Are we building a brand or are we taking individual actions?

I always visit mega marketing festivals throughout the world. I am a working professional at Grizzly New Marketing and I understand its importance to a large extent. The Marketing Festival in the Czech Republic was now the sixth in a row. I have had the opportunity to visit the event a couple of times before. Expectations were high regarding the content of the event – the first visit was very successful, and the second time I got a lot of new lessons and insights from the content of the event for my own coaching. For the third time, there was slight growth pain in the arrangements for the event, but the content was again guaranteed Marketing Festival quality.

After a break of a couple of years, I decided to head to the Czech Republic and Spring Prague welcomed me in March 2019. Seminar speeches from previous events have concretely addressed the use of different tools instead of entertaining and over-flying lectures, so expectations were high. On the lunch of the first day, I was accompanied by participants from all over the world and it was nice to see that the event has garnered more international interest than before. In 2015, I was the only Finnish participant in the Brno event. There were even more of us on site this year, but I didn’t manage to run into domestic-speaking participants.

Marketing Festival seminar day issue

The first performer, Wil Reynolds, led the audience in future trends in search engine visibility. The most special aspect of the presentation was that during his own speech, Wil repeatedly referred to one of the best speeches I have ever heard. It was a presentation at the 2016 Marketing Festival about how a customer’s need for information and content that meets that need affects search engine positioning: what kind of information a customer seeks at different stages of purchasing and how information needs and content formats differ across target audiences and industries.

In his presentation, Wil emphasized the importance of his own data: are marketing choices based on mutilation and general best practices, or on understanding his own clientele and industry? Do we analyse enough available data and is the information we have reliable to support decision-making?

An example could be the amount of text per page: search engine optimization recommends a certain number of characters per page, but there may be differences in the needs of the target customer group: do you want to read a lot of information about the topic you are looking for in advance> cf. healthcare-related sites where you want to read information / information, while the e-commerce site works better with product information and possibly video content related to the use of the product. Is the customer looking for inspiration, alternatives or support for the choice?

Although a website has reached number one in a search engine based on a single keyword, Google also evaluates the movements and actions of visitors to a website: visitors visit the website, but they leave the page immediately. Information seekers move to the second and third search results in the search result. The fourth search result hits the button and the visitor to the website spends time exploring the site and multiple pages. This is a signal to Google’s algorithm that interprets that the fourth page best meets the needs customers seek. This is how search engine results gradually change places.

You should read more about the Rank brain. More on this topic such as Increasing Customer Understanding content (marketing) which perfectly illustrates (based on data) that each industry has different practices and success in search engine visibility is based on understanding customer information needs.

Don’t do shady shit

One of the most anticipated speakers at the event was Christopher Wylie. A man who uncovered Cambridge Analytica’s concerns about data misuse and suspicious activity related to political influence. The speech was very interesting and sparked to think about the implications of data collection and communication.

While Christopher envisions all that data misuse can accomplish, how we create uncertainty by providing personal information (often not understanding where that information can end up) and letting the “internet” into our home was clear from a marketing perspective: Don’t do shady shit. So as a marketer, don’t abuse the customer information you hold.

The example taken from the queue presentation outlined the companies and brand value through three different levels. At the bottom, is the company whose service works and meets the need, but the brand does not particularly evoke emotion. The middle is a brand that surprises positively and delights and is built around identifying stories. At the top is an example of a brand that, in addition to storytelling, touches, helps and leaves a positive feeling and experience.