Digital Marketing Conference – Digital Crush 2019

Digital Marketing Conference Keynote – Content Strategy

Come see my keynote on Content Strategy at Digital Crush 2019 – a digital marketing conference on Friday, October 11, 2019, at the Three Rivers Convention Center in Tri-Cities, Washington. It is – I’m stealing this directly from their website – “a full-packed, one-day conference for digital marketers and business professionals looking to grow their digital marketing skillset and toolbox. In a collaborative and inspiring atmosphere, participants will be able to learn, exchange ideas, network and establish relationships with others in the area.”

Content Strategy is arguably one of the most unglamorous parts of marketing, but also one of the most important. My experience (from a startup, to starting my own business) shows that great content requires a strategy, and that many stakeholders misunderstand marketing as simply tactics. We will go over the challenges marketers face everyday—from hurried requests to the approval process—and how a well-prepared content strategy will help you mitigate those issues. We will also discuss the philosophy behind your content strategy, how it can improve your marketing, and offer practical tips on designing it from start to finish. You will walk away with a better understanding of how to manage your marketing, control, and creativity to craft better, customer-focused marketing.

There is a great lineup of speakers. See who they are in the PR below. They will discuss a variety of marketing topics. It’s exciting to see!

So join us in the Tri-Cities on October 11. I hope to see you there!

Digital Crush link: https://thedigitalcrush.com/

Conference Schedule: https://thedigitalcrush.com/schedule/

From Digital Crush:

Digital Crush, the Inland Northwest’s First Digital Marketing Summit, Coming to Three Rivers Convention Center October 11

Digital Crush, the Inland Northwest’s first Digital Marketing Summit, will be held Friday, October 11, 2019, at the Three Rivers Convention Center in Tri-Cities, Washington.

Digital Crush is a full-day conference for digital marketers and business professionals looking to grow their digital marketing skillset and toolbox. Bringing together and educating digital marketers and small business members of the inland northwest on practical and important digital marketing practices, the goal is to drive increased market share, new customers, and profitability for regional businesses, through utilization of the newest and best practices in digital marketing.

the 2019 Digital Crush Summit Speaker Lineup:

Ali Schwanke, CEO Simple Strat, Lincoln, Nebraska – Keynote
Paul Warner, Marketing Campaign Manager Schweitzer Engineering, Pullman, WA – Keynote
Cindy Krum, CEO & Founder, MobileMoxie, Denver, CO – Keynote
Torey Azure, CEO BrandCraft, Tri-Cities, WA
Manny Rivas III, CMO Aimclear, Duluth, MN
Diane Mahan, Chief Digital Strategy Officer Klü Digital, Spokane, WA
Matt Johnston, CEO Guide Social, Philadelphia, PA
Spencer Haws, Blogger at NichePursuits.com + Founder LongTailPro.com & LinkWhisperer.com, Tri-Cities, WA
Chris Davis, Performance Marketing Manager ConnectYourCare, Tri-Cities, WA
Barrett Pryce, Director of Marketing Vivid Learning Systems, Tri-Cities, WA
Thomas Kratsch, President & CEO Activities & Tours Marketing by TRK Creative, Seattle, WA
Dee Boyle, Digital Marketing Strategist BrandCraft, Tri-Cities, WA
Travis Scott, Director of Marketing at ISM, Spokane, WA
Bethany Lee, Digital Marketing Manager Visit Tri-Cities, Tri-Cities, WA
Elsie Puig, Marketing Manager, Flex Rental Solutions, Tri-Cities, WA
Jordan Beilin, Director of Advanced Advertising Sales Spectrum Reach, Denver, CO

Speakers will share their expertise on digital marketing trends and topics including content strategy, search engine optimization, analytics insights, mobile and video digital marketing, B2B digital marketing, call tracking, and more.

Torey Azure, BrandCraft CEO and a member of the Digital Crush Planning Committee, said “we’re excited to bring a digital summit to the Inland Northwest, providing both an opportunity for the exchange of best practices and good ideas around digital marketing, and equipping regional business professionals and digital marketers with additional education opportunities and resources to help realize an even greater return on their digital marketing investments.”

While digital marketing summits are held around the country, this will be the first summit of its kind held in Eastern Washington. Tickets and more event info can be found at https://thedigitalcrush.com/.

