At the end of last week I was lucky enough to be given a ticket to the “sold out in 60 seconds” digital marketing conference of the year: BrightonSEO…and I loved it!
Full of inspiration from the speakers at the event, I came away with some real gems that I’d like to share with you – hopefully which will help you to become the font of all things digital marketing (and impress your Gen Z colleagues too!)
How long does it take you to switch off?
Probably longer than a Generation Z kid! Nichola Stott, Managing Director of theMediaFlow, told us that those born in 1996 and after have an 8 second attention span and spend up to 25% LESS time on content than the rest of us. Having a ‘cool product’ is much more important than a ‘cool experience’ to this generation – which is completely against the opinion of the millennials. It’s important to ensure that your business is future-proof in order to speak to your audience and Generation Z is no exception. By 2020, this young segment will make up 40% of consumers…a scary thought!
So how to reach this consumer group?
Make the page load quicker says Tom Bennet Senior SEO Consultant from Built Visible! He shared with us best practice on building websites, placing images and how it’s important to be strict. Ask yourself how many weights and styles of images you need. Did you know font icons carry a lot of weight? Careful consideration and a detailed look can help to diminish slow site speed and keep Gen Z engaged for longer.
Answer their queries straight away! Ever seen one of these?
A real life ‘feature snippet’
A feature snippet in Google answers the searcher’s query from a keyword, a ‘jargon’ based search, a question or to ‘fix’ a problem. Truly modernising search, feature snippets allow your website to deliver content and value to the user without a specific request.
To help your website be more discoverable in a feature snippet, Rob Bucci CEO of STAT Search Analytics, shared a few tips with us at the conference:
1. Analyse your keyword opportunities – prioritise keywords
2. Create new content targeted at snippets – add great value which leads to great UX
3. Bring in Q&A formatting – create content with FAQS. Focus on structure, subheads and lists
4. Slice up the copy within subheads lists and tables
5. Polish establishing snippets for higher click-through-rate
But, the core of reaching your audience is content and it’s important that this is at the heart of everything you do. According to Mel Carson, founder at Delightful Communications, we need to be discoverable, be shareable and be memorable in order to provide our audiences with the most authentic, relevant content that we can.
So there we have it! I hope that these digital marketing tips have given you some food-for-thought when thinking about your wider marketing strategy. It’s important to prepare for the future and tailor your activity to the changing needs of the business and your audience.
