PMW Unlocked was a great couple of days filled with inspiration, some key takeaways.
Adapting to a cookieless future on Google Ads with first party data now being more important than ever to utilise across the platform. This enables us as advertisers to maintain key targeting, personalise ad experiences, and ensure compliance with evolving privacy regulations, ensuring continued effectiveness across campaigns.
I’m excited to see how AI continues to shape the future of performance marketing with even more adoption of AI around Meta’s advantage plus, Google’s Performance Max and the new adoption of their Gemini generative AI model (now in Beta on Google Ads). Having greater capabilities with machine learning and assisting us in reducing the more manual set up tasks, enabling us to focus more on performance data & optimising account efficiency.
Incrementality testing is becoming more important than ever as the competitive landscape is continuing to grow, keeping the edge over competitors is key. Gathering greater valuable data through testing will allows us to refine strategies, optimise performance, and maximise ROI by identifying and implementing the most effective campaigns – much more testing in 2024!
We were very fortunate to receive a keynote from Ibrahim Kamara, founder of GUAP, who gave a brilliant address on the importance of authenticity and community engagement when it comes to marketing and brand building.
In the fast-paced, 5-second, 240-character world we operate in a first impression has never been so important, and coupled with the increase in AI use in digital marketing, we as consumers can often wonder who to trust. Ibrahim, and others at PMW Unlocked, therefore gave us some really valuable points to consider when it comes to authentic, engaging marketing:
- A consistent value exchange between consumers and brands is essential – at a minimum, does your brand respond to Google reviews?
- It’s not just about what’s being advertised, it’s who’s behind it. Perhaps some behind-the-scenes content is in order for your next campaign!
- Audiences are more likely to trust and engage with content that they feel accurately represents them – we see this all the time in our work, for example, when we advertise using photoshoots featuring real customers as opposed to stock imagery.
Artificial Intelligence, AI, is everywhere – there’s no avoiding it. We as a team entered PMW Unlocked with a fairly solid understanding of AI, with many of us already using it in day-to-day tasks all the time. However, we left with a much clearer understanding of more ways in which we and our clients can utilise AI to enhance our work and allow us to dedicate even more time to our clients.
Namely, there were some great discussions across several panels about the role of AI vs humans in the world of marketing. These largely boiled down to:
AI functions
- Marketing automation
- Marketing personalisation
- Analysing data
- Chatbots and virtual assistants
Unequivocably human functions
- Transparency with customers
- Decision making using personal insight and intuition or ‘gut feel’
- Saying ahead; looking for the next trend and being a trailblazer
- Emotions: AI cannot replace the emotive response to advert copy or creatives
My biggest takeaways were definitely around audience and community fostering. Grace Andrews, Marketing Director for Steven Bartlett & The Diary Of A CEO, shared some really fascinating insights around this. She impressed how The Diary Of A CEO is more than just a podcast, it’s built an entire community, and shared some of the ways in which they built that relationship with their listeners.
One key point made was the difference between an audience and a community: essentially, audiences are consumers we talk at, whereas communities are consumers that we talk with. Whilst it can be uncomfortable, it’s absolutely vital to listen to your users and find out what makes them tick in order to shape your content.
Finally, make content that people actually care about! It might seem like a no-brainer, but how many adverts have you seen recently that have really struck you? Very few brands are in touch with their customers, and it shows. How do you find out what your customers care about? Listen to your them. It all flows together!