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Another Rocks Digital Conference has successfully wrapped up. The wonderful speakers have spoken, and we have all done our best to absorb their wisdom – which is a bit like trying to get a sip of water from a fire hose! As a live blogger, I trust that I’ve successfully distilled this knowledge and presented it in accessible, bite-sized morsels for you.

One of My Biggest Rocks Digital Takeaways This Year

I was thinking about my very first Rocks Digital conference five years ago, and how nervous I was. The very first connection I made was with Dean Lindsay, and I’m glad I get to see him at the conference every year. There are other folks, too, that I look forward to seeing, and even when we don’t have a chance to really connect, we smile and wave. Plus, I even had a great conversation in the parking lot as I was leaving, and it was the highlight of my day.

And here’s the thing – No matter what topics the speakers cover, it’s all about connections. And if you get to the heart of almost every presentation, you will find that it’s about connections and conversations – and even when we’re employing automations, the goal is to connect. Connect customers with your brand, connect people with information, build relationships, and it will help your sales numbers.

Even though we live in an increasingly automated world where we can now order products just by saying a few words, and we can actually conduct business globally without having to leave our homes (something that I am personally very grateful to do), when you pay attention, you will find that people are still impressed when a great connection is made.

Connection Is Everything

Rachel Chang talked about LinkedIn and video, and how there are millions of people using LinkedIn – and only a handful are creating and sharing video. Oh yes, video is a “hot” thing right now, and I think that for all of the convenience that we get from automation and voice search, people are still looking to make connections – and video seems to foster that connected feeling. And yet the perfectly produced, heavily-edited videos are not what draw people – it’s the videos that show people being authentic and flawed and relatable that get views. Why? It’s because people see themselves reflected, and have that feeling of “yep, me too.”

So, my “last word” this year is connections. I’m delighted to have made new face-to-face and social connections courtesy of this great conference. I’m so very grateful for the opportunity to attend Rocks Digital every year, to reconnect with past-year conference attendee friends and colleagues, and to be there to make new connections. A special thanks to Lissa Duty for having me back each year. And you bet – I’m already looking forward to next year!

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The Kimono Is Open was presented at the 2019 Rocks Digital Marketing Conference by Marty Weintraub. Here are the takeaways from his session.

Integrated Marketing Is a Matter of Survival

(Integrated= with various parts or aspects linked or coordinated)

• Ample % of marketing success integrates Search/Social
• The last mile of the CPA / Scale Pivot is via integration
• Pathway to CPA: Keywords, retargeting, psychographic (Intent) display, & creative
• Audience data management IS often targeting
• Go deeper into long business goals to improve integration
• There IS low-hanging revenue for best practices
• Branding is required for the ultimate integration

Targeting Channels = Introducing new people to the system

• Wide open brand search PPC
• Wide open non-brand search OOC
• Programatic
• FB social display
• Twitter social display
• Organic & direct website visitors
• Social engagement
• YouTube
• FB lookalike
• Google Customer Match

Retargeting Channels

• Programmatic exchanges
• FB retargeting
• Twitter retargeting
• Google Display
• YouTube

Brand Lift Measurements Now that You’ll Want Later

• Google & Bing brand search
• Paid brand traffic conversion sale
• Organic brand keyword traffic in SEO marketing
• Lowered overal PC $$
• Deep customer value/pathway to purchase
• Daily sales metrics

Why Brand Search Is Keyword Lakefront Property

• Brand IP Marks can be protected = R, TM, C, etc.
• Competitors can trigger PPC but not use IP
• Control Creative in tandem with Organic Search (SEO)
• Brand Search is usually the least expensive KW Inventory
• +Brand Search conversion lowers cost, raises scale of entire system
• Brand Search usually has the highest conversion rate
• Direct Traffic from brand awareness lifts scale & lowers cost
• More conversion, lower cost, more Brand Search means GROWTH

Imprint Brand When You’re Selling

• Use brand terms, devote site links & social post fields
• Place name of company & logo as prominently as possible
• Cred marks like T, R, C, etc.
• Place brand keywords and marks ON images & video
• Make positioning statements tangible
• Every paid impression must contribute to conversion

Sell When You’re Branding

• Soft Touch: gently help users know what is a conversion
• Devote site links & social post fields to selling awareness
• Place conversion keywords ON images & video
• Every paid impression must contribute to conversion

Integrated Creative Grid – Short Statements Your Product Owns

Replacing Lost Facebook Targeting

DMPs use audiences from the same third parties which USED to drive FB intent targeting, with more complete libraries. They push ads into huge banner space, including Google Display with prioritized access to some inventory over using Adwords. The targeting now replaces former targeted social ads.  Radical data includes tons of intent data, going to buy or do something.

Layer in targeted emotions which may drive conversions.

