Click Asia Summit 2011 – Day 2 Field Report

Day 2 has arrived and everyone is buzzing with excited energy. Mainly because the opening keynote will be delivered by none other than Gillian Muessig, the same charismatic and brilliant speaker who wowed the crowd yesterday with her presentation. The day looks promising from the get-go. B2Bento brings you a summary of Day 2 as well as a not-so-“live” updates straight from the sidelines.

*[Final Update]* That’s it folks, the Click Asia Summit Conference and Expo is done! It was a great success to say the least. Hearing the brightest minds this side of the pond speak was truly an enlightening and intoxicating experience. Hope to see you next year!

[Recap from 5:25pm] SEMPO Track : Integrating Search and Social into Marketing Mix – Benedict Hayes (Head of Search and Analytics, Communicate2), Pradeep Chopra (Digital Vidya) & Navneet Kaushal (CEO, PageTraffic)

Pradeep Chopra:

Talking about SEMPO. It started with search engine marketing but has now embraced social marketing.

Benedict Hayes:

Integrating search and social together. Google is a modern day mind reader who works with intent. Marketing’s core aim is to create customer intent. Consumers are savvy and inquisitive and investigate further. It is critical to connect the dots.

Key Takeaways: Search and social should be an integral part of any marketing initiative, Preparation is key, be there from the start and you will reap the benefits, Launch Facebook campaigns, etc.

Navneet Kaushal:

SEO is just like any other marketing plan. Market & Keywords research – A recent study showed that 80% of all online transactions begin with a keyword.

[Recap from 4:35pm] Future of Digital Advertising – Gurbaksh Chahal (Founder, RadiumOne)

As stated by Siddharth Jhunjhunwala, this is the penultimate session for Day 2. Click Asia Summit 2011 was a great success. Hearing the brightest minds this side of the pond was truly an enlightening and intoxicating experience.

The US advertising industry is in transition. Double digit growth ($40 billion industry). The market and appetite for online advertising is still there. The most important tier right now in the data hierarchy is Social. Internet users across the globe primarily uses the Internet for email and for consuming content. One thing to notice that in India, it is the young population that drives the internet.

The advertising budget for social media will see an exponential growth in the coming years. Behavioural advertising was a big trend 6 years ago during Blue Lithium’s time. Now, Social is the biggest trend. Facebook is a threat to Google because the latter does not really have a solid social strategy.

Choice nuggets:

• The difference between Facebook and Radium One? The Facebook social graph is a bit diluted because of so many things put into it. You may have 400+ friends on Facebook but you only interact with a few on a regular basis. In Radium One, we extracted the social graph in terms of isolation your true social spectrum … the ones whom you really interact with.
• Facebook is THE platform right now.
• Facebook has undergone through so many iterations. Their advertising works. The amount of revenue pouring into is tremendous and there is no threat to that business model.
• Radium One works with the rest of the web, outside of Facebook.
• If there is going to be a strategy that has a potential to go up against Facebook, it will probably come via the mobile platform. I haven’t seen a business model for that yet but yes I believe that the mobile platform has huge potential.
• There is no secret sauce. No technology out there that caters to everything.
• The goal is to become a better businessman and better entrepreneur.
• Google scared about the prospect that Social advertising would overtake search marketing. If you can scare a $200 billion company, then you are probably doing something right.
• Every industry is evolving constantly. You can look at walled gardens like Facebook as platforms that give you an opportunity.

[Recap from 3:20pm] Leveraging Digital to Target Global Audiences –
Achal Shah (Head of Marketing, Times of Money), Prashant Rao (Head of Brand Planning, Essar Group) & Vishal Jhunjhunwala (Head of Corporate Branding, TCS)

Vishal:

Use of whitepapers, case studies to engage customers. Bounce rate in B2B websites is exceptionally high. Engaging content is a pain point for most B2B companies. In the last 4 years, the way companies think about digital has changed. The long sales cycle is a factor in re-thinking how to use digital content especially for global B2B audiences.

