Advanced Facebook & Instagram Advertising in 2019 & Beyond
Taught by Tim Halloran of Aimclear fame, this all-day masterclass workshop provided a deep dive into the Facebook/Instagram adverting platform. Out of respect for those paying extra for these deep-dive workshops, I’m only going to share a few select nuggets. The first is to remember that audiences are discreetly different, but often overlap. To reduce duplication of efforts, consider merging audiences if the overlap is greater than 35%. Not being a Facebook advertising expert like my teammates at Anvil, I found this session to be very technical, but beneficial to those managing campaigns daily.

The Power of Purpose
Mike Dupree from Twitter talked about the needs and benefits of brand purpose in terms of connecting with customers. Social activism is on the rise, especially amongst younger generations. Another opportunity Dupree outlined is for brands to be an “island of safety” during turbulent times. Fun fact: 75 percent of consumers expect brands to take a stance on political or social issues and 30 percent are buying or boycotting based on that stance. He then outlined key steps for leveraging purpose: 1) brand permission (do we have a right to be here?) 2) take a stand without taking sides 3) demonstration > communication 4) organizational decision. He cited a few brands demonstrating purpose through advertising (Nike’s Just Do It), REI closing the stores for Black Friday with the #optoutside campaign, HBO with the Rock The Vote campaign and the Countrytime Lemonade Legal Ade campaign.

B2B Account-Based Marketing: Align Your Digital Marketing for Sales Success
Bob Tripathi talked about account-based marketing (ABM) best practices. He discussed the B2B Lifecycle, emphasizing the need for alignment across the organization (agreed). This is particularly important due to the complexity of the technology and need for integration across teams within the organization. Through a host of visuals, Tripathi outlined key steps in the planning process when building an ABM program. He emphasized the importance of partnership between sales and marketing, knowing that can be challenging. In his example, Tripathi illustrates a sales funnel with a 10% conversion rate from initial awareness of target account to closed deal. This is a very reasonable estimate, based on our experience, if implemented properly. Tip: ensure decision-makers, approvers and influencers are included in the contact database or target marketing efforts. Tripathi outlined key responsibilities by department. Marketing owns content, nurturing emails, lead capture and scoring. Sales owns meetings with marketing and/or sales qualified leads (MQL/SQL), building relationships and closing deals. Tripathi then went through the steps of building an ABM campaign in detail, starting with developing a target account list and contact database. This step requires close collaboration with the sales team, who should know exactly who they want to target. He recommends starting small, with 2 verticals and a handful of target accounts as proof of concept. With each target account having an average of 5 contacts, the database grows quickly. Get buy-in from senior management with early wins to provide more support for a broader rollout. The next step is mapping out content type by objective (product or service) and persona. Each persona should have a unique and relevant experience based on role and pain points. Once the content is mapped to each prospect journey, the next step is creating the content assets. Tripathi reminded the audience that print direct mail works. In terms of outreach via advertising, he mentioned Facebook Business, Twitter Business as well as standard players like Google and LinkedIn more commonly associated with B2B targeting. He gave a shout out to LinkedIn InMail at $.30 per send. Ensure your platform tracks all forms of activity and touchpoints along the journey. Lead scoring should be thought out carefully, to minimize false positives while generating a meaningful number of leads. Lastly, Tripathi recommends forecasting your lead funnel for planning purposes.

Three Keys to Mastering B2B Email Like a Jazz Musician
Cliff Seal from Salesforce compared famous jazz musicians with smart email marketing. He cited research, including one study where emails generated 5x higher unique open when personalizing subject line vs. just the first name. Cliff suggested running one statistically significant test every month, focusing more in generating data more than looking for a clear winner. He also cited a stat: 89 percent of B2B buyers expect companies to understand their business needs and expectations, which is very unrealistic, especially when lacking enough data. The workaround is by starting with available data, then segment, tailor and repeat. Cliff reminded the audience to customize emails in real-time based on behavior to maximize performance.

Website Migration: What to Do Pre, During and Post
Samantha Kermode discussed effective migration strategies. She opened with a pre-site migration audit, looking at tags, site speed, images and content freshness. Samantha highly recommends adding the current features, including schema markup, Twitter cards, Facebook Open Graph, Hreflang, plugins and Google AMP. I would add next gen image formats to that list. She also reminded the audience NOT to forget to use “noindex” in your robots.txt properly (hiding the new site before it’s live and removing the restriction when it is live. I’ve personally seen many larger brands lose rankings when failing to remove the “noindex” tag. Make sure to test the site (ScreamingFrog is good) to identify broken links, particularly 404s. Samantha also recommends capturing the inbound links with 301 redirects to maintain domain authority. She recommends the tool httpstatus. Additionally, a new XML site map will tell Google what pages matter and where to go to index them. During Launch mode, Samantha recommends monitoring XML sitemap, robots.txt, 301 redirects and rankings. With Post launch, continue with the previously mentioned activity, with additional efforts around reclaiming backlinks (especially with high domain authority) and optimizing conversion rates.

