all search is now voice search. The next search frontier will be how these results are influenced.
  42. The first and last screen that we see every day is the one in our pockets.
  43. Social media can be used to drive sales. Providing it’s a well thought out and highly targeted campaign. Only your specific target audience should see it.
  44. As our machines get smarter, we will be able to delegate more tasks to them. We can delegate driving to our car, how long until we start delegating other things to our car? Maybe finding the cheapest petrol station or what to do in an accident. Can a car find a car spot and give it to another car? Business-to-things slant on IOT and evolution to the Economy of Things.
  45. Why is Google developing a driverless car? Is it because it will provide everyone with more time to engage with their data and more digital attention to give out?
  46. What if a university degree streamed lectures in real time and let you complete a specific version of a degree. Business degree 2.3.1. It would provide a useful reference, plus allow them to have an ongoing relationship with alumni who want to update their degrees/skills.
  47. We need to replace searching with finding.
  48. The commodity of the future is trust. Consumers will “BYOD” Bring Their Own Data and provide access to organisations who they trust.
  49. Having dedicated people to manage experiments is the best way to keep them on track and focused.
  50. Voice interfaces are here. Start thinking about what your brand sounds like.
  51. Don’t think outside the box, build a bigger box!

Tools and resources mentioned:

  1. Facebook’s Creative Hub (In the future it will integrate with power editor!)
  2. Persado - a cognitive content platform generates language that inspires action
  3. NexLP uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to derive actionable insight from unstructured and structured data
  4. App tools from Amazon’s Mike Hines
  5. Google tango VR tool
  6. Google Alerts – stay up to date with topics of interest to stay abreast of developments
  7. Facebook Blueprintt - free online training for advertising on Facebook
  8. Mary Meeker’s 2017 Internet Trends
  9. The Internet of Things : new digital capital in the hands of customers - Journal by Michael Rosemann

Keep Learning

The digital learning doesn't have to stop here. We have some great seminars, masterclasses and masterminds coming up across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane for the rest of 2017! Take a look at what other events we have scheduled.