Digital Marketing Summit - WJXT
Tue Jan 28, 2020

By John Hawley

​

​

​

​

Lawson gave a brief history of herself noting her 15 years with the station. On background, she is also married to Channel 4 evening News Anchor Tarik Minor. Lawson relayed the significance of having mentors like multi-decade News Anchor Tom Wills. She emphasized the risks and struggles the station had with going independent from CBS in 2002 after being the second station on air in Florida in 1949 and as it has continued to evolve as a leader in the Northeast Florida news market.

Lawson noted the value of their embrace of doing things differently with the example of going digital-first with some news stories versus automatically leading on television. As a testament to their digital commitment Lawson stated they have six people on staff for their web operations and a huge (undisclosed number) social media team. Lawson explained we all need to know our audience. WJXT is no longer “just about news”, but includes podcasts and different sorts of coverage as with new talent planned for election coverage, etc. Lawson noted everyone in the room at the Digital Marketing Summit should consider Graham Media Group for their advertising needs across their multiple platforms and closed with “It’s a whole new world out there online.”

Maresa Friedman, Google Brand Narrative Strategist and TEDx speaker from San Diego represented her talk as focused on demystifying the acronyms for Business to Business and Business to Consumer relationships at Google. Her presentation was accompanied by a slide show to illustrate her points as was that of the final presenter Kenzie Dahnert, Director of Sale Development at AdTaxi that provides the bulk of Graham Media Group’s digital marketing support.

Grow your business in the age of assistance was integral to Friedman’s presentation. She mentioned the average American’s connected an average of 23 hours and 40 minutes per day. Eight connected devices per house per person is common. Friedman noted her family has 74 devices at home. We are bombarded with 10,000 brand messages per day on average. We must REPEAT OUR MESSAGES AGAIN & AGAIN in this environment.

The average attention span is three seconds. Thus, load speed beyond three seconds lowers websites SERP (Search Engine Results Page) rank. We over research and want to take action when we encounter businesses that provide the answers we are looking for.

Friedman noted IG is like grandmas’ picture album. “The only thing that is changing is the platform.” Our messaging is the same.

Date collection is helping to target. It allows customizing user experience. Dopamine emotional response in our brains is the sort of feeling that we have to tap when making our pitch. Tell your story.

Time spent online now outpaces all other with 6.9 hrs spent online compared to 5.9 hrs on all other media. As a result “Focus on the user and all else will follow.” Send them to the appropriate landing page to covert the sale not a page that won’t deliver. Take a step back and realize others look at it differently. Get an outsiders perspective on your business strategies. More input and analyzing data about what works and what doesn’t is crucial.

Over the past 2 years, searches for the term “best” grew over 80% on mobile.
Our behaviors have changed relative to voice search. Over 50,000 years' worth of watch time has occurred on mobile in the past two years, but only 18% of that is watching major brands.

We are MORE DEMANDING as a result of the empowered consumer with more choices.

Mobile searches for “____ for me” have grown 60% over the past 2 years.
Over the past two years, searches for “near me tonight” and “near me today” have grown 900% on mobile (for example, dentist today, dinner tonight”)

Those companies that do charity work demonstrating HELPING OTHERS and share that information have shown to do better financially as compared to those that don’t.

-2x increase in same-day shipping searches.

-We’re living in the age of assistance.
-Only 1/3 of all brand experiences are really helpful.

3 key principles in the age of assistance.
-Be There: Connect with the right people during key moments of intent. Your customers are constantly exploring.
-Be Valuable
-Be Quick
*Intent is everywhere. Friedman used the example of her husband purchasing a weedwhacker while in the dentists’ office. We cannot use traditional measures to know where the next sale will come.
Don’t assume simply tracking initial inquiries is enough. Instead, measure every moment that matters to your business.
Effective Ad copy can get calls, but NO CONVERSIONS due to wrong person answering the phone, not saying right thing, etc. Your sales team has to connect with your marketing messaging or it won’t work.

-SWITCH to a non-last-click attribution model. Google Analytics has a myriad of ways to track and add weight to the various touch points along your sales funnel.
-last click
-time decay
-linear
-position-based
-first click
-data-driven-attribution.
Various touch points have weight. We cannot assume it is the first contact or final one that made the sale or that had the most impact on the client journey. Determine which touch points are important for your business & monitor them in google analytics tracking profiles to know where to invest your time and dollars.

We should strive to DRIVE GROWTH THROUGH MEASUREMENT.
Friedman emphasized the need to “Be valuable: Create valuable experiences” for search users.  

-Google analytics use aides in targeting clients and helps avoid decisions based on merely baseline data.
Marketing message are better tailored vs broadbrush

-Understanding your audiences
-Beyond the demos
-Beyond the transaction
-Beyond the keyword…BRAG!!!

Friedman wrapped up with the point that we must understand our audience demographic, but beyond that and the transactions and targeting keywords BRAG! TELL YOUR STORY as people want to know who is behind the brand and we too often don’t share our wealth of knowledge that can be key to landing more clients for our business through partnering with google providing their search clients a better experience.

​

​