Vision: “Our goal is to bring together and educate digital marketers and small business of the inland northwest on practical and important digital marketing practices. Through this we hope that your business is able to increase market share, customers and profit by utilizing the newest and best practices in digital marketing.”

Contact: info@thedigitalcrush.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedigitalcrush/

Free Marketing Tools

Free Website Stats Tools

January 28, 2018

Traditional Marketing and Advertising Doesn’t Work Anymore

The only pro traditional marketing articles proclaiming “No, really, print still works!” are penned by those selling it. This should be a red flag by itself, however, the fact that nobody can really measure it should be another reason to swear off of traditional media entirely.

Anyone who tries to tell you its working is selling you something. Be wary.

This article explains it well – read on:

4 Reasons Traditional Marketing and Advertising Doesn’t Work Anymore

Before you traditional media types email me with your tirades of “How traditional marketing isn’t dead”, and that “You have no idea what you’re talking about”, I should note that most of my background is in traditional marketing and media on the agency side. I’ve spent hours on end writing TV and radio scripts, mulling through Nielsen reports, calculating gross rating points, frequency, and an endless list of data points that attempted to provide the most value possible for my clients. Many of these clients invested quite a bit of their own money for me to provide these services for them, with little guarantee of return on investment. I sold these media with the promise that they would reach the most amount of people and eyeballs for each dollar spent. Looking back (hindsight is always 20/20 right?), my thought process was very flawed.

Sure, you could tag (insert traditional ad medium) with a promo code as a feeble attempt to track return, but at the end of it all with the media market as fragmented as it is, it becomes very difficult to firmly close the loop and determine what actually worked. The key performance indicator (KPI) generally becomes “Did I sell more?” or “Did I see a jump in phone calls?” With how complex market forces are, it’s almost impossible to track a jump in sales to traditional media spend without making some very broad assumptions, and who likes to make business decisions based on assumptions? Exactly.

It should be understood at this point that I’m a huge proponent of digital marketing, more specifically, inbound marketing. The 4 Reasons Traditional Advertising Doesn’t Work Anymore that are below will help explain why.

Read the rest of the post HERE. The author [Brad Larabell] covers four main points:

1. The consumer buying process has changed (A LOT!)

2. Traditional Media Is Interruptive in Nature

3. It Doesn’t Work on Millennial Buyers

4. Lack of Trackability of ROI

November 4, 2016December 16, 2017

Marketing: How to step outside the ‘bubble’

Photo: Serge Melki from Indianapolis, USA

Countless times in marketing strategy meetings, I have heard sentences beginning with and/or containing “I” or “my.”

“I wouldn’t respond to/click on that.”

“My friends and I thought the idea was great.”

“That’s how I would do it/buy/respond.”

Not wanting to invalidate a personal POV, especially from a boss or executive, many stay silent. And then carry out marketing plans according to the leader’s —sometimes personal— experience and wishes. [The ‘marketing’ department is then basically relegated to the role of a Kinko’s store – taking orders and creating collateral].

You can see the problem here.

We’re not marketing and selling to our (I’ll borrow Kissmetrics’ term here) “HiPPOs” (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion), we are attempting to message our customers. They are sometimes two very different things.

[Or Avinash Kaushik coined the term. See also: Digital Marketing Analytics: Avinash Kaushik]

Jamie Oliver’s story about trying to change eating behavior outside his cultural norm is a perfect example. It took some time to get to know the customer. And, of course, so should you.

SO the next time you hear an “I” or “My” in a marketing meeting, try to see if you can’t change the subject to the customer, based on objective research.

Referenced article is Eat Your Peas: A Recipe for Culture Change via Strategy+Business

Photo: First Time Bubble by Serge Melki

August 17, 2015December 23, 2017

Welcome to the Social Media Election

Social Media – Think most everyone saw this coming.

Getty

Social media is driving the 2016 presidential race, as candidates of both parties increasingly view Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as key battlegrounds in the fight for the White House.

Campaigns have used social media in past elections. But in recent months, it has threatened to overtake traditional news outlets, paid advertising and the campaign stump as the top venue for candidates to rally voters, hit their rivals — and even make news.

And those best able to harness the power of social media are showing they can use it to generate the most buzz.

