2 days, 5 takeaways: What I took from dmexco 2016

When I was told I would be going to dmexco in my first week at Skai I already had my sombrero packed! Sadly, it turns out ‘dmexco’ isn’t the same as ‘Mexico’. It is in fact the ultimate trade show in digital marketing and 50,000+ marketers and agencies from all over the world descend on Cologne for the two-day event.

So here I am…two weeks into my new job and whilst I had originally planned to do a blog after my first 30 days sharing what new insights I had learnt, I realised after two days I probably have enough content to fill three blogs!

Here it goes…my top five takeaways from dmexco 2016:

• Agile marketing is most definitely a ‘thing’ – I had seen this phrase prior to joining Skai but I wasn’t quite sure what it actually meant. However, having listened to my colleagues explain the concept on a couple of occasions at dmexco it makes total sense. Here is my view on what ‘agile marketing’ means for us marketers:

Consumers are unpredictable and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to gain their attention and loyalty across all the latest digital publications and apps. Marketers have their work cut out to keep up and reduce the growing disconnect between their brand and its consumers. The consumer journey is no longer linear and only those that are sophisticated and agile in their approach will remain strategic, profitable and, most importantly, become more meaningful and relevant to the consumer.

And luckily for marketers, agile marketing solutions like Skai’s Search & Social technology help us do just that – see what our CEO has to say about it in this short video.

• Facebook is more than a ‘like’ and a ‘poke’ – I don’t need to tell you that Facebook is no longer just a social channel. The stats are out there for all to see – ad spend on social channels has increased quarter on quarter for the last two years. While our marketing counterparts across the pond in the US are spending huge amounts on social advertising, it seems that in EMEA – a few companies aside – we are still just dipping our toes in. So what’s stopping us? Facebook has more than proved itself on driving solid performance results as seen in the strong ROI of recent features such as Dynamic Ads. If you work in Retail, Travel, Gaming or eCommerce, you should definitely take a look at Facebook for Skai. Watch our short clip from dmexco.

• Social and Search: BFF’s – What I have learnt from chatting to agencies and marketers at dmexco this week is that quite often Search and Social sit in separate teams and have different objectives. This siloed approach isn’t sustainable in the long term. Digital channels need to work together and the adoption of tools like Skai Infinity Suite that optimise spend and performance across both search and social in one place, is where the industry is heading. If your team isn’t structured in that way, this needs addressing – your competition is doing it. Your search or social counterpart needs to be your new BFF!

• It’s all about the customer – Seems obvious but it’s so easily forgotten. There were over 900 marketing technology vendors at dmexco and it was interesting to see almost all of them launch into a sales pitch before they had even asked me any questions about my marketing requirements. Both B2B and B2C marketers need to put the emphasis back on the consumer. Technology can help with this by analysing exactly what your customers are doing online and target ads specially to their interests and behaviour. Don’t second guess this as it’s critical to success.

• No more late nights tagging creative – Two years ago I worked for an agency where I managed a big client in the online meeting space. We ran a big online advertising campaign for them across search and social and must have created around 200+ variations of creative. It took us HOURS to sort the creative, resize it for the various channels, tag it, traffic it etc. We all know that ads with creative (static or multimedia) perform better than text ads – and as Skai announced at dmexco, it is now even easier to manage and optimise these in one place with Creative Manager. If you have worked late evenings or weekend’s managing creative ads like I did – then you should definitely take a look at how it can help.