November 23, 2015

Quickfire Qs: Jack Cornwall, Senior SEO Specialist at Sky

Jack Cornwall, Senior SEO Specialist at Sky, speaks at the Figaro Digital Marketing Conference on 26 November 2015 alongside Stephen Kenwright, Director of Search at Branded3. We caught up with Jack for a quick preview of their presentation

Can you give us a quick introduction to what you’ll be discussing at the Figaro Digital Marketing Conference and tell us why this is something that matters to marketers right now?

Content is your digital salesman. A good salesman doesn’t drone on endlessly. He doesn’t spout a load of gibberish. He makes sure he tells the customer exactly what they need to hear to make a purchase. Content is important because in a world where Google has made links honest and transparent, it’s your ingenuity in content marketing that earns you the links that’ll make a difference. It is our responsibility as marketers to make our brand’s content stand out and to know our audience well enough to create content that’ll matter to them.

Can you give us one quick takeaway from your presentation?

Google has been saying the same thing for 10 years: create the best, most unique user experience, give users the information they need and you shall rank. The only thing that’s changed is that they now have the algorithm to enforce this. Have your customers at heart.

Any advice for marketers who want to improve their search results over the next 12 months?

I personally don’t think that enough marketers have sufficient data to do their jobs effectively. It’s good saying ‘Let’s create this page and we’ll get 30 links’. Or ‘We created 10 articles and got 5,000 views.’ But as marketers we need to be looking at customer data and understand what they want us to provide for them.

What has been your favourite digital marketing campaign of 2015 and why?

For me to like a marketing campaign it has to do one of two things: either make my spine tingle or make me smile. I thought all the Back To The Future Day stuff that Uber, Nike and Pepsi did was awesome, but I also loved IKEA’s ‘Experience the Power of a Bookbook’ campaign.

Any other thoughts on current issues in digital marketing or the factors that might shape it in 2016?

Marketers need to stop being siloed. Just because I’m an SEO that doesn’t mean I haven’t learned a little about dev, PPC, PR and everything in between. It helps me do my job better and it helps when coming together with a multichannel integrated strategy.