Last week saw the return of Search Analytics & Social Media Conference to sunny Manchester for its sixth year. Four of our team headed over to support our very own Fabrice who was speaking at the event on ‘Search Marketing Beyond Google’.

The conference looked at a huge variety of different topics within the digital spectrum; from taking advantage of trending topics, through to conversion rate optimisation. Although there are far too many for us to detail in this post, here are what we think are the highlights from the event.

Our first SAScon session of the day was hosted by a diverse panel to discuss Measuring Return-On-Investment on your Content. The Q&A session delved into the how Google algorithm changes have meant that SEO no longer works the way it used to; that good content is the way forward and a new breed of consumer now means that advertising has been forced to be more engaging.

As new traditional marketing ceases to capture the attention of the modern consumer, digital media now provides a current outlet for marketing - as well as instant results for the marketer which can be both a blessing and a curse. The core takeaway from the session was that as consumer habits and consumption changes, so must the marketing approach. If consumers are interacting and engaging with brands in different ways, it is imperative that marketing strategy must mirror this.

The second presentation we attended discussed Search Marketing Beyond Google, and whether or not we should be diversifying our strategies and exploring other avenues such as Bing and YouTube. Our phenomenal Francophile Fabrice was up first to discuss his thoughts on the varying paid options available to the modern marketer. Facebook advertising has now become a far more targeted method of reaching relevant users, especially with the ability to boost specific posts and introduce call to actions within the advertisement. YouTube also offers up a vast array of different advertising options such as ‘InStream’ video ads, which display before you view any other content, and ‘InDisplay’ video ads which appear just to the right of the main viewable content. It is this diversity which allows the users to view marketing material across different screens that gives a hugely flexible platform, and one which can be adapted to different budgets and provide tremendous value to campaigns outside of traditional search mediums.

The third session of the day was hosted by Yossi Erdman, the head of brand and social media over at AO.com. Yossi’s presentation took us through how social media has been the only brand advertising used by AO for over two years, and how this has had a tremendous effect on the company. The reason why AO have decided to invest so much time in social media is based on the fact that it is instant. The engagement on social media is fast paced - this can provide immediate answers and feedback and can be a great sounding board to experiment on a low budget.

While social media is a great marketing tool, getting it right is a different story. The core consideration for AO when approaching social media has always been fun; live giveaways, amusing interaction and staff incentives means that the company can portray that it cares about both its staff and customers, providing a platform which consumers are far more likely to engage on. An extremely interesting element to note was the prevalence of video on platforms like Facebook and how AO are adapting to the way this media is now displayed. Due to the automatic autoplay settings on Facebook, Yossi noted that it was now imperative not to overload a promotional video with dialogue within the first ten seconds. By creating something visually engaging you can bypass the autoplay, where sound is not automatically played, and fully engage the user making them more likely to watch the full video. The key takeaway from the presentation is that video is taking over, and without utilizing rich media on social platforms your brand might fall by the wayside.

Another core focus from AO was incentivising staff to provide the best customer service which was then monitored through social media. By doing this, AO have allowed themselves to be a one-stop-shop for customer interaction allowing them to deal with both positive and negative reviews instantly. By introducing incentives like rewards for drivers after a good social media review, employees are now taking responsibility for representing the brand in the best possible way.

The final session of the day was by far the most entertaining and was hosted by content marketing guru Jon Burkhart, author of ‘Newsjacking’ and the man behind urgentgenius.com. Jon took us through how important it is for the modern marketer to jump on current trending topics. Running through various examples of expertly crafted reactive advertising to many that didn’t quite fit the bill it became increasingly obvious that modern marketing now relies less heavily on evergreen content that can be recycled. It seems that as consumer consumption becomes smarter, the need for newsworthy topics is imperative.

In summary, SASCon provided plenty of interesting presentations looking at social media and search analytics. The key focuses to take away are:

• Using elements other than traffic and conversions to measure success
• Utilising trending topics in order to create campaigns
• Employing social media in a fun and engaging way