The Mackman Group recently sponsored the 15th CIM Cambridge Digital Marketing Conference, held at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford. The event returned after a short break over the pandemic, and it was great to get back to a face to face event, meeting with marketing peers and hearing from industry experts.
What topics did the conference cover?
The line up highlighted the key questions facing marketers in 2023, with Consumer Behaviour, AI and Social Media Engagement being popular topics. Speakers included Dave Chaffey from Smart Insights, Ann Stanley from Anicca Digital, Tim Fidgeon, CIM Tutor and Amy Hobson from SocialB.
The conference started with an overview of digital advertising from Elizabeth Lane, IAB UK, reporting that even in the current economic climate, a staggering £26.1 billion is being spent on digital advertising. This is an 11% increase on the previous year, consuming 75% of the overall advertising market (IAB UK / PwC Digital Adspend Study 2022).
Tim Fidgeon then ran an engaging session on changing consumer behaviour. With a user’s attention span reducing, this session highlighted that we now have only 2 seconds to grab our audience’s attention online and engage them. He also walked the audience through changing behaviour as users navigate through digital platforms and the important of tailoring your user experience and content to your audience segments.
Ann Stanley then considered the changing world of digital marketing including GA4 for web analytics, changes to cookie and privacy legislation, automation in ad platforms and the rise of AI. A key takeaway from this session was the importance of migrating your GA4 account correctly and scoping out the reporting you require as GA4 does not offer the ability to mine data retrospectively as Universal Analytics did.
AI was unsurprisingly a hot topic of the day, with the panel sessions including a number of AI related questions and the day concluding with Dave Chaffey taking the audience through AI and the Future of Marketing. With Chat GPT dominating the AI conversation at the moment, Dave gave an overview of a range of AI tools out there to support marketers. The key takeaway was to utilise AI as a part of your toolkit for idea generation, editing and automation but that for your marketing to be authentic and effective it should complement your existing processes, rather than act as a full replacement.
Amy from SocialB then took us into the world of Social Media, with tips and case study examples of how you can increase your audience engagement on social media. Key takeaways were understanding the difference between broadcasting and creating a community on your social platforms as well as creating a value mindset, not a sales mind set.
We look forward to hopefully seeing some of you at the next CIM East of England regional event, please keep an eye on the events page for upcoming events.
What were our key takeaways from the event?
As a CIM corporate partner, we are always keen to support and get involved with CIM events. This conference enabled us to both meet with local marketing professionals and to continue our own professional development.
“The social media, AI and email marketing talks were really insightful. They gave me a deeper knowledge on how I should be approaching social media platforms, using them to build a community instead of just scheduling posts. It was also interesting to hear how we can utilise AI alongside our daily tasks instead of fearing that AI will take over our work”.
Ben Kemsley, Digital and Media Executive.
“I really enjoyed the chance to engage with marketing professionals. It was great to hear from industry experts on topics that we work on for clients, ensuring we are delivering the highest standard of advice. The IAB UK, Consumer Behaviour and AI sessions were also really insightful and supported our on-going research and development of how we develop UX for our clients and our use of AI”.
Adam Chamberlin, Head of Development.
Thank you to the CIM East of England for organising such a fantastic event. Our company’s headline sponsorship was a great opportunity for us to support our fellow members and connect with like-minded professionals within the industry. In an ever-evolving consumer and marketing landscape, the practical insights shared on the day will have our marketing team discussing long after the event”.
Andrea Smith, Head of Marketing.
