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IMDS15 – Wrap Up (Part 1)

The Interactive Minds Digital Summit is a gathering of some of the best digital marketing minds in our country. To share their online marketing successes with an audience hungry to get more knowledge and action points for their online marketing strategies.

And boy did it deliver!

A Day of Exceptional Speakers

The team from Nous who attended were Persephone, Steven, Brian, Karen and Patrice, we all came back with some moments of real gold. The event was well planned, with some exceptional speakers who have a depth of understanding on how the online world differs from offline, and how it is possible to successfully combine the two into a full customer experience.

This post highlights some of the information from the main speakers of the day, and our part two will have the top tips and quotes from the event, from both the speakers and those who attended.

We want to thank Interactive Minds for the attention to detail, and the speakers they chose, and I am sure everyone who attended got more than a few key points to take away from the day. Now just to put them into action!

In this wrap up we are sharing highlights and points from the main speakers of the event:

In the next wrap up we will have tips and quotes from some of the other speakers, as well as attendees of the day.

Anticipating the Curves Ahead

Sam Olstien – Director of Global Innovation – GE

Sam started in with details of the history of GE, that the brand perception is for industrial products, and that it needs to shift to attractive, tech and modern. One of their strategies was to appeal to a younger audience through telling modern Internet story – the Digitisation of industry.

The audience that they aimed to reach were the millennial tech enthusiasts, those who could be termed as ‘Geeks’, with all the passion that the term brings these days. To reach them was a matter of combining machines with big data and analytics, and connecting it to the web, so everyone could reach it. The other side was to talk the talk, to speak with the audience on a level that made sense to them. No simple task!

We are all able to make the future happen.

Conversation Through Emoji

Through leveraging the use of emoji’s, the Science of Emojis was developed, and through and interactive snapchat experience, conversations developed between scientists and people choosing an emoji and getting data back from qualified scientists.

Connection to the Audience

Sam highlighted ways we can tell a story through new methods.

On the anniversary of the Moon landing (GE was involved with NASA in engineering the soles of the original moon boots), they created a shoe to celebrate. They only made 100 pairs, and they sold out in 7 minutes from launch.

Drone week, like shark week was a week dedicated to drones flying around 5 of the GE complexes, showing test sites, wind turbines, offices and more, with people able to interact on periscope. The end result is somewhat beautiful and hypnotising. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X57vJYRt35Y

Top 10 Tips for Engaging Your Community

The talk gave so much depth and nuance to what GE does to keep in touch with their community, here is a summary in the following tips:

  • Have a sense of urgency
  • Be proactive – make ideas happens
  • Lay the groundwork , pair up with right influencers
  • Lean forward. Get engaged
  • Work with fresh ingredients
  • Show up to your audience in unexpected ways
  • Speed – go to market quickly, bring creative lens
  • Competition – game of inches, play to win
  • Culture – appeal on multiple levels
  • Community – online and offline, drive the community forward

Back to Top…

Building a Content Machine

Dan Norris – Cofounder – WP Curve

Dan started his session with an overwhelming raw insight into the expected salary of an entrepreneur. The expectations and the reality did not meet, even though he had good ideas and didn’t give up. Then he found one that worked, through offering 30 minutes at a time of work on a WordPress site for website owners, it was unique, niche and helpful (but untested).

Along the way as a “failed enterpreneuer”, Dan learned a lot about writing content as he had written more words than “War & Peace”, so he used that knowledge and shared it with us.

How to Build a Content Machine

Great content is for helping your brand. With the content going out for free in order to gain attention and build trust, it has the ability to inspire a community of people to promote your business through their trust of who you are.

Content marketing, never advertising

In practical terms, get the fundamentals right and then scale. Apply a framework that’s scalable for someone to be able to do their job better, this allows your business to grow. Use simple tools that are collaborative, a Google doc or a worksheet, something that helps the work to flow.

Make your work based on your values, Dan holds to these – UAT – useful, authentic and transparent. Your audience knows what you are doing, and by being honest with them, you gain both trust and respect.

