Digital Marketing Trends 2017 by CX Network

My colleagues at CX Network, led by the amazing Zarina de Ruiter, just published their annual Digital Marketing Trends report.

 

 

The report outlines 4 key trends:

1. The brave new world of content marketing – Looking at the increased impact of video and the growing reach of influencers
2. Customer driven marketing decisions – Experience is everything now!
3. Data big & small; From actionable insights to changing regulations
4. The future of Marketing tech – AI, AR, Alexa and more!

It also features an update on GDPR, a case study on social influences, and great tips for staying ahead of all these changes. There’s also insight from multiple marketing experts at Revlon, Westfield, Booking.com, Bloomsbury Publishing, Duck & Waffle, Jones Day and yours truly. It’s well worth a read You can download your copy of the report at CX Network or click here.

New IQPC Website now live…

Special thanks to our IQPC web team and all their efforts in updating the IQPC website. A few key people stepped up and did most of the work on this in their ‘spare time’.  It’s a great effort and the site looks great.. Thanks!

It’s been redesigned with a few key points in mind:

• Update the look and feel and include more movement, graphics, color, interactivity etc. 
• The idea was to also make it more repesentative of the energy and passion of the people who work at IQPC.
• Add the ability to promote more featured events at a global and local level.
• Add the ability to promote more speakers, and bring them more to the forefront of the site.
• Raise the profile of some of our remarkable content created by some of our remarkable OCM’s.
• Improve our social media integration (this part is a bit of a work in progress…)
• Add email optin for all topic areas.
• Improve the branding / user experience across our online communities.
• Incorporate a new navigation/infrastructure allowing for a global home page.

As always there’s more work to be done… more on that later!

Boring Boring Boring…

That’s the knock on most business to business conferences… and certainly the main theme in this great piece “The Posh, Predictible World of Business Conferences” by Eric Garland (Thanks @whoisdarwin for sharing). Eric makes some fantastic points, and they are all true.

The challenge is for event organizers to break the “2 speaker/coffee/2 speaker/lunch/2 speaker/coffee/2 speaker /cocktail” mold, and never has the need to do so been so high. If we want our events to resonate with our audience and cut through all the noise, we have to deliver a different experience. Likely it will involve more work not less, including more speakers (talking less), professional moderators, more flexibile agendas, more interaction, less power point, and more immersive experiences that will require different venues and more site tours. 

With this in mind it was also refreshing to see this great concept from our very own IQPC team at Defence IQ: Live vehicle testing at The Internation Armored Vehicles Show. Anything that promises an experience that includes “sinusoidal waves” and “rough goings” is guaranteed to break the mold, you can’t exactly test drive an armored vehicle online.

I also love this: http://www.pecha-kucha.org/ 20 slides, 20 seconds each. Then the PPT gets turned off!

I also think the unconference format holds great potential.

Giving delegates these type of immersive experiences is the future of B2B events!

10 Years at IQPC

This week marks a bit of a personal land mark, 10 years with IQPC. 

That’s a long time to spend with one group and the longest stint of my career, but it’s also not a co-incidence. I’d be lying if I told you 10 years at IQPC was all roses, so why stay for 10 years?

It’s pretty simple, the people.

I have worked with some of the best managers in the business, and I have learnt something from all of them. I have many people to thank for opportunities in the past and I currently work with a great management team, who continue to inspire me and share their insight, there is no greater teacher than experience.

The people I work with directly are also some of the best marketing managers in the business. Together they bring a unique set of skills that in itself motivates me and their teams. We have some truly talented people, some of which we have taken the time to develop internally, which is even more rewarding, but some who have also been attracted to the fast paced marketing of B2B events and the entrepreneurial or innovative culture at IQPC.

I believe the culture at IQPC encourages team effort and innovative thinking. Nothing is more rewarding than seeing a team start with nothing and build a successful event that meets our commercial targets and makes sponsors, delegates and partners happy. Similarly, in the past few years seeing our online communities grow beyond our expectations has been very rewarding.  

I’ve also been lucky enough to work around the world in this business, including long stints in Chile, New York, Sydney and Dubai. I have also worked closely with teams in Argentina, India, Singapore, Sweden, Spain, Germany, Canada, Brazil and the UK. No two offices or events have been the same, it makes going to work fun!

It’s been a rewarding career, and made me think, so what I have learnt in 10 years with IQPC:

Great product solves 80% of all your problems.

Continually learn – most importantly, every event is different, learn from each experience and read (a lot). 

Learn to listen more than you talk. People who do this are always more successful in this business. Also be great at the art of questioning.

Answers to problems can come from anyone on the team. A great event or marketing plan takes team work.

Trust your gut.

Get the basics right, tackle the 4 p’s, use industry or economic models to explain the dynamics of your product.

Research, research, research. Speak to your target audience and partners, gain a first hand understanding of their challenges, and build a product and story that resonates. And challenge all assumptions.

Plan, Execute, Monitor and encourage innovation, testing or experimentation at every corner.