For example: Nationalist, Disrupter, Lover, Hater, Angry, Jealous, Sad, Right Wing, Left Wing, Extremist, Pothead, Nudist, Green, Narcissist, Cat People, Dog People, Fearful, Optimist, Pessimist…

List of Integrated Marketing Tactics

• Retargeting segmented by $$$ KWs
• Imprint keyword & brand in display/retargeting creative
• RLSA (Remarketing lists for search ads) to Paid Social Audience Pools
• Non-commercial informational keyword RLSA to $$ KWs/Ad Groups Audience Pools
• Reduce $, Increase Scale By Causing New Brand Search
• Grade effects of PR on performance marketing
• Low $$ geek tail KWs for content amplification/display
• Map physical world objects & web representations
• Use paid KW & social targeting tools to advise SEO & community management
• Pull display targeting lists from PR DBs, emails, Twitter, publications
• Include data team in creative hackathons
• Pre-promote upcoming email blast targeted via custom audiences. Measure success in email conversion lift
• Rip video, shred soundtrack to satire, caption to your videos, optimize video, “leak,” promote
• Crawl social sites & leave badge behind, measure viewbacks & friend requests accepted
• Reverse Engineer Success-Traffic via 3^rd Party Data + DMP:
• Straight-up sales
• Cause KW search early
• Definitive personal data replaces FB Studies
• Advise and/or BE content strategy
• Proof for inside display sales
• Boolean GAP on Integrated Public Content Grid: Reverse-engineer competitive wins/losses by channels, users, authority, KWs, & conversations

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Local Search Success in the Age of Automation was presented at the 2019 Rocks Digital Marketing Conference by Joe Youngblood. Here are the takeaways from his session.

The age of automation is coming, whether you like it or not. Self-driving cars are a example of the automation that is already in place.

When Siri first came out people thought it was ridiculous, but within two years it became cool.

How to be successful – Voice search is designed to restrict consumer choice. The goal of AI services in this blossoming age will be to emulate an actual human’s psychological process, but more quickly, with more data points, and then to offer one or a small handful of options to the human. So, the goal is to remove consumer choice but to deliver an excellent consumer experience.

How a Person Might Select a Local Business

• Has someone I know had a good experience with a business?
• Which businesses are at the top of Google?
• Which of these are highly rated by other consumers?
• Which of these are near my location?
• Which of these have I used and been satisfied with in the past?
• Which of these have similar consumers used, and been satisfied with in the past?

How an A.I. Attempting to Emulate a Human User Might Select a Local Business

• Has someone my human knows had a good experience with a business?
• Which businesses do my algorithms recommend?
• Which of these are highly-rated (within past X time frame) by other consumers?
• Which of these are close to my human?
• Which of these has my human used and been satisfied with in the past?
• Which of these have similar consumers used, and been satisfied with in the past?
• Have any of these businesses broken my rules?
• Do any of these businesses pay me money?

Signals an A.I. Assistant Might Consider for a Local Business

• Inbound links to a website from known and trusted local sources.
• Mentions of a brand name on known and trusted local websites or media determined to be discussing the local area.
• Reviews and ratings by consumers that have a high probability of being legitimate. (If that consumer has reviewed other businesses in the area recently, for instance.)
• Profile on the same platform as the A.I. Helper that is fully filled out and looks legitimate.
• Any proprietary data my system has on this business.

You MUST Diversify Now – Choose Any 3 of These

1. Local SEO / Google My Business
2. Google Ads
3. Yelp
4. One other directory (Avvo, HomeAdvisor, GrubHub, etc.)
5. Facebook or Instagram Organic
6. Facebook or Instagram Ads
7. Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, Snapchat, or Pinterest

You NEED to get reviews – because you need to be #1 or you’re out of the running (because, remember, the goal is to limit consumer choices).

You need to get local media coverage. If a local news outlet talks about you it gives you relevance to the search bots.

Recent Important Research and News on This Topic

1. How Many Links a Website Needs to Rank #1 in Google
2. FreshChalk 150k Website Teardown on SEO Factors
3. Roughly 3.25 billion voice assistants installed globally
4. GrubHub found to own as many as 23,000 domains for restaurant clients without those restaurants’ permission. Websites help GrubHub charge a commission.
5. Yelp wants to be a “remote control of your life”
6. An Official Survey Shows That Google My Business Wants to Charge For Some Features

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The Voice Search Resolution was presented at the 2019 Rocks Digital Marketing Conference by Abhi Vyan. Here are the takeaways from his session.

You used to open your phone, open an app, add things to your cart, and complete the purchase. Now you just say “Siri, purchase paper towels,” and you’ve eliminated a number of steps in the purchasing process.

Amazon is the marketing leader in smart speaker market share – 68% of the market. But Google is catching up. And Amazon is up-leveling their voice assistants to help retain their place. One example is Echo Look, which helps you with fashion dilemmas.

We should assume that Alexa is listening to all conversation in the house, but not reacting. You need to address Alexa (“Hey Alexa”) to get it to react.

Many people have at least one Alexa (or similar device) in their home. There are 50 million Americans using voice devices monthly. Annual growth is about 129%.

Google is lining up an army of assistant-enabled products. Your digital assistant on your phone can book travel for you, it can make restaurant reservations – and Google is forging relationships with retailers like Walmart and Home Depot to do voice ordering.

