Key Takeaways from the Digital Now Conference in Association with Google

The Bangalore chapter of Digital Now conference, in association with Google, concluded on June 12. The event was a great success, both for the participants and speakers.

If you could not attend the event or if you want a second look at the insights shared, here are the key takeaways:

Reach of Digital in India by Google’s Akshay Sonthalia

Google’s Strategic Partnership Manager, Akshay Sonthalia, delivered the keynote address on the reach of digital in India. Akshay shared several popular videos with the audience, that highlighted one key factor – digital marketing is capable of touching the hearts of millions. It Connects.

Check out the key takeaways from his session:

• Think digital, with Google – Engage with people’s emotions, logic and sense of awe. Digital helps move people when it matters the most
• Video views are exploding in India with YouTube having 60 million unique users. If you have not completely embraced video marketing, you need to start now to stay ahead of your competitors
• Timeliness, reach and impact can act as cost effective ways to reach out to millions of people
• Increase reach by embracing personalization. In fact, digital ads have more scope to get creative as compared to traditional media, where you are bound by a set of guidelines
• Indians are transacting online more. Here is what we found – Digital buyers in India are expected to reach 41.8 million by 2016 (eMarketer)
• Research Online Purchase Offline (ROPO) is today’s reality – consideration happens in digital even if purchase doesn’t. Leverage it.
• 3 pillars of capturing demand: Personalize, build for mobile and data usage
• Good customers are great to have, they say awesome things about you. However, you should not ignore disgruntled customers. In fact, you should be wary of them, since they can ruin your credibility with even a single bad experience, thanks to digital media. Invest in reputation management systems.
• Consumers can create and consume content. Keep consumers engaged to make them your brand advocates

 Infrastructure for going digital, by Position²’s CEO Rajiv Parikh and MD 74 Nambiar

After watching some wonderful, moving videos, it was time for the audience to tighten their seat belts. Next up were our CEO Rajiv Parikh and MD 74 Nambiar for the session on ‘What you need to go digital’. Here are the key insights from this session:

• Customer journey varies in B2C and B2B sectors. Position² took the audience through the journey of a consumer, until she/he reaches a purchase decision.
• Content in multiple formats is in demand
• Mobile is big, so you have to make your landing pages mobile-friendly
• You need a three layered framework to go digital:
  • Content layer
  • Interaction layer (for instance, blogs, social channels, landing pages etc.)
  • Marketing layer (paid search, media, email etc.)
• We also emphasized on the need for user centric SEO, as compared to search engine centric. The consumer is king and while creating an SEO strategy, companies need to focus on conversational keywords, user experience and content authority. If you are still focusing on keywords, content quantity and frequency, its time to realign your marketing priorities.

Insights from the panel discussion

The following are the important points that cropped up during the panel discussion that followed:

• Move from traditional to digital marketing
• Monitor the journey of a customer through digital
• Consumer behavior drive social media marketing

Hope this was a good refresher!

To the 100+ people who attended the event, thank you! If you did not get to the event, we hope you see you next time.

Drop your comments in the section below!