Prashant:

Conducting awareness campaigns to engage financial audiences globally. Setting up a Youtube channel to generate awareness. Generate relevant and optimized content. Coming from a traditional marketing background, the use of digital media is cost-effective. The quality of the creatives – it is important to have local relevance with the content. The challenge is in converting awareness to engagement with the use of content. We need to fundamentally re-think how we are generating content.

Achal:

The Challenge: Huge geographical spread of customers, impossible to set up a physical network, etc. The answer is: Digital. Customer preference for media consumption has changed dramatically. Digital gives us an advantage over target audiences in global terms. Digital is interactive and cost-effective. Search Marketing is the single biggest source of acquiring customers.

[Recap from 1:50pm] Twitter for Business – Pradeep Chopra (Co-Founder, Digital Vidya)

In Twitter, being restricted to 140 characters, it’s very difficult to convey messages. It’s also the reason why many people don’t get the real value of the service. The point is about sharing easy to consume bite-sized content from individuals to companies.

• Started in July 2006 and has grown phenomenally. Obama campaign used it. Dell is a great example of a company that uses Twitter heavily and effectively. TED India also used Twitter extensively.
• Twitter can give companies maximum mileage in social media
• Real-time customer testimonial and customer service response
• You need to know your objective
• Know you target audience
• Define your frequency
• Listen!
• Use #hashtags
• Follow your fans as a person
• Strategic Approach: Follow, Create, Engage
• In Facebook, you add people you already know. In Twitter, you are making new friends and relationships
• Twitter links carry SEO value

[Recap from 12:05pm] Digital Marketing, Lead Nurturing and Social Media for B2B Enterprises – Anol Bhattacharya (CEO, GetIT Comms) & Neil Burton (Business Development Manager, Web Spiders UK)

Anol Bhattacharya:

The 3 Major Pillars of B2B Enterprise Marketing

Lead Nurturing – statistics show that 25% are rubbish and 25% are golden leads.

• The remaining 50% are qualified leads but are not yet ready to buy.
• Marketing and Sales hate each other. Unqualified Leads = waste of productivity.
• Lead Scoring – Everything has a score attached to it, either positive or negative.
• Tools are easy – strategic framework and change in rooted culture is tough.

Social Media – Marketers are always rushing to jump onto the social media bandwagon and they completely get it wrong.

• The first thing to do is to Establish Your Goals – find out the ‘why’ before asking anything else.
• Second is to find out where your prospects are through Outbound Analysis and Inbound Analysis (although it’s subjective, it can tell more about intent).
• Next is to Map Influences – who are talking about your products and product categories, etc.
• Set Up Engagement Framework. This is not an exact equivalent to a social media policy which is a ‘not-to-do list’. Setup response workflow and escalation process.

Content Marketing– this can give you the anchor of conversation and can make you remarkable.

• It ignites conversations and provides the context in social media.
• Content for Lead Nurturing

Neil Burton:

Social Media marketing isn’t just for B2C. It’s similar … Digital marketing for B2B companies is largely the same as marketing for B2C companies.

But B2B is different. 34% of B2B marketers are not measuring social success at all. How is B2B different?

• It’s a different sales pitch.
• Business Focus
• B2B is more about Lead Generation and Lead Nurturing rather than sales
• Different platform

Social Media for B2B Marketing – Product / Service Demonstration, Training how to use, Your consumer as your R&D / Idea Generation Tool, Great for sharing industry news, Customer Service

It’s about building trust and relationships and adjust to give a better service or product. B2B example: Web Spiders, Nokia, IBM, etc. They practice what they preach. They use Facebook, Twitter, Social Media integration

Think strategically. What’s the purpose and goals? Determine your definition of success so that you can measure your goals. Determine the platforms that your are going to use. Content is ‘King’. Pure sales and marketing in the B2B world is a pure turn-off. When you have the platform setup, determine the departments involved and their responsibility. In-house versus Co-sourcing.