Find an anchor or driver for your event that evokes passion in your audience. Use this to drive all communication.

Great systems and processes help you sleep at night! But people make it happen.

The conference industry in general can be challenging at the best of times, constant time and budget constraints combined with the need to innovate every marketing plan will keep you on your toes. It’s never boring…even after 10 years.

IQPC Marketing Celebrity

Our very own Jenny Zhang, Marketing Director, IQPC Singapore on developing Singapore into a life style and business events hub!

(Click on the image to see Jenny in action)

eBook: Mastering The Basics of Social Media (from the team behind Click Egypt)

The IQPC team behind Click Egypt, the online and digital marketing summit have put together this great Introduction to the basics of Social Media success ebook.

It includes the basic steps to get started: Management buy in, resourcing, growing bigger ears, focus, engage, learn, measure and teamwork. As well as some great tips on the major social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Plus some links to some cool tools you can use to simplify, organise and monitor your social network presence (and they are all free!).

It also includes this great quote from Scott Cook at Intuit, “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is – it is what consumers tell each other it is”. Which I think highlights how control of the messaging, if ever there was any, has really changed with social media and the depth of change that will be ultimately required within organizations if they really want to use social media in their communication mix.

You can see some of the amazing speakers (Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Vodaphone, Sony, P&G, Kraft, Nestle, Expedia and more) and read more about the event at www.clicksummitegypt.com or follow @socialmarketME. If you are in Egypt and interested in Online Marketing and Social Media this is a great place to start!

The CMO Exchange London

Thanks to the team at IQPC Exchanges in London I was lucky enough to attend a couple of sessions at the CMO Exchange in London.

I was able to sit in on a session about Aligning Sales and Marketing by Nick Eades the CMO at Psion. Nick’s presentation was the most insightful content I have seen on sales and marketing alignment, since reading this landmark HBR article.

I can’t really do Nick’s session any justice, but he gave some remarkable insights. For me some of the highlights included:

• Understanding the personalities involved is critical but understanding what motivates the sales team is even more important.
• A great analogy to understand the “lethal personalities” at play – Think Captain Kirk as the leading sales guy and Dr Spock as you’re a typical CMO and you get a good picture!
• It’s not that hard – Sales people want to hit their sales targets and marketing love their data (maybe too much).
• Career marketers (vs accidental marketers) know how to keep it simple and not hide behind complexity. We need analytics but we must keep it simple!
• The forgotten p – Price is one of the most effective tools we have (and likely least understood) to impact the bottom line and help drive sales.
• Better lead generation and management is a bigger issue for most companies than they think, and can most likely solve a lot more problems.
• Functional strength is an important aspect of marketing, you are only as strong as your weakest link!
• Meaningful objectives – You must have goals that can be conveyed across channels, functions and the boardroom. That means having 100,000 followers needs a little more work.
• Find simple ways to express simple strategy – Retain customers, grow prospects!
• Take an account vs product approach to sales and marketing.
• Profitable growth is the ultimate measure!

Nick’s insights may not be applicable to all businesses, they are certainly more B2B than B2C (for a change), but I think it was one of the best marketing presentations I have seen in quite some time. Congrats to the exchange team and the speakers for a truly outstanding marketing event.

IQPC Marketing Wins Commendation

Congratulations to the UK based IQPC International Marketing team for winning a highly commended award at the 2011 Conference Awards.

I know Amy and her team work hard and do a great job, but here’s what some actual customers think;

 

“IQPC’s marketing team continues to do a tremendous job…. In this era of tighter budgets and declining resources, attendance continues to increase, with a sizable set of “returners” voting with their feet.  Media coverage of the Cyber Warfare event has expanded, with significant involvement of the BBC. There is a direct relationship between the quality of the content and surge in attendance. The team is doing a super job on this…” (Prof. Dan Kuehl)

 

“I’ve benefited from measurable and increased exposure thanks to the marketing team’s effort, from their engagement with speakers in generating pre-event podcast interviews, provision of dedicated email blasts with real value to the industry, and lively interaction through social media. As a result, the Customer Experience in Telecoms Conference is one of the best I’ve ever been to.” (Emilie Smith)

 

Here’s a photo of the team enjoying the evening!

 

 

Congratulations to all the winners.

Video: Two Middle East Social Media Experts Talk Digital Marketing

Great interview with Yousef Tuqan Tuqan, the CEO of Flip Media, Alexander McNabb, Radio Personality, Blogger and Group Account Director at Spot On PR talk with Anthony Permal from Click 5.0 The Digital Marketing Event (in Dubai on June 26 in Dubai). Some of the great issues they discuss:

• ROI on Social Media
• How Middle East  telcos can leverage Social Media
• Airlines and social media
• The genie is out of the bottle – Your customers have mobile phones!
• The challenges of Arabic copywriting and the internet
• Online activism in the Middle East
• Some insights into how Wild Peeta became the Social Media darling of 2009
• Where to start in Social Media and more….

