13 Oct The CMO’s Guide to Peak Performance By Launch Online

What a week it’s been at Amanda White Digital. Let me run through the highlights.

Although the week has been made much more complicated by struggling with the tail end of some virus, thanks to my 5-year-old, I haven’t been as full of beans as I would have liked. The week was split in half, with the first half being full of client work, five meetings on Zoom with very little voice. It was then off up to Bristol for the Launch CMO guide to peak.

You might be wondering why I would attend an event put on by a rival agency. This is where the South Wests Marketing scene is INCREDIBLE and something I am proud to be a part of. Although we are technically businesses in the same industry, us marketers are a really rather lovely bunch who all support and lift each other up. We’re all within slightly different sectors and have slightly different offers and lifting each other up and often sharing work and experiences make a much better environment all around.

The event by Launch ‘The CMO’s Guide to Peak Performance’ was a great chance to hear from other professionals within the industry and network with like-minded people. It was also so lovely to see so many familiar faces from the marketing world, Being a freelancer is incredible, but it’s important to keep up to date and keep myself up to speed with the latest ideas so that I can constantly deliver the best to my clients too. Thank you Launch for putting on a great event.

Shruti Maheshwari, Google
Navigating Measurement during Peak to drive growth with confident measurement.

If the advice is coming directly from Google, it’s probably good advice! Shruti had me engaged the minute she started talking about buying red boots 🤣 Shruti opened with the dreaded topic of data consent. But it was relieving as she started to talk about GDPR, she quoted that there are over 70 regulations that we have to adhere to when talking about consent and that GDPR is just 1 of them and that even Google staff get confused. HALLELUJAH, it’s not just me!

Compliance is just one part of the puzzle, but getting that consent and getting that 1st party data is KING, it’s the key to future marketing but we must always remember that the users choice reigns supreme! Compliance may well be complex but it is absolutely crucial.

Once you have the user’s consent, you need to balance personalisation with privacy. Don’t harass your poor users, as they’ll soon unsubscribe and request that their consent be removed, and that’s not going to help build any brand,

The foundations to getting this consent start with your Google Tag. This is like an invisible barcode that sits behind your website and captures user behaviour. This isn’t a set it and forget it task, and it’s worth making sure these are kept up to date as Google does roll out changes and updates to these.

Without consent mode enabled, you can’t use Google’s latest technology ‘Enhanced Conversions’ this allows you to connect the missing data and recover up to 65% of lost conversions.

As we go into a more privacy focussed future, there are going to be more and more gaps in the data, and we are going to continue to lose even more. If you’ve worked in the marketing sector for years, you’ll have gone from no data in the days before digital technology to havin more data than you can shake a stick at! But that peak of transparency is in decline, and we are getting less and less visibility, and in some ways, things are going back slightly to ‘marketing’ before digital.

Marketing in a data privacy world.

Once again, we reflect on Shruti’s earlier comment. ‘1st party data is king’, and it really is. Without it, you are marketing blind. Gaining permission to collect your customers’ data enables us the ability to use remarketing and to update customer match lists in Google Ads. It gives us the ability to tell Google who are target audience really is, and in a world of diminishing data, this is king!

Ian Lewis, Launch
The future of measurement: Unlocking the power of first-party data and AI with Google Ads

Continuing the topic of first-party data, Ian opens with first-party data collection from the 90s. Anyone else remember the Tango Man. Equally similar was the Pepsi charts radio, save enough ring pulls, send over your details and a few quid, and you could be the proud owner of their latest marketing collateral. Whilst you received your freebie, they got your data. WIN WIN!

Ian went on to discuss how we see consent as this new way of working whereas to our children it will just be a part of their digital world and the future generation will be more aware of this,

It’s interesting to understand that 2 out of 3 people want to see personalised ads. If we love a brand, we will gladly give them our details. We want to know about their latest releases and latest products, but Ian went on to explain that, sadly, 64% of people don’t trust brands with their data.

The number 1 thing Ian recommends for clients, brands, and agencies is to audit your site and make sure that consent mode is set up and running correctly. You can read a previous blog of mine on consent mode here. Ian reiterates Shrutis’ words and that marketing is all a puzzle, and with the ‘consent’ piece missing, you can’t build trust and value,

Then there’s the massive elephant in the room! AI, we haven’t mentioned this beast yet. AI changes EVERYTHING< This is the year that everything changes, kids growing up will be more tech-savvy than any previous generation. If we, as marketers want to stay ahead Ian suggested these three key take aways.