10 Tips for Content Strategy

Dan shared his tips for a 10-minute strategy for creating content, and they are.

  • Vision – what do you want to be out there that isn’t currently out there.
  • Values – UAT – decide on your companies values
  • Inspiration – who is doing the kind of content you want to do (even sideline industries)
  • Description – go in depth
  • Communities – Create content for the community at large of ‘product/service’, become relevant to the community
  • Differentiators – stand out
  • Unfair Advantage – discover yours and use it
  • Key influencers relationships – keep in touch
  • Metrics – track your information
  • Lead Magnets and Call To Action

Back to Top…

Spark an Online Movement Using Social Media

Sarah Prescott – Head of Marketing and Communication – Thankyou

Thankyou is a social enterprise that started with water, being bottled and sold in first world countries to help communities in developing nations to have access to safe, fresh water. In time they expanded to food and hygiene products, each related to a cause. Sarah quoted from Seth Godin, “Advertising is tax for not being remarkable” and then went on to tell us how having an online community invested in your product can produce remarkable business results.

As a social enterprise, they started with no money for advertising so started a Facebook page, and being a group that appeals to philanthropists, and people who like to get involved in helping the underprivileged, their product and ethos had massive community appeal.

Social media can influence business goals and objectives

Appealing to the (Online) Community

When they were ready to launch their new products, and give further aid to those in need, they approached the supermarket giants to have their products on their shelves, with limited interaction or success, as they were unable to prove that people would buy.

So they developed the Coles and Woolworths User Generated Campaign.

With this campaign they went to their established social community and asked them to tell Coles and Woolies that the consumer wants to buy these products. They also got celebrities involved and asked Sunrise to do an article with a call to action at the end.
Social Proof As a result, videos, tweets, and thousands of posts to both the Coles and Woolworths Facebook pages in the first 2 days, it was a completely social media driven campaign. A video they created received 86,000 views in the first 2 weeks, and when they then met with the retailers, they got a yes from both within 5 hours.
Their products were on the shelves in a month. Showing that social media can be powerful, and it just depends how you use it.

Back to Top…

Core Strategies for Best Practice Digital Marketing

Chaminda Ranasinghe – Head of Digital Sales and Marketing – ANZ

Chaminda began with telling us that marketing is changing… rapidly. Many CMOs think there is more change in marketing in the past 2 years than there has been over the past 50.

While change is inevitable, it’s how quickly we take on and implement changes that make the difference to both our customers and our community. People start their journey online. To be relevant, digital has to be core to the strategy of the bank, and connects to the customer. As a channel, digital did not sit well with the banks risk profile with its immediacy.

Digital is about driving leads and being the glue between all the products

ANZ itself is a multichannel business, with a number of products and services both online and offline, as a result it has worked hard to bring them all together in a seamless interactive experience.

Personalised Customer Interactions

Through using data that a customer provides in the forms they fill out for their queries, 40% of journeys on and site are personalised and targeted,  creating emotional connections to your audience can be achieved.

Continuous Improvement of The Customer Journey

The perception of perfection is dead, if you have a new product, or an idea or a new way of making things happen, get it out to the marketplace. Digital isn’t like a magazine, if you put it out there and get it wrong, fix it. The customer will tell you. Innovate, challenge, optimise on the fly. Empower teams to deliver and to correct mistakes.

Start with the customer, what’s their need, fix it.

Be aware of the marketplace, don’t set and forget… See what competitors do, and see where you could progress. Digital is finding opportunities to improve customer journeys.

IMDS15 Wrap Up Part 2

We had a great day at the Digital Summit, and would recommend it to anyone in marketing, especially in the digital space. Many ideas that were shared reinforced methods of best practice, and seeing them in action with the data of the results gave further insights. If you are new to the digital world, this provides some groundwork and a basis to get you started.

Our IMDS15 wrap up part 2 has highlights form the both the speakers and attendees.

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