I always equate going to a Conference to going to Summer Camp. You come back wanting to take on the world because you drank the juice and you were around ‘your people’. This year, coming back from Denver’s Digital Summit, I feel no different. I want to do all the things. But this year I promised myself actually to do, some of the things. Here are my biggest takeaways and things I promise to think about every day:
People First
Putting the human first was a theme in almost every session I attended. Each speaker challenged us to stop doing things as a marketer that we hate as humans. Examples being immediate email pop-ups on pages, selling on a platform that wasn’t built for sales and not having a consistent brand tone (think offline and online as the same thing to most customers). Stacy Minero from Twitter encouraged us to take it a step further and use empathy in all of our marketing efforts. Chelsea Handler told us to take it even further and, use our marketing power to help those in the minority.
Data Overload
As any marketer knows, there is always more data than what we know what to do with and Jessica Best from Barkley reminded us of that. She also encouraged us to get KPI buy-ins from the top down and to share even the smallest of insights with your team, frequently. Lucky for us content marketers, SEMrush created this great tool that will help us cut through the data-clutter that we encounter every day.
Paid Pitfalls
We know that paid search and SEO play well together, but this year many speakers felt paid wasn’t working hard enough for them. Rand Fishkin reminded us that Google is big business. Ashlee from Yeti Coolers gave us insights on how to audit your Google Ads account. She also shared this fact that we loved — her Paid Social team isn’t on her traditional marketing team, but her branding team. These speakers and more encouraged us to reevaluate our marketing budgets and to give more to those channels that are working harder for us.
If these insights aren’t enough, our team would be happy to meet over coffee and share more. Skip the coffee, because we’re still energized by that Summer Camp (Conference) feeling.
V9 Miranda, Megan + Alien @ Digital Summit Denver: “It was out of this world.”