ICYMI: We attended the Houston Interactive Marketing Association (H/IMA) 2016 Interactive Strategies Conference at the Queensbury Theatre yesterday… and it was AWESOME!
First off, great job to the H/IMA members and volunteers who put this event on! It was a great venue packed with eager minds ready to network and listen to this excellent roster of both national and local speakers – not something you typically get at most conferences.
This years theme was all about hyper-personalization and the trend towards a more personal connection with your audience to increase engagement and conversion.
It was exciting to see how the strategies executed and presented by some of Houston’s brightest minds gelled with the larger scopes and campaigns the national speakers used to illustrate their points. Some of which included famed neuromarketer and Forbes.com contributor Roger Dooley, Mobile Monkey Founder Larry Kim, Mary Nice of Convince & Convert, and VP of Web Strategy at WPEngine David Vogelpohl.
Here’s a few samples of some of the masterful insight we got to witness and be a part of yesterday.
David Vogelpohl, VP of Web Strategy at WPEngine
- ‘Google is personalization. They’re the metric for understanding relationships and content.’
- ‘Instead of long lead forms consider progressively profiling your customers, especially in long sales cycles.’
Mary Nice, Convince & Convert
- ‘Traditional creative briefs don’t cut it.’
- ‘Think deeper about what really is going to connect with your audience.
- What motivates them?
- What are the key barriers?
- What makes them pull the trigger?’
- ‘Create a culture where it’s okay to fail.’
- ‘Have flexibility when it comes to process. Know upfront what you’re will to bend on so your team can be more efficient.’
- ‘Avoid the slot machine mentality. You simply can’t just throw money in and expect a result.’
- ‘Bring your team in early… don’t make anyone the pigeon.’
- ‘The 4 Tenets of Measurement
- Use the right metrics
- Don’t measure all customers the same
- Figure out what is working across the journey
- Prove the impact.’
Larry Kim, Founder of Wordstream
- ‘99.9% of content goes nowhere. .1% get 1000+ shares.’
- ‘Use micro budgets of $50 or less as a catalyst for content for an accelerant for your top performing content’
- ‘Higher engagement = Lower CPC. High post engagement = High quality scores.’
- ‘My strategy is this:
- Organically to twitter
- Top 1% on Facebook and Twitter
- Promote unicorns on Facebook and Twitter.’
- ‘Brand affinity dramatically impacts CTR. The best way to build brand affinity is video ads on Facebook.’
- ‘Content marketing is about creating a bias.’
… So Here’s the Gist.
So if you’ve made it this far into our recap you might be thinking… dang I really missed out yesterday by not attending the IS 2016 conference. And you’d be right!
With the ever changing tidal forces at work in the realm of digital marketing it’s great to know that there’s a resource for those of us in Houston wanting to know more and keep our skills sharp.
So don’t forget to mark your calendars for next year. You won’t regret it!
