Following a game-changing year for digital marketing, Brighton SEO was in full (virtual) swing in March 2021 with over 70 talks, Q&As, training sessions and panel discussions. The conference had professionals and experts from around the world discussing their experiences, top trends, and digital marketing insights for the year to come and beyond. From link building, social media and digital PR best practices to virtual discussions on how to manage an agency remotely, Brighton SEO provided us with a wealth of information and interesting viewpoints. Here’s our pick of five of the most important talks at Brighton SEO.
Audiences: the hottest topic at Brighton SEO
With the majority of our lives now spent on digital platforms, one of the hottest topics at Brighton SEO was audience building. Crafting a successful audience profile is crucial to making sure your message has impact. Our very own CEO, Ned Quekett, explained during his talk at Brighton SEO that in the luxury industry, it can be more important to identify those who will push for change within the C-suite’s inner circles and target the chain of individuals behind those key decision-makers. Think of those that do the important research and report back to these executives, such as data analysts or junior consultants.
It’s important to remember that there are false positives within the data we use for targeting, whether this be the fact that the person we see making the purchase isn’t the one driving this decision, or that an individual has not updated their Facebook likes or LinkedIn accounts in years. Our advice is to dig into targeting data a bit further, allowing you to understand the full story surrounding your audience and ensure you are not wasting your efforts and budget.
We can do this by ensuring targeting is multi-level and well-thought-through. The beauty of data in digital is that we are able use specific information about people and their behaviour online to determine buckets of individuals who are action-driving and non-action driving, and then we can further use data to refine these buckets by their interests and passions, allowing us to deliver the resonant or emotional message our audience wants to hear. You can gather this information from your customers, CRM, site analytics and social media, comparing sources to make sure you are coming to the right conclusion.
Digital marketing insights to improve your eCommerce business
Luke Carthy, an independent eCommerce growth consultant, gave us some powerful digital marketing insights on best practices for eCommerce SEO and CRO. The main takeaway is to ensure you’re increasing sales by simplifying the customer-side journey and delivering a satisfying user experience. Here are his easy tips to get you started.
Including a site search function is five to six times more likely to convert users – but there are a few best practices to take note of. For example, faceted navigation has proven to be a potent tool but you should opt for a limited amount of filters to avoid overloading the user with too much information. ASOS is a great example of an eCommerce company that’s simplified their customer journey and reaped the rewards. Users can purchase products through a guest account rather than going through the extra step of creating a personal one, halving the abandonment rate at checkout. Your search bar is also a fantastic way to better understand your customers. An easy but valuable tip is to focus on the top 5% of the site searches to make sure you’re capturing what people are looking for.
Top tips from Brighton SEO for digital accessibility
Did you know 20% of web users experience some form of physical or cognitive difficulty? In an era in which most of our lives are spent online, ensuring digital accessibility and compliance is a must. When it comes to website and app design, the following digital marketing insights should come in handy to optimise user experience for every individual.
Leah Scadmore, SEO analyst at AimClear, advises taking into account colour schemes that may make text difficult to read, removing gray fonts and inputting larger text, and ensuring your website is readable even with the sunshine’s glare. Navigation around the website can be enhanced by using breadcrumbs and optimising the page title for the user rather than for SEO purposes. Finally, ensure your website or app includes all the crucial information in the front page or the most visited links to make it mobile-user friendly.
The power of image identity tags in content planning
Aimed at content strategists, Dan Taylor, head of R&D at SALT.agency, gave a fascinating talk on using image tags to get ideas for content. Image identity tags are useful because they give a view into Google’s interpretation of what users are looking for when they type a search term into Google Image search. Google uses an association score which associates images with each other, so any images you are given when typing in your search term are things that Google believes are closely related to your search.
These image tags allow you to map out a web of word associations and ideas, giving crucial digital marketing insights for content planning. For example, a search for a ‘holiday in France’ will retrieve images with tags such as ‘luxury’, ‘beach’, ‘all-inclusive’, ‘resort’ and ‘nightlife’, all of which are good starting points for your content. A handy tip: you can use Python to extract these tags.
Working in digital marketing with remote teams
Another headline addressed at Brighton SEO this year was of course remote working. Connecting teams through a virtual interface has proved a challenge to even the best digital teams, and Kristy Dean, digital business analyst specialist, reminded us of a few must-dos to keep your team happy and in touch.
The most important point was to ensure there is allotted time in the week for your team to unwind and chat. Encourage everyone to turn their cameras (if possible) and use online games and quizzes to get the conversations going. It can be tempting to multitask during virtual meetings, but you will get a lot more out of them, not to mention an enhanced social experience, by giving them your full attention.
Coordinating teams and individual’s agendas face to face is hard enough. Encourage everyone to include holiday dates or days off in email footers or a communal virtual calendar to ensure the business runs as smoothly as possible.
For external meetings and pitches held virtually, remember that first impressions are based on 55% body language, 38% tone of face, and just 7% words. So, you may find it helpful to set up your camera to show more than just your face. For a more interactive meeting, why not try Google’s Jamboard, an easy-to-use digital whiteboard that will get ideas flowing in no time.
We loved attending Brighton SEO this Spring. If you would like to get a deeper understanding of the latest trends in digital, please get in touch with us today.
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