The Bernie Sanders campaign has parlayed the liberal senator’s formidable social media presence and a #feeltheBern hashtag into record attendance at rallies around the country.

When Donald Trump fires off a late-night Twitter tirade, it shows up in the feeds of more than 3.7 million followers.

“I think one of the most interesting things this year is that it’s no longer a question of if candidates should be using these platforms, it’s how and how often,” said Erin Lindsay, a principal for digital at Precision Strategies, a consulting firm founded by veterans of Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.

In recent days, social media has even doubled as a virtual debate stage, with candidates sparring in a manner inconceivable just a few election cycles ago.

When former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) said at a conservative forum, “I’m not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues,” Clinton’s team pounced. “.@JebBush: You are absolutely, unequivocally wrong,” her account said, retweeting a reporter who had covered Bush’s remarks.

The two tangled again on Twitter this week. When Clinton sent out a graphic detailing the amount of student debt held by Americans, Bush’s campaign sent back with a similar image slamming what they called a 100 percent increase in student debt during the Obama presidency.

The beef was on. “Fixed it for you,” Clinton responded, having modified the graphic to read “F. The grade given to Florida for college affordability under Jeb Bush’s leadership.”

Bush then posted a version of Clinton’s campaign logo — the letter “H” where the bar in the middle has been replaced by a right-facing arrow — with the arrow pointed up and the rest of the “H” was comprised of the word “taxes,” repeated over and over.

Interactions like that can make news. “Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush Are Having a Photoshop Battle on Twitter,” AdWeek declared; “Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton Got into a Twitter Fight” saidVanity Fair; and Wired went as far as to call the back-and-forth an “Epic Photoshop Battle.”

Campaign aides also use their own accounts to respond to rival staffers and reporters who write stories they disagree with.

Just as frequently, candidates are using social media to connect with and energize their supporters.

Sometimes, that takes the form of a glimpse into a candidate’s life: Bush posted a picture to Instagram recently of a tortoise on a lawn at the Reagan Library. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) gave supporters an inside look at his announcement via Snapchat. And Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has made a habit of posting pictures of his unglamorous meals, including a slice of sausage pizza in the Charlotte, N.C., airport.

Strategists say that candidates are most successful when they customize their message to each individual platform and can respond swiftly.

“I think depending on the platform you’re on, you need to be either more playful or clever,” said Marie Danzig, the global head of creative and delivery for Blue State Digital and a former Obama campaign staffer. “You need to operate more quickly on Twitter than you do on Facebook. I think Snapchat and Periscope will continue to become more of the norm in terms of providing behind-the-scenes content.”

Clinton’s campaign has been particularly aggressive about finding novel ways to engage with her supporters. Her Instagram account likes photos that mention the campaign and, earlier this year, her Facebook account left a supportive comment under a photo from the popular blog Humans of New York that purported to show a young boy distraught that he would not be accepted because he was gay. Signed with an “-H,” it received over 94,000 “likes.”

“It forces candidates to show more personality,” said Lindsay. “Authenticity is a big thing in social media. I think the candidates that are the most successful are the ones that are clearly the most comfortable.” Teddy Goff, one of the co-founders of Precision, also works as a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton on digital communications.

This strategy has its limits. In a piece addressing politicians’ social media presences more broadly, BuzzFeed News’s politics editor Katherine Miller said that Clinton’s “tweets often evoke an elaborate pasteurization process, wherein aides calculate what needs to be said (topic) with the maximal amount of safety (substance, tone).”

Danzig said that “there is a little bit of risk of fatigue” when candidates are taking shots at one another on social media.

But the continued rise of social media in presidential politics is, in many ways, a case of candidates meeting supporters where they have their conversations. A Pew survey released this year found that in 2014, 71 percent of online adults used Facebook, 26 percent used Instagram and 23 percent used Twitter.

Since 2012’s election, the number of mature, major social media networks has grown — with platforms such as Pinterest and Snapchat growing in popularity. As Americans continue to make using social media a part of their routines, candidates are as well.

“It’s become much more interactive, less about your posting your own beliefs in your own feed,” said Danzig. “So I think we are seeing the candidates wake up to that and make sure that they’re having more of a conversation rather than using it as a PR channel.”

By David McCabe

Original POST