Marketing Week Live: a Crafted review

Last Thursday, I journeyed to London to attend Marketing Week Live, the UK’s premier marketing event hosted by Marketing Week magazine.

As Crafted’s recently appointed Marketing Manager, I was keen to go along to the show’s best practice workshops. The free half an hour seminars gave marketers yet another chance to expand their skills, offering inspiration to take back to the office. I’d planned my agenda before arriving at the show (I’d recommend this to anyone attending next year because there are just so many talks to choose from), and so arrived ready to make the most of my day.

Upon entering Olympia, as ever, the first thing that struck me was the size and scope of the exhibition. With eight individual shows under one roof, Marketing Week Live is certainly one of the largest industry trade shows. As a digital marketer, I stuck to exploring the Online Marketing Show on this occasion.

Content is king, but distribution is queen

First on the agenda was ‘Search in the post-Panda and Penguin World’, run by Neil McCarthy of I Spy Marketing. Neil argued that brands must see themselves as publishers, writing in plain, easily understandable, English, to their customers, who should be viewed as readers. He emphasised the importance of blogger outreach and an effective mobile search strategy, summarising with one of the best catchphrases of the day: ‘content may well be king, but distribution is queen.’

Relevancy, relevancy and more relevancy

Next I took a trip over to the Email Marketing Arena to listen to Andrew Bonar’s ‘Email Deliverability and Compliance – the news rules for 2012’, run by Emailvision. Again, content marketing emerged as a key theme, with Andrew emphasising that emails must be engaging to read, and, most importantly, relevant to the recipient. He advised marketers to continue testing what works best for them, making alterations to their emails and using an A/B test to get a feel for what their customers like to read.

Your content disgusts me

Then it was a short walk over to the Content Management and Marketing Arena for yet more lessons in creating engaging copy. The talk’s host, Joe Edwards of the IDM, illustrated his argument perfectly with his controversial workshop title ‘Your Content Disgusts Me’ (despite risking insulting his audience). Joe’s point was simple – it’s all well and good producing reams of content for your website, but it’s only ever quality content that will count. He encouraged his listeners to think about emotion in their copy, making their readers happy, angry, or, even, fearful. Why? Emotion drives sharing, and sharing drives deeper understanding of your brand or campaign.

Google + social = big things

After exploring some of the exhibitors’ stands, it was then on to the Search, Affiliate and Display Arena for my final talk of the day. Danny Hall of SEO Positive held a session on ‘Google Plus for your business’, running through his thoughts on why brands must embrace Google’s social network. Danny shared some examples of how brands have been successful at using the platform, predicting that if the network doesn’t yet have an impact upon search results, it’s highly likely that it will fairly soon.

All round it was a great day, and I left Olympia armed with ideas (and the obligatory bag full of freebies) to take back to the Crafted team.

Written by Vicki Cole