Last Thursday, Figaro Digital were joined by digital marketers interested in retail at The Hospital Club, Covent Garden, for an informative morning of presentations and roundtable networking. Industry experts shared their insights and answered questions, covering the latest trends in retail and ecommerce. Here, we take a look at the key takeaways from the #FigDigRetail spotlight and roundtable.
Who Really Has A Clue About Influencer Marketing?!
Influencer marketing is looking like it will be one of the biggest buzzwords of 2018, yet in it’s purest form it is simply using someone’s following to convey a brand message. At it’s core it is just amplified word-of-mouth marketing. Lauren Spearman, Digital Manager at Benefit Cosmetics, kicked off the day with a talk covering why there’s suddenly an urgency for brands to jump on the influencer bandwagon, what it means for brands, whether influencers should play a part in your marketing strategy, and how to nail it. Lauren looks at the key reasons why influencer marketing should be at the forefront of your digital marketing strategy and why it is a particularly useful tool in the marketers toolbox, from offering authenticity to an audience of customers that are increasingly sceptical of branded content, resulting in increased engagement rates, to capitalising on the 49 per cent of customers that already rely on influencers for product and brand recommendations.
View Lauren’s presentation here.
Power Up Your Commerce!
Shoppers have more choice and more control than ever before. If they don’t get what they want from you, when and where they want, then they’ll bounce. How do you deliver value-driven shopping experiences when consumer values are constantly changing? Matthew Tilbury, Director & Digital Experience Strategist at Codehouse, explains in his presentation how personalisation has finally come of age, allowing brands to provide omni-channel retail experiences that delight the right customer with the right offer to boost profitability, and show that retailers who turn every interaction into a transaction with personalised offers across the buyer’s journey are the ones who will win. Matthewends his presentation by showcasing a recent ecommerce case study; Codehouse worked with Wagamama to implement a single customer view and scale up personalisation to improve the various costumer journeys.
View Matthew’s presentation here.
Retail PPC: Is The Future Automated?
Retail PPC teams typically manage campaigns for large and fast-changing product inventories, which cannot be optimised manually. In this presentation Pete Whitmarsh, Head of Paid Media at Search Laboratory, shares examples of how automation can help scale and optimise Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns nationally and internationally, and the opportunity presented by Amazon Marketing Services. He also provides a sneak preview into Google Attribution, and looks forward to other issues that will affect the future of PPC.
View Pete’s presentation here.
Advanced AdWords Techniques For Retail & Ecommerce
Gareth Morgan, Managing Director at Liberty Marketing, finished off the morning by divulging how you can get ahead using advanced adwords techniques and how to get the most out of your Pay Per Click budget. In this quick fire presentation, Gareth outlines 10 targeting options in 10 minutes to show you how you can really figure out who you should be spending money on targeting using the incredible targeting options Adwords offers. These range from utilising ready-made affinity audiences to bid modifiers – using location, device, and time of day to modify what you are willing to spend on an ad. This is important for retail in particular Gareth explains: when someone is in walking distance of your store within store opening hours, it is worth modifying your bid to optimise your PPC.
View Gareth’s presentation here.