Apple is coming out with the HomePod. At this time, though, it has a lot of limitations. For instance, it can only stream music from Apple Music, and not from other services such as Spotify.

There are no current monetizations of voice search – but it’s probably coming. As prices of voice-assisted commerce devices come down, it will certainly become more accessible.

Voice is another touchpoint of the customer journey, and by 2020, 50% of searches will be voice search.

Here’s a checklist for optimizing your brand for voice search:

• Create content in a conversational manner
• Implement structured data
• Be mobile friendly
• Be secure
• Build with page speed in mind
• Manage reviews and ratings proactively
• Manage your overall data footprint
• Build a unique persona

Things to consider before investing in voice:

• Can your product/service be adapted for an audio platform?
• Will potential customers be able to grasp what they are buying without pictures/visual cues?
• Is your product an essential item that is regularly ordered?
• Is your target audience likely to be an early adopter of voice-enabled devices?
• Can your brand generate quality voice content regularly?

The voice search revolution is coming. Are you and your brand prepared?

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The Opening Keynote Panel was presented at the 2019 Rocks Digital Marketing Conference with moderator Giovanni Galluci and panelists Heather Nichols, Nicole Wight, and Cameron Gawley. Here are the takeaways from this session.

Our day began with a panel discussion regarding Facebook.

Giovanni noted that unless you are a well-connected influencer, FB is not the place to go for organic traffic. Giovanni asked each panelist a question that focused on their expertise first.

Nicole – What is the most shocking thing that surprised you this year at F8?
A: The Facebook layout is getting changed significantly for the first time.

Heather – You manage Mari Smith’s Facebook group; what is the number one problem/challenge for the group you manage?
A: There’s a buzz right now for video, so it’s not just the technical aspects – so how do you use video to reach the right people?

Cameron – What influences the media mix you deal with?
A: It depends on what you’re trying to achieve. What’s the objective? Every brand needs to be obsessed with the customer and the customer journey. You always need to start with people first. We look at all of the touchpoints and determine what is the best platform to reach the client’s objectives. The media mix changes based on the brand and the product.

There is a rumor that Facebook is going to get rid of the newsfeed, and what does FB become without it?
A: The shift is actually mostly in the layout. The newsfeed isn’t going to disappear, it’s just going to change placement for communities and stories. Driving brands into having Groups. We’ll see the shift, freak out – and then adjust.

Facebook is trying to help people connect with brands and people they care about – more group interactions are already showing in our newsfeeds. People are already posting more within groups and communities.

For an agency – What impact will this have? Is it becoming more difficult for brands to connect?
A: The newsfeed is evolving and Facebook is rolling out new features. Voice will be a big player in the future of messaging. Stories and video are becoming more important. You have to just get more creative about your targeting. Facebook knows that FB in its current form is not the future. The newsfeed will evolve, and you just need to go where the people are – and we just have to keep up.

How do you, in a world where we have to get results fast, how do you build quickly? Because relationships take time to build.

Every brand should, at its heart, understand their audience and choose topics to rally around. Two-part approach: Builders and Drivers. Facebook is a pay-to-play world (as is Instagram). You’re very campaign-focused. If you want to move the needle for a brand, roll out your organic content (12–15 pieces of content needed). And you need to be using video, not static image ads.

We think that we are marketing the product or service, but we’re really solving problems – what else is happening in their lives? Tune into the customer journey. From an advertising standpoint, don’t judge who is on the other side of the click. Awareness, Engagement, Solution.

You need to start leveraging communities. Create something that they truly care about. If your brand doesn’t have a community, you need to start thinking about this: What does my brand have that people care about and want to discuss? Talk with your community about what their problems and struggles are. We want to connect people with the common interest in our product/service.

Tell us one tactical thing we can do when we get back to our office and implement in the next 30 days.

Start a community. Connect at the ground floor level, as a person. Find your top users and invite them to the community. Use paid ads to drive people to the group.

Pull out your phone, and go live! Video doesn’t have to be difficult. Remember to be authentic even if you are imperfect. Then look at your insights and adjust accordingly. Remember: it’s about the who, not the what.

When you start doing video, it’s going to be bad – but just take the leap, because you will never get good unless you just keep going. You don’t have to be great to start, you have to start to be great.

SEM Rush has a topic research tool. Find out what questions people are asking and answer them. People get stuck because they don’t know what to talk about, so utilize tools to figure out what to talk about. Talk to your customers – create a conversation. They want a better experience.

Tips from Giovanni:

• YouTube – type in a keyword and Youtube will autocomplete.
• Buzzsumo.com has a free version, and if you type in a keyword it will give you
• Answerthepublic.com – will give you questions that people are asking
• Tubebuddy.com – $30/mo.
• Get your content transcribed. Scribi.com will transcribe.
• Pay attention to your thumbnails – Tubebuddy will help.

The final question: Is the government going to break up Facebook? Unanimous panel opinion – NO!!

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