Review: CEO Keynote Panel @ the Conference for Conference Professionals

Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the Conference for Conference Professionals, but I did finally get around to watching the free web broadcast of the CEO panel. The panel included; Greg Hitchen from Terrapinn, Laurence Julliard from Alcatel-Lucent (courageously representing the sponsor side of the equation), Tim Weller from Incisive Media, Uday Singh form Osney Media, Neil Stewart from Neil Stewart Associates, Kim Myhre from George P Johnson and Peter Rigby from Informa via a brief video. After a slow start, a rough audience survey and then intros the panel eventually featured some great insights.

You can watch the whole thing here (I recommend skipping the first 10 minutes and the last 10):

As Drucker once said, “Managers may believe that industry structures are ordained by the good Lord, but they can – and often do change over night”, and this industry is changing rapidly. Fuelled by social media, smart phones and empowered consumers the events business is under going significant transformation. The increasingly low barriers to entry also mean a flood of new entrants, outliers, whom without the burden of standard industry processes will rapidly improve our core product and meet customers needs better than traditional B2B conference providers. Unless we adapt…

Some of the panel highlights for me included:

• Good insights on the threat and potential of technology from Peter Rigby (via a pre-recorded video) got it right when he said technology is a boost not a threat. In my opinion the key is how, where and when you implement it. Apart from the many marketing advantages – technology should be leveraged to add to the experience at the event and potentially improve pre and post event sharing, learning and networking! He also high lighted how the days of sending 50,000 brochures and getting 400 people in a room to sit through 8 presentations are long gone!
• Here’s Peter’s top 3 pieces of advice for any event business:  1) Be innovative and entrepreneurial 2) Create market leading events (and ring fence them) which incorporate multiple media formats and 3) Listen to the customer and adjust the programme and format to meet those needs.
• Greg Hitchen from Terrapinn raised TED multiple times as example of the power of conferences to engage people. He also highlighted his belief that conferences have come of age and that TED is a sign post for the future. He also mentioned how some TED speakers spend 6 months preparing for their session, which is a lot different to some of the prep for a typical B2B event. Greg also shared an interesting concept on the pre and post Laidlaw Paradigm. We have to change the way we think about conferences, what they are, how they are produced and how they are marketed
• A heated debate over sponsored speaking positions polarized some of the panel and didn’t resolve itself, but most agreed sponsors are a key part of our business and their involvement in the agenda needs scrutiny. Interestingly the session ended with a presentation from a sponsor!
• There was a lot of discussion about technology and the need for investment, but eventually there was agreement that technology is a means to an end, it has to enhance the product or experience. Ultimately the events business needs to tap the most powerful element of the medium, the physical exchange of ideas, and technology can help. 
• There seemed to be general agreement that virtual events still need some work. The current format and clunky interface doesn’t enhance the event experience.
• Interesting debate on how live streamlining has the potential to cannibalize traditional incomes. But it lacked any real insight into how this ultimately opens your event to significantly broader audience who may not be able to attend that year, but could become advocates moving forward. Neil Stewart shared some insight on how women executives with family commitments may be unable to travel, or just time constraints in general can limit your audience and broadcasting your event can over come these issues, but there was no real debate on the complicated issue of pricing.
• There was general agreement that blended learning can be very powerful, all shared various concepts but the idea of pre-event, live and post event interaction is definitely resonating.
• Kim Myhre shared a great analogy during the discussion about whether face to face events are dying, on the how people thought TV wouldn’t work and its impact on radio. Of course live events will always have a role, if they add value, and we take advantage of the technology to enhance the experience. I think Tim Weller added another interesting analogy that you can’t mate through match.com, eventually you need to meet.
• Neil Stewart had a great quote, “Play with Free you play with Fire…”, he was talking more about broadcasting events but I think it’s relevant to more than just technology, post recession the whole industry is struggling with guesting strategies and trying to recover delegate revenue. If you come for free one year, its very hard to turn around pay the next.
• Some question on ROI and Margins, Greg Hitchen said it best when he said, high margins will continue for those who deliver quality. Quality being defined as quality content, quality speakers and quality audience, with a great brand that perpetuates.
• Someone in the panel summed up the change in our industry simply as, at the start of the modern conference you now say “Please turn your phone on”…

Good panel session, with about as much insight as you can expect from CEO’s whose organizations compete at many levels, there seemed to be some twitter action that it was a little boring but I enjoyed the panel from the comfort of my desk as I cleared my emails from my last trip! That says it all, maybe. A great question from the audience at the end also put the panel in perspective! She pointed out how she (and a colleague) had been unable to download the event app, and didn’t have a smart phone, and how as a result of the chairperson mainly taking questions electronically they had been frustratingly left out of the conversation despite having paid to attend!

What does all this mean for us conference marketers… well it repeats some of the things I bang on and on about on this blog including:

1. Times are changing…
2. We must adapt our product or outliers will eat our lunch
3. We must utilize technology to enhance our market reach and enhance (not detract) from the conference experience

Thanks to all the panelists and the organizers for the free broadcast!