Highlights and notes from the first ever Digital East conference.

Stefanie Berliant
Client Services Manager

Yesterday was the inaugural Digital East conference. There was a good turnout and a good cast of keynotes, panelists, and moderators including EyeTraffic’s own Andrew Bates! Andrew did a great job of moderating the Search Marketing session with Heather Dougherty (Experian Hitwise), Jordan Glogau (1-800-Flowers.com), Benjamin Rudolph (Relevance Advisors), and Jiyan Wei (PRWeb). The 50 minute discussion covered paid search marketing and natural search engine optimization and how PR and social media support natural search and should not be viewed as a stand alone program, but more as a another means of communication which enhances online equity. There were some disagreements between Glogau and Rudolph as to whether paid search programs should be sourced to an agency or remain in-house. Rudolph, coming from the agency side, noted that outside parties provide a fresh perspective and because they are running campaigns for others, can use learnings to apply across all their clients. Glogau felt that this wouldn’t be helpful unless the agency had control and input into the landing page.

I attended other sessions and good conversations were had all around. Here are my highlights:

Mobile/Location
The best way to start in this space is to play with apps to understand the design and usability your audience prefers. Reviews are really important and are never deleted, so the need to monitor and respond to the feedback is very important. Metrics of success include downloads and staying in the “featured” or “top” lists. Don’t put any half baked app in beta in the app store. Instead, conduct testing outside of the app store. Apps can take about one month to build, and during this time its a good idea to market the app which also provides a way to test the app by having people to sign up to use the beta version. Encourage the build of mobile websites which is a lower cost than creating apps as it can easily operate across different mobile platforms. “Push” apps can be intrusive and can hurt the brand, so it’s a good idea to let customers be in control. While apps can be monetized, it’s not a huge revenue generator and is widely viewed as part of an integrated marketing plan and not a stand alone strategy.

Usability and Design
It’s best to define metrics of success and business requirements and then build a site around these ideas. Frequently testing the site with human feedback is a must. The “redesign” is dead; relevant and timely content is necessary in any site. A website is not static, it is constantly used as a communication tool with audiences, so not updating and testing the site is a terrible idea. The content on the site also needs to be carefully planed with much attention to detail. User experience isn’t just about the navigation bar but also about the information the user is actively looking for. Mobile websites should be different than PC sites. Sometimes what people want on while they are on their phone isn’t want they want when they are sitting in front of their computer. Good SEO is good user experience. Build the site for two audiences: the user and the engineers.

Online Advertising
“Kill the click!” There needs to be less emphasis on the value of the last click. We need to use the attribution model to provide a better view on how online campaigns truly perform, however the tools to measure this is limited. Creative and strategy must be good to start with; if you have bad creative you are pretty much shooting yourself in the foot at the start of the campaign. Another metric to determine performance is to determine how many impressions it takes to get a conversion. The quality of impressions also need to be paid attention to; for example are they above or below the fold? Again it’s important to be fully aware of the entire integrated marketing strategy to limit duplication of showing the same ads to the same people over and over again. Additionally optimize the campaign and use learnings as the campaign progresses and not after the campaign has ended.

Analytics
The biggest issue in this session was the lack of resources needed to get code in place and people to sift through the data and respond to actionable findings. Analytics tools will never provide the exact same data, so its important to establish the “tool of record” for your specific KPIs. It’s a great idea to use two tools for optimization purposes, just make sure trends are the same. Uber-targeted marketing campaigns are not realistic sometimes. Marketers don’t have the time to manage and optimize every single geo/ad/behavioral campaign. Be proactive with reports and deliver ad hoc reports that highlight the campaign. Sometimes the data can be overwhelming and this keeps things exciting and marketers on their toes!

Online Video
Fun fact: two thirds of all US internet users consume video online. Video is the second highest activity online after social. Good content is still important and how it is consumed should be taken into consideration when developing the content and actually creating it. Figure out where your audience likes to view your content, either or on mobile devices or on a computer in order to provide the best user experience. Also keep videos 90 seconds to 3 minutes long and don’t repurpose tv ads for online ads. Keep online video ads to a 7-10 seconds and not 30 seconds.

Andrew Bates Moderating Search Marketing Discussion at Digital East