10 Key Takeaways From Our Digital Transformation Summit

If you couldn't attend our Digital Transformation Summit, or just need a refresher, here are 10 key takeaways from our five speakers.

We’re always here to help you adapt your marketing strategy—and not just via our platform . Our latest virtual event, Digital Transformation Summit, focused on sessions with the best-in-class marketing leaders of today to provide you with digital transformation tools for tomorrow. It served as a guide to kickstart your digital marketing - built on strong web foundations, SEO, and Organic Marketing.

Top insights from the 2021 Digital Transformation Summit

If you couldn’t attend this event, or just need a refresher, here are 10 key takeaways from our five speakers:

Omar Johnson, Former CMO at Beats by Dre & Former VP of Marketing at Apple:

1. Customers are expecting brands to act like humans. How can you do that? Work with influencers and creators. More than that, make sure they're in the room when you’re thinking of your next marketing strategy.

2. One of the hardest things for marketers (that in actuality, should be the easiest) is asking questions. Ask your creator what they want to say and include that in your message so that they can champion it.

Caterina Fake, Co-Founder of Flicker & Chairman at Etsy:

3. The independent web has made a massive return in the past 18 months, meaning there must be a relationship and sense of intimacy between the consumer and your content. You must be conscious of the effect your content is creating.

4. Along with a return of the independent web, we saw a rise of the creator. Make sure that if you do work with a creator, they are aligned with your company's values and build seamlessly into your system and community. Say goodbye to the passive consumer. Have conversations and know who you’re talking to.

Scott Brinker, VP of Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot:

5. The pandemic sped up digital transformation by 97%, according to Twilio Inc.

6. The upcoming decade can be called the “the age of augmented marketer.” Meaning, there’s 5 key trends in tech marketing for the decade ahead:

• "No code" citizen creators
• Platforms, networks & marketplaces
• The great app explosion
• Big data to Big Ops
• Harmonizing human + machine

Want to do a deeper dive into any of these five trends? Check out the on-demand recording of Scott’s session.

Atul Dubey, Chief Strategy Officer at Wolters Kluwer:

7. The first step to creating a beneficial digital experience is your website. The team at Wolters Kluwer’s knew that. In order to prepare for their site migration, the team implemented a philosophy of transparency, collaboration, no surprises, and letting people at the company (not just stakeholders) know where they stood.

8. Before you start a site migration, you need to choose a reliable company to lead you the accurate, trustworthy way. Selecting Conductor was easy for Wolters Kluwer’s because they wanted to have a true partner in their project. Conductor made sure their SEO was ready from day one. “They knew what drove our SEO up and configured the site correctly based on that." Not sure how your own site is performing? Get a free SEO assessment here .

Piera Gelardi, Co-Founder & Executive Director at Refinery29:

9. 69% of Gen Zers think a brand should help them achieve their goals.

10. How can you strive toward that? Here are 5 ways:

• Create with empathy: ask yourself, how am I building a relationship & telling stories?
• Double down on visual identity: does your search and social content reflect your visual brand? Think: short attention spans.
• Know that niches can be huge: when you create for everyone, you create for no one.
• Build teams that represent your customer: make sure the people on your team share experiences, passions and points of connections.
• Find & commit to your brand purpose: customers expect businesses to be socially minded and will shop based on value.

Digital Transformation Summit: What to prioritize next

Notice a trend when looking through these 10 key points? Here’s what stood out to us so you know what to prioritize next:

• Ask questions (person-to-person!) and listen to the answers. Connect with your audience.
• The next decade will bring huge changes to the Digital Marketing landscape, so have next steps carved out for not only your strategy but your website as well.
• When creating content, make sure it connects with small audiences. This can often be done through working with niche influencers, who already market to your ideal demographic.

Want to dive into each of the sessions? View the full event here , for free.