• Is your cookie banner fit for purpose? If not, you will loose trust with your users if you are collecting their data unethically.
• Are you REALLY using Google to its full potential? If not, you can bet your competitors are. Ensure you have consent mode enabled and Enhanced Conversions working and add those first-party customer lists.
• Are customers willing to provide their data and when? It might just need a minitue rubber orange man to get their data. It could be on pop-ups, newsletters or at checkout. However, you get the data, Building your brand’s database will be key for growth in a data-centric privacy world.

Ian’s last takeaway is something that I find really interesting. If you use Googles Chrome Browser, their privacy policy that you would have signed on downloading and agreeing to use will have a privacy policy built in. So even if your customer declines consent for you to use their data. If they are using Chrome that might still be trackable as they are logged into Chrome! This is where enhanced data comes into play and pulls all of the pieces of the puzzle together behind the scenes for you.

Remember – If customers love your brand, they are more than happy to give you consent.

John Readman, ASK BOSCO
Attribution: Which click wins?

John opened with a similar sentiment that we’ve had it too easy for too long. We could use things like Meta and Google to pinpoint our exact customers and appear in front of them very easily. However, with privacy changes, things are about to get much harder!

There needs to be more trust. Not just for customers but for marketers within the industry, too. Ian reiterates the question ‘Is Alexa listening?’

Are Google Ads getting more expensive?

Ian highlighted that even on your own brand terms, Google is raising CPC costs by 20 – 30%. He reminded us that they are a business with a core to make money and a very easy way to make money is to raise PPC costs.

With the costs rising and marketing getting harder, it is another solid reason to make sure that we are using data-driven attribution within our decision-making; we’ve heavily moved away from first-click and last-click attribution. Whilst there are tools out there like Triple Whale that combine the latest Marketing Mixed Modelling (MMM), These tools can have expensive monthly costs and aren’t accessible for all brands,

J

ohn discusses that, actually, not all businesses need a mixed marketing model and that those with short funnels or journeys to conversion are still relatively easy to attribute, Whereas once you start getting brands with more and more touch points, it’s more important than ever to understand which channel is driving what results.

There is a lot of marketing activity, and things are more competitive than ever. There’s more competition than ever competing for those bottom-of-the-funnel conversions, And the path to these conversions is getting longer and more complicated. Ultimately it’s all down to looking after your data. If you do this, you have a better chance of success. Remember CRAP IN CRAP OUT. Make sure the data you are collecting isn’t crap. Wise words John,

Joe Johnston & Becky Herbert, Launch
From insight to impact: How creative experimentation drives sustainable growth

Although this talk was more focussed on A/B testing for social media, there were some valuable nuggets of information worth sharing. Becky again continued with the theme of first-party data, but this time, it was in the form of reviews. Using the reviews to pick out the language used by customers is a fantastic way to learn how to connect with your audience and speak their language.

There were a lot of mentions that Facebook’s Meta doesn’t give you any data anymore. Still, both Joe and Becky reiterated that unless you are getting at least 50 events a week, meta will struggle to learn, and you will struggle to optimise. If you don’t have 50 purchase events a week, aim for 50 ‘adds to your cart’. If you don’t have this, then you can go for 50 page views. As long as you choose something valuable that Meta can measure, it can help guide more conversion events. They also strengthened their views that Meta wants you to go more broad with their targeting. With a tongue-in-cheek comment that Meta just doesn’t know anymore, and since IOS14 they can’t really target!!

Their closing thoughts are not to assume anything and test everything.

Amy Budd & Danny Ireland, Launch
Rethinking Performance

The last speakers highlighted just what a busy year 2024 has been. Everyone and everything is busy. We’ve had elections both in the UK and coming to the US. We’re having budgets and a new government THe only constant is change and that even includes the unlikely re-coupling of Oasis 🤣 But with all this activity marketing needs to really cut through the noise and capture the audiences attention.

Media costs are rising, everything is rising and consumers are more savvy then ever. We are seeing an increase in competition at the bottom of the funnel which is harder than we’ve ever seen before.

Whilst things get harder from both a measurement and a conversion point of view, it’s more important than ever to go back to basic basic marketing. Think Tango Man and get that first-party data.

They reminded us all that 15% of daily searches on Google have never been seen before so the top of funnel has so much potential.

As marketers we mustn’t loose sight of the big wins. Avoid being heavily trapped in month on month reporting and make time to look at the bigger picture and celebrate those year on year wins.

They also pointed out that although the rise in TikTok has been incredible, Googles’ YouTube Shorts are about to overtake TikTok in popularity.

BOOM – That’s my round-up from Bristol. Thank you, Launch and Jaye Cowle, for putting on such a wonderful event to help loads of us in the South West learn a little bit more to help our day-to-day digital marketing life. If there’s one thing that I’ve taken away, it’s that data is the most important part of marketing and going back to basics isn’t such a bad thing as we go into 2025.