A fantastic experience for agencies and brands.
The story begins
It was a long, arduous journey through multiple stations - at one point, Dave couldn’t get a seat on the tube - but alas, we eventually arrived at ExCel London. Having indulged in a healthy breakfast washed down with some sugar-heavy lattes, we entered the exhibition.
Upon arrival
The show was well-organised, though sharing their space with Britain Means Business gave off a kind of red vs blue effect. The printed guide to the DMS made the day easy to plan, ensuring we saw everything we wanted to see, stress free. We did try the DMS app, but decided due to intermittent internet to go old school, with the printed guide.
We began our DMS experience by perusing the stalls. They all provided a valuable marketing service or product, most of which we found interesting and of potential help within our company. Keeping up-to-date with the tools of the trade is compulsory in modern digital marketing. Though the stalls kept us entertained for a fair while, we had other things on our agenda. The talks.
Industry talks
We had a selection of theatres to choose from, all of which were scheduled with valuable presentations from a range of industry professionals. There was something for everyone. We began with an informative talk by Strategy Digital experts John Courtney and Marty Bickford (yes, he was American). Their discussions on the pros and cons of performance-driven digital marketing shared some inspiring ideas for agency pricing.We moved forth to what was personally my favourite talk of the day, ‘Unlocking the Power of Social’. Presented by Hootsuite’s very own Head of Community, Dan Spicer, we were able to absorb the energy and powers harnessed within social media using Hootsuite. As a Digital Marketing Apprentice and avid Hootsuite user, I gained valuable knowledge and insight enabling me to reconstruct and develop ideas in our existing social media strategy using methods and guidelines promoted by Dan. Thanks Dan!At this point, I must add, legs were feeling rather tender, as I’d been standing for the previous two talks due to the lack of available seating.
Final talk
We finished off our adventure by listening to the wealth of knowledge emitted from Ivan Imhoff, Head of Conversion Rate Optimisation at House of Kaizen. This was one for our lead designer, who we could clearly see had immense interest in the information and concepts Ivan was presenting, particularly how you should create a narrative script on your web page that engages the user, before moving on to any visual design.[caption id="attachment_2347" align="aligncenter" width="700"]
Ivan Imhoff at Digital Marketing Show 2014[/caption]Though Ivan’s talk was very interesting, my competitive nature couldn’t help but shove my attention towards a reaction-based button-pressing game situated on the Lead Forensics stand. Win an iPad 2 or tea for two at the Ritz? No doubt, I would have won those prizes, but I resisted the urge to retain the dignity of the company…
Leaving on a high
After listening to three impressive presentations on digital marketing, we left feeling inspired and well-informed, albeit with painful knees.The Digital Marketing Show 2014 was a fantastic experience providing a great exhibition for free, to agencies and brands, enabling them to develop their digital marketing skills within their industry. We appreciate the work put into this event and we hope to return next year.