Extend Your Reach through Content & Influence Marketing
Juanika Cuthbertson of Ladypreneur Academy outlined best practices for content and influencer marketing. Juanika opened with the idea of creating consistency and intentionality around your brand. Specifically, she wanted the audience to think about brand voice, as that provides an essential foundation for content and influencer marketing. Juanika shared examples of brand voice in social and advertising, including Wendy’s, Pampers and jetBlue. She outlined which types of content work best for each stage of the customer journey, from awareness to purchase decision. Think about which platforms, media format and content types resonate for each stage and get it out there.

How to Become a Thought Leader on LinkedIn
Ty Heath from LinkedIn talked about my favorite topic: thought leadership. As a top B2B digital marketing influencer (according to BuzzSumo, not my Mother) with over 17,000 LinkedIn connections, I have a personal interest in this session. Ty talked about the importance of thought leadership across the spectrum, beyond traditional sales and marketing: employee and customer engagement as well as general inspiration. I disagree with Ty that sharing (other source) content on social is not thought leadership: I believe there is value in being a filter for others that don’t have the time to read every article and blog post on the Internet relating to your area of expertise. In a world of declining trust in corporations, thought leadership provides a unique opportunity to build trust with prospects and customers. According to recent research, social engagement by C-level executives increases reach and engagement by 5X. Ty outlined four steps for thought leadership on LinkedIn. 1. Create compelling content 2. Define your approach 3. Engage and nurture your audience 4. Measure and optimize. She briefly outlined a methodology LinkedIn uses for its own thought leadership: SCORE. S: Structure (content should follow a traditional story arc, yet maintain simplicity for better engagement and recall); C: Contrarian (makes it interesting and allows you to stand out); O: Ownable (make it distinctive and relevant to your brand); R: Replication (makes it valuable, like blockbuster model Disney utilizes); E: Expertise (making it profitable – as it appeals across the broadest spectrum of decision makers and influencers). Most of the session validated my thoughts on leveraging LinkedIn, outlined in this article: How to Ramp up Revenue in One Week or Less.

Digital Summit Charlotte was packed with insightful nuggets provided by expert speakers. I recommend attending a future event in a city near you. If you’re interested in learning more about podcasting, which was my topic, you can read my article on the topic: How to Extend Your Brand by Building a Podcast Strategy.

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Designing Connected Content, Mike Atherton, Facebook
Mike reminds us that most consumers are consuming content via social media, vs. through your corporate website. As a marketer, you need to be where your audience is and providing them information in a way that they prefer: format, frequency, design, etc. Oftentimes, the structure of content is an illusion. Mike gives a site architecture as an example, where the structure is somewhat arbitrary, vs. embedded in the content themselves. An example of the new mode of navigation is Google’s sidebar or search results pages, where content is linked based on relevance vs. hierarchy.

The concept of Connected Content is…
• Specifically about the things that matter to an audience
• Structured according to how these things connect in the world
• Stored outside of any interface, ready for use in every interface

One tip Mike outlined, is to Map The World. Determine how content links together as you create it. Embed links to connect content and context. These relationships create value and help paint a clear picture. The technical term is Domain Modeling. Here’s an example:

Once you’ve mapped out your link structure, the next step is to open the windows. Rather than take a traditional UX/UI design approach, Mike recommends separating concerns into three categories: interface, content and domain model. Overall, the session was insightful in rethinking the content and design creation and integration process.

