Online Marketing Rockstars 2017 and Content Marketing
OMR17: The most important insights
With more than 25.000 visitors the OMR festival in Hamburg has become one of the biggest and most important online marketing events worldwide. Hot topic in numerous discussions at OMR17: Content Marketing.
Of course, The Digitale was also in Hamburg. Here is my report from the Online Marketing Rockstars Festival 2017 about this year's most important takeaways and their significance for modern content marketing.
GAFA all over: the powerful four of the internet
The Big Four – Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple (Short: GAFA) – are omnipresent and have long been the most important gatekeepers of the internet. Actually nothing new, but nonetheless impressive how powerful the four have become by now. On the OMR17 stage the current numbers were discussed extensively.
Hardly any sales funnel is without one or more of the Big Four nowadays. Personal assistants from Alexa to Siri are developing extremely fast towards the new interfaces with search and user behaviour. The art remains to use these channels and platforms in the best possible and efficient way, but without becoming completely dependent on them. After all, who wants to take the risk of not reaching their target group anymore just because Facebook has turned the algorithm?
Pull and Push: Successful marketing combines tactics
It is always better to combine the most successful marketing tactics, than to just rely on a single one. So, in many cases, content marketing is still geared to the fact that the content is already found – but as our partner Outbrain says so beautifully: "Hope is not a plan".
The OMR17 participants agreed: Modern content marketing requires intelligent promotion strategies, for example via social media channels or native advertising, in order to guide users to the content. If you do it right, you convert them to returning visitors.
Influencer marketing works. If you have the right influencer
People, who have an outstanding standing in their community, can also influence and convince them of products. Sounds logical. However, many of the prominent, very large-scale influencers are highly over-rated. So, hands off influencer marketing?
No, because there is enough potential. In niche areas, influencer marketing can work very well. Influencers exist today for just about all areas, from anglers to the secretaries' office. These very special interest influencers can often have only small ranges, but they are highly relevant for their target group.
OMR17-Learning: Amazon as marketing platform
Amazon is the largest search engine for shopping search request in the US. Before Google! However, since the competition for attention on the platform is even lower than for example in Google AdWords, it is relatively easy to work with significantly lower CPCs.
Amazon is still a hidden champion. If Amazon is relevant to your own products, this can be an extremely efficient channel.
Test it, test it and test it again
Just because something worked four times does not mean it will work the fifth time around. Working digitally means trying out things rather than having endless discussions about it.
Take risks!
„A ship is safe in harbour, but that’s not what ships are for“, said John Augustus Shedd, an American author and professor. On the OMR17 stage this true thought was picked up: If you aren’t ready to take risks for your business or to try something new you will be overtaken on the digital market sooner or later.
Big players are investing huge sums of money in order to be able to play at even larger parts of the (digital) ecosystem in the future, and are also pushing into ever new product categories. Even Facebook, Andrew's "Boz" Bosworth, VP Advertising at Facebook, had to be careful not to be overrun by the world's Snapchats.
Content Marketing today: Big and smart data
Marketing approaches from the times of Mad Man are long gone. It is no longer „I have a great idea“, but ideas are generated through data. This approach does not question creative approaches, but in the end creativity has to serve the project goal.
Content marketing means: mobile first!
The mobile usage is continuously growing extremely fast, this makes it even more important to develop mobile first and to do everything possible to make the own content work very well on mobile. Google, for example, provides with AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages, this also is supposed to be used for Ads soon) and PWA (Progressive Web Apps) tools, which can help to reduce loading times (according to Google 53% of users cancel the visit of a page, when the loading time is over three seconds) and therefore improve the ranking for search engines.
2011 the Online Marketing Rockstars started with 100 participants. A small branch meeting has now become a much-noticed event. At OMR18 up to 40.000 participants are to be present, announced organizer Philipp Westermeyer. A sign that the industry is still on the brink.
Do you want to get even more information about how you can reach your business goals with content marketing? Just contact us.