Data and content for online success

The Swiss Online Marketing trade fair set a record for attendance.There was a great rush at the cash desks, at the stands of the 172 exhibitors, in the lecture forums, at the discussion rounds, training sessions, courses and the many other offers of the trade fair. Swiss Online Marketingwhich set a new visitor record with 4,225 trade visitors. Swiss Online Marketing was held in Zurich for the sixth time this year.Marketing in a digital worldOne of the major highlights of Swiss Online Marketing 2014 was the keynote speech by Thomas de Buhr, Director Branding DACH at Google. He demonstrated to the numerous listeners how much digitization has already advanced in consumers' everyday lives and what this means for advertising companies. "Brands have to move in the digital world." To target those people with a relevant message who were interested in a particular product, companies are helped by data from users' Internet searches. For example, providers of cold products could have their Internet advertising delivered in regions where Google searches for cold-related terms are particularly frequent.Twitter brings TV and online advertising togetherThe short message service Twitter scores points with its users with speed and accessibility: "Twitter is live, public and gets people talking to each other," says Ali Jafari, VP of Direct Sales at Twitter. Users chatted on Twitter about current events, sporting events or TV shows - or even about being hungry or wanting to start running again. Jafari showed how brands have found innovative ways to engage in these conversations with creative content and draw attention to their brands, using examples such as Adidas and Old Spice. In addition, he said, Twitter recently began offering brands cross-channel retargeting. This allows brands whose spots run in commercial breaks of TV shows to target those users who have been talking about those shows on Twitter, thus amplifying their message.Relevant content instead of funny cat pictures on FacebookThe targeting options offered by Facebook to advertisers were presented by Martin Ott, Managing Director Northern Europe at Facebook, in his widely acclaimed keynote. With the "Custom Audiences" offer, companies can specifically filter out those users who are particularly important customers, for example, or those who are not yet customers but have very similar profiles to their customers. Here, too, however, content plays the main role, he said. "Don't beg for likes with funny cat pictures, but offer users relevant content," was an important message from the Facebook manager. The challenge today, he said, is to get Facebook users, who are predominantly mobile, to "pause their thumbs" so that they pause while scrolling and look at the brand message.Challenges in e-commerceThe keynotes by Yves Mäder and Stefan Regli also met with great interest from the trade visitors. Mäder, Managing Director of ricardo.ch, reported on the mobile orientation of the largest Swiss online marketplace, the challenges involved and the resounding success of mobile SEO activities. Regli, Head of Sales, Marketing, Communications and E-Commerce PostLogistics, analyzed the needs of online stores and their customers and presented Swiss Post's comprehensive offering in the e-commerce sector. The trend, he said, is toward same-day or overnight delivery, at the time and place of choice. With its new "Yellow Cube" all-in-one logistics solution for distance selling, Swiss Post is making many tasks easier for providers.Turning data into goldThere was a lot of excitement in the panel discussions at SOM14, especially in the international keynote panel presented by Catrin Rubenson, CEO of Admazing AG. Digital Marketeers from India, Turkey, the Netherlands, the UK, Sweden and Switzerland discussed the digital trends of today and tomorrow. Here, too, data played a central role. Michael Ossendrijver, co-owner of the DQNA Media Group, reported that in the USA, data is regarded as a currency with which users pay for the use of Internet services. Anders Willstedt, co-developer of the app Quizduell, described data as a "game changer in online marketing." Companies can address exactly the right target group online - a pizza baker the potential customers in his neighborhood, a global brand customers worldwide, each with different messages.To better use data for advertising, silo thinking must end and target groups must become addressable and measurable across the various channels, demanded Lara Kelly, Head of International, at Atlas, a company belonging to Facebook. The industry is still in a learning process, said Yunus Güvenen, founder and managing partner of Digitouch Performance Media Group. However, he said it is important for companies to incorporate their CRM knowledge and business intelligence data into their advertising activities in order to target the right users with the right message at the right time.Comprehensive overviewMore than 80 presentations and panel discussions as well as the exchange with the 172 exhibitors gave the trade visitors a lively impression of which marketing trends will be important in the future and with which tools they can already reach their customers today. Selected presentations will soon be available for listening on the Swiss Online Marketing website.The next edition of Swiss Online Marketing will take place on April 15 and 16, 2015 at Messe Zürich.