Ignore at Your Peril: 9 Trends That Will Shape Marketing in 2019, Loren McDonald, IBM Watson Marketing
This session covered trends shaping marketing. A few of those trends, as outlined by Loren, include:
1. Integrating Marketing & Customer experiencer: always be thinking about the Customer Journey in everything you do.
2. Eliminate data silos: ensure data is being shared across platforms to inform the customer journey and targeting marketing effectively.
3. Monitor real-time customer struggles: identify and address customer friction points.
4. AI and Machine Learning: it’s the future, but it’s only as good as the data being fed to it
5. Digital marketing agencies transformed into consultancies: Accenture, Deloitte and other big consulting firms have incorporated digital marketing into the service offering, to be competitive, spur growth and enhance relationships with clients. Loren advises going niche or expand on the agency side. Brands, conversely, need to decide who they want to work with… who is going to best meet their needs and help achieve goals.
6. Regulations & GDPR: Loren believes its largely a good thing. While meeting with legal isn’t fun, it’s important, considering 55 percent of consumers prefer not to share personal data. As a result, there are a few key steps to take to be compliant: focus on data hygiene, instilling trust, acquisition quality and rethinking metrics.
7. Agile Marketing: 37 percent of marketers report they’ve adopted some flavor of agile marketing. Agile is a tactical marketing approach that allows teams to divide marketing workflow into smaller chunks and iterate over a shorter period of time.
8. MarTech + AdTech are coming together. 86 percent of digital display ads in the US will be programmatic by 2020. Media buyers are most at risk with the evolution of automated media buying, bidding and measuring. Related tech includes Demand Side Platform (DSP) and Data Management Platform (DMP), which both help brands and marketers understand the impact of advertising throughout the customer journey.
9. Customer Centricity will drive customer innovation. Everything is a subscription these days, from cars and razors to food and clothing. This model provides critical margins for businesses with largely compressed profits. Unfortunately, companies have to restructure to better serve customers… with a customer-centered approach vs. discipline silos.
10. Bonus: In the emotion economy, purpose creates loyalty. Loren uses Kaepernick and Nike as an example. Good idea, since I’ve shared my thoughts on the Nike Just Do It campaign when it launched last year. Brands are selecting their customers based on purpose, which implies fans are more engaged and others are fired. I agree this is a powerful trend, as does the Anvil team.

Build a Loyal Base of Listeners: B2B Podcasting, Sean Campbell, Cascade Insights
Of course I felt obligated to attend this session on podcasting, as that was my topic as a Digital Summit presenter and I’ve written about developing a podcasting strategy. According to Sean, he believes too many marketers or brands are just shouting and need to stop. Cascade built a podcast a few years ago (now at 200 episodes) and Sean shared his experiences and lessons with the audience.

His overall philosophy is that consumers want content to be “narrow” so the goal is to deliver, while appealing to the broadest audience. Sean reminded the audience that audio quality is the “location, location, location” of podcasting. Don’t cut corners on your audio quality. Also, don’t cut corners without editing, which is essential to streamline the flow and make it more engaging. Sean recommends against self-hosting podcasts; use Libsyn or other podcasting host platforms. He also recommends finding a niche (topic/theme) and sticking to it. Your podcast shouldn’t be for everyone, it should be for those that matter to you – your target audience.

Don’t forget to talk up your podcast with your customers/clients and other important constituents, especially considering they are the primary or secondary target audience. As a result, it’s okay to engage the sales team and incorporate sales messaging. In fact, Sean recommends crowdsourcing questions from your customers and prospects to help formulate the content, guests and format. Pro tip: pre-record questions from your audience and air during the show when high-profile guests are only available outside of your planned recording sessions.

Advertising isn’t a bad thing, especially when integrated properly. Overcast and Podcast Republic are effective ad platforms that generate new listeners/subscribers for very little ($400 or so per campaign, based on demand). Most ads run for 30 days, which is good for reach and recall. Sean also recommend a mid-roll ad (15 seconds) to promote your business in the middle of your podcast. Use Voices.com for quality voice talent for ads.

In terms of guests, shoot for the moon with thought-leaders, influencers and otherwise engaging guests (funny, informative or unique). Don’t get trapped in thinking a job title or level of experience makes a great interview. Vet and prep your guests in advance. Think quality over quantity, not just in terms of guests or content but podcast frequency. Most guests tend to create evergreen content, which is inherent to the interview format. While attribution can be challenging due to limited metrics, it can be powerful. For example, the podcast we helped produce and market, Craving the Future, generated a global hotel consulting client for our customer.

Conversational Strategies to Reach Today’s Consumer, Grad Conn, Sprinklr
In this session, Grad outlines the concept of B2B social account-based marketing. Specifically, the concept is prospecting targeted (named) accounts in social via a programmatic approach. Grad outlines the concept of CXC, where mentions are distributed through the company via the Sprinklr application. If you don’t understand what a CXC is, worry not, as it’s Sprinklr-specific jargon as far as I can tell. To help illustrate the concept, he used Burger King as an example.

Grad goes on to outline the process for ABM:
1. Identify account based on success levels of traditional outreach methods, revenue or employee size targets, brands are engaged in social (specific to Sprinklr)
2. CXC team is activated and begins ABM research process (to learn more about the brand and key contact
3. CXC team develops a research brief to provide context for engagements
4. Set up listening to asset with research and develop key insights (using Sprinklr platform)
5. Look for opportunities to create and share custom content that engages the prospect

One example used was the CMO of Sonos, and how they targeted her after she moved to Lyft. They developed custom “congrats” creative and shared it directly with her via social (from Sprinklr profile). A second example was the CMO of Mastercard, who received custom creative, resulting in sharing and a thank you.

The conference will continue this afternoon, but I won’t be able to provide recaps. I recommend attending a future Digital Summit in your city or better yet, in Portland!

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