Inside Turing 2015 - The Edinburgh International Technology Festival

Turing Breaks - 3 key takeaways from the 2015 Edinburgh International Technology Festival

9 Sep 2015

1 min read

I had a break out of the office recently to attend the inspirational Turing Festival in Edinburgh. It’s a three-day, Tedx style event which attracts world-class speakers to share their insights and experiences of the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Alongside fellow attendees, agencies and client-side marketers, I learned a lot. Much of what was said resonated with my own project experiences at 999.

Now that I'm back behind my desk, I can't wait to share some insights so here are my top three digital marketing takeaways:

1) Understanding your audience

On or offline, marketing strategies must derive from a genuine understanding of your target audience(s). This needs to be clearly defined from the outset and underpin every decision you make.

In the digital world, this translates as:

  • WHO – demographics, age, location, gender, etc
  • WHAT – trends on content types and themes your target audience is discussing or sharing
  • WHERE - what platforms are they using?
  • INFLUENCERS – who is your audience influenced by and are they willing to share your content?

2) Brand heroes

As a brand, you decide who or what your hero is, e.g.: your product, your people or your customers. If your customer is the hero (and they should be since you are trying to satisfy their needs or desires), you need to understand them. For example, if you know WHAT topics they are discussing and what aspects of those topics are getting them fired up, you can capitalise on this rich marketing intelligence. By strategically selecting, creating and repurposing compelling content, your social media posts will start to resonate with your audience. In this way, you make your customer the hero via the content you choose to share.

3) Right vs reach

Without fail, social media needs to be focused on engaging the RIGHT people. This far outweighs REACH. It’s important that this is the guiding light of your digital strategy. It really is true that size doesn’t matter! The key is to get the right marketing message in front of your actual target audience, or the people that influence them.

So, in many ways, it’s not true to say that content is king. In actual fact, audience is king. There’s so much content out there to contend with that, unless we put our customers’ interests and concerns at the heart of what we do, there’s little chance of achieving our goals. After all, we can’t increase sales, change behaviour or increase awareness without them.

#socialmediastrategy #digitalmarketing #contentmarketing #events

Written by

Jude Kerrigan, Director of Client Services at 999 Design

Jude Kerrigan

Director of Client Services