My colleague Will Holden and I had a chance to attend the Denver Digital Summit last week to listen in on all things digital – trends, strategies, new tools and ongoing tactics. It’s great to see this Denver-based conference thrive and continue to grow each year, and while there was a ton of talk about Snapchat and other emerging technologies there was one constant theme from nearly every session I attended: Tailored user experience (understanding and knowing what your audience wants first and foremost) needs to be the focus needs to be the focus of every campaign.
I feel like we’ve posted something about this previously…maybe back in 2014?
All self-congratulatory comments aside, the concept of putting your user’s wants and needs first – talking with them on their terms rather than at them on your terms – is the way digital marketing is today, and the way it will be for the foreseeable future. Here are a few notes from the conference to back this concept up:
- Crowd-favorite and Day 1 Keynote Gary Vaynerchuk commented, “Social media isn’t a piece of marketing, it’s the current definition of the Internet. That’s how vital it is.”
- In “Social Trends and Strategies,” the panel started their discussion by saying that, “Facebook is making a big play on video while Google is focusing on mobile. That’s what their audiences want, and what they are using/consuming.”
- Salesforce’s Matthew Sweezey noted, “Brand is not what you project, brand is every experience your customers have with you.”
- Jarrod Dicker, The New York Post’s Head of Ad Product and Technology tells us that 80% of Internet users have some form of ad blocker installed. Nearly all of us want the content we self-select, not the content that is forced on us.
- Rapt Media’s Erika Trautman’s research shows that, “Giving people ‘choice’ creates a sense of gratitude from the end user.” We all favor content that puts us in the driver’s seat.
- Even the analytic-heavy talk from AOL’s Sam Kim confirmed, “61 percent of consumers are cool with branded content as long as it’s ‘good’ content.”
The definition of “good” is completely up to your customer. And the more we understand what our customers want and tailor our user experience accordingly, the more successful we’ll be as marketers.
It’s not the most resource-friendly approach, but it’s the approach that provides the best return on your investment, and the approach we’ll continue to take for our clients at GroundFloor Media and CenterTable.