Trends to watch: Fragmentation – lots of niche channels are appearing, Mobility – social interaction is fuelling mobile development

Key takeaways: Think about the strategy, B2B is diff from B2C, talk business from the start, talk numbers, communicate, don’t ignore social media activities, don’t obsess over number of fans or followers, and don’t use social media for self-promotion.

[Recap from 11:15am] Brands & Digital Marketing: The New Rules
Mahesh Murthy (Founder & CEO, Pinstorm)

• Digital is not niche. Digital is bigger than mainstream. – over 84 million desktop users and over 40 million mobile internet users in India alone
• The big surprise is in the amount of users
• Not all digital is growing equally – all growth is from social sites
• The big development is the spread, size and ubiquity of social networks
• Readers don’t trust their editorial. Why will they trust your ads there?
• It’s not about the spending the same money in a different medium. It’s about spending less money.
• It pays more to invest in unpaid media than in paid media
• Brands need to move from advertising to editorial
• The answer is not to buy fans. The more important metric is engagement.
• There is a new world out there where perceptions on brands are changing more rapidly than they used to – A brand is made of perceptions
• The marketing manager’s job is now very different
• The new process starts with live research – what we call ‘active listening’ to everything
• The new process continues with action – Respond to consumer negatives first
• The new process then continues with planning and analysis

[Recap from 10:35am] The Digital Marketing Lifecycle: including Media Buying Process – Krishna Subramanian (Co-Founder, Mobclix)

Evolution of the advertising eco-system. It is important to determine what marketers want and what their goals are – Different marketers have different needs.

• The ability to drive incremental value from data and targeting depends on 4 key elements which include value, privacy and more.
• Exchanges – Publishers provide a slice of their inventory to exchange so that advertisers can select just the inventory they want, sometimes calculating value from upwards of 50 data elements.
• DSPs – They bring all accounts into one tool for centralised management and reporting. They also bring efficiency to handling multiple and exchange accounts.
• How advertisers use data – Advertisers are able to sort through dozens of impression attributes (and cherry-pick billions of impressions) to choose impressions to buy. Data are used to select and optimize exchange impression attributes and bring high value than just context or time of day.
• 3 screen ad approach – Internet, TV, Mobile
• Different data is available on different platforms
• Data and Cookies – Cookie deletion by users is rampant (upwards of nearly 50% of users delete cookies every month). Overall, 36% users delete cookies monthly. Trusted sites showed a real variation of deletion rates. Cookies are a great risk due to privacy concerns.

Digital Advertising Ecosystem Themes:

• Over-crowded market place
• Demand side Capabilities likely to combine
• Data become ubiquitous and commoditised
• Life gets tougher for Agencies
• Publishers need to leverage data and make it valuable– Publishers can make data work for them

[Recap from 9:10am] Keynote Session (Digital Analytics) – Gillian Muessig (President & Co-Founder, SEOmoz)

Analytics is Dead – Long Live Analytics!

Reporting is painful. Reporting is NOT analytics. Higher bids does not necessarily mean that we are going to pay more for conversion. Analytics = Linear Programming. Metrics Decomposition: It’s always about margin versus volume. Where to focus?: focus on the things that are believable and then you apply metrics to it. Maximise your sales subject to the constraints of your budget.

All the touchpoints you get are really about people talking to each other. Benchmark what you’ve got. Take note of the amount of noise in social media – that’s how you start to measure it. We don’t get to talk about how to work online and offline together. If you are not in front of the consumer’s eye, the consumption will go down. You are not mainly advertising because of competition but for awareness among your consumers. No signal is a signal in itself.

Analytics help you determine what point wherein you can stop putting money into an effort in relation to ROI. Analytics itself is not driving – It is the same as a car needing someone to drive it.