Day 2: "Brilliant marketers surrounded by idiots"
Day 2 of the BAM Marketing Congress had some rock stars in store. The king of SEO provided a full house at “the main stage,” as did one of the best-known non-fiction writers of the moment. But as at most festivals, there were also many discoveries to be made on the other stages. A summary in 5 scenes.
Don't do it the old way, do it the way it's supposed to be done
Agile marketing is not pouring all tasks into scrums. SEO doesn't mean cramming Web pages with the right keywords. Running a successful agency does not mean writing in as many awards as possible.
Day 2 was mostly about understanding correctly what we as marketers are doing. Making sure things are used in the right proportion.
A lot of the speakers brought - sometimes with a very firm message, right Michael Farmer? - the much-needed nuance to ensure that the pendulum is not only swinging in the right direction, but doing so at the right speed.
Invite Ferrari's pit stop team for a change
Optimize or rethink? We have to be honest, in marketing we are quite often concerned with the former. While the second can generate so much more value. That was Neil Perkin's point. And he made that clear with a great example.
For example, while watching an F1 race after an operation, two surgeons came up with the idea of inviting Ferrari's pit stop team to see how they could approach operations in a fundamentally different way. The team accepted the invitation. Result? Operations went twice as fast after that and there were fewer technical problems.
It's drumming in the 'Engage stage'
The “second” stage? It didn't seem that way at times. The Engage stage was packed during many presentations. This had nothing to do with the quality on the Inspire stage, but rather with the concrete, practical approach that characterized many of the presentations on the Engage stage.
If we have to pick one of them: the presentation of Eline Cottyn and Bjorn Van der Cruyssen who explained Colruyt Group's multi-brand strategy. They summarize the approach in 6 points:
- Understand the positioning of your brands while ensuring differentiation
- Know what (read: who) your audience is
- Be bold in deciding on topics and go for that unique angle
- Choose distinctive brand assets and make sure your approach is coherent and not necessarily consistent
- Adapt content to each platform you deploy
- Choose a single KPI for each stage of the sales funnel.
Search is so much more than Google
We can't help but talk about the rock star of SEO, Neil Patel. His most telling slide: Google today accounts for 18% of search instructions. But 18%.
We also search through social media and even Apple's App Store at a gigantic rate these days. That App Store, by the way, accounts for half a billion searches a week.
It immediately gives a very different view of search. A view where you look much broader than SEO and much broader than the traditional channels.
How do you make sure your message arrives?
“Why is communication still so difficult? We have all the tools, ways,. Recently also AI...” That was the question asked by bestselling author Thomas Erikson. His conclusion? A message is what someone imprints in their mind. And there - and this is painful for marketers - no one else can change it. So those who are smart look at their approach and make sure that it is adapted to the types of people out there who receive the same communication in a completely different way. “The most complex code can be opened by anyone if they know the combination,” Erikson concluded.
