Double Diamond Digital: Taking Your Customers From Base to Summit
Being a Google Premier Partner definitely has its perks, including the opportunity to co-host digital marketing summits. This April we brought in the most influential minds in digital media to speak at our Double Diamond Digital Conference hosted at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City, Utah. These digital pros included marketers, influencers, tech gurus, paid ad strategists, and more. Like us, they live and breathe digital marketing strategy. At Avalaunch Media we work hard for our clients, but we also like to take a step back to enjoy the relationships we have built over the years. Our first day of the Double Diamond Digital Conference started off right in the heart of the Wasatch Mountains. Brighton Resort is a Utah local’s favorite, conveniently located in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Our national and local clients had the opportunity to join us slopeside for a little downtime outside our Silicon Slopes office. Blizzard-like conditions reminiscent of mid-Utah winter weather were not what we expected for a Thursday in mid-April. Nonetheless, many braved the elements, breaking out their skis, snowboards, and snow bikes to take full advantage of some fresh POW! Throughout the day, clients and Avalaunch team members enjoyed hot chocolate breaks sponsored by Blendtec and a special guest speaker appearance by Marshall Miller, GoPro Bomb Squad leader and adventure enthusiast. Rumor has it Marshall even pulled off a killer backflip off a questionable jump. After attendees were finished shredding the gnar, we all met up for a dinner reception at the Millicent Chalet, enjoying excellent mountainside food provided by Martin’s Fine Desserts. With sore legs, the Avalaunch team and guests all put their digital caps back on to join guest speakers for a full-day immersive digital experience. Day two of the Double Diamond Digital Conference was held at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. This beautiful place is a cultural highlight of downtown Salt Lake City.
Leveraging Cognitive Marketing, Machine Learning, & Artificial Intelligence Michelle Robbins, senior vice president of content and marketing technology at Third Door Media, kicked off the event and set the bar high for the following presenters. Third Door Media represented well-respected digital brands such as Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, and MarTech. Michelle’s presentation shed light on the impact of artificial intelligence in the digital marketing space.
If you are unfamiliar with AI, it basically combines big data and machine learning to create a more user-friendly experience. As marketers, we cannot rely on gut instincts alone to make knowledgeable marketing decisions, especially in the AI space. Tools like Persado and Albert.ai offer cognitive content creation, channel optimization, scalability, advanced A/B testing, and predictive analytics capabilities. Although some fear that such advanced functionality could threaten the need for human marketers, Michelle thinks otherwise. Rather than taking away the need for marketers, the need for a human touch of artistic direction, content, data scrubbing, and quality control is greater than ever. Bots will never be able to fill the void of emotional connectivity. After all, the best marketing campaigns are the ones that tap into our deeply rooted emotional cores. The Power Of YouTube Branding & Storytelling Insiyah Contractor, agency account strategist at Google, opened her presentation with a startling fact: Video is taking over the globe. By 2021, video content will consume 82 percent of all global internet traffic. If marketers don’t shift their focus, they will be left behind. With 1.5 billion monthly users, YouTube is leading the video-sharing pack. So why do so many users love YouTube? For many, YouTube serves as a voice. A platform to share, listen, and build a community. Contrary to traditional TV, viewers have the power of choice, choosing when, where, and what they view. Users believe YouTube to be more informative, empowering, and relevant. This begs the age-old question: As a business, how do you find and connect to YouTube users? Channels like YouTube compile data on search history, user intent, and consideration, making it easier than ever to find the right audience. However, marketers must be able to determine the differences between intent, passion, and casual interest. 
According to Insiyah, Google Advanced Audiences allows marketers to utilize intent signals and data from Google searches, Maps information, and app downloads to predict which audiences are most likely to engage with specific brands and deliver results. The Custom Intent Audience feature has also finally provided advertisers the opportunity to reach their audiences on YouTube based on AdWords keyword data. Purple, a contemporary mattress company, took full advantage of this new addition. They capitalized on brand awareness and consideration among their target audiences, resulting in a 339 percent increase for Purple brand searches. So once we understand our audiences, how do we capture their attention and then convert? A winning formula starts with effective, creative content, as well as using the appropriate platform. For many YouTube advertisers, a six-second bumper ad is all you need to effectively tell your story and create efficient brand recall. Other brands may opt for a longer form, using TrueView ads to increase reach, impact, and action. Lastly, it is important to remember which metrics actually matter. Focus on analyzing how your video content impacts offline sales, branded search terms, and online conversions. Our next guest speaker highlights his video secrets that took a brand from zero to publicly traded in less than two years. 
Going from Zero to Public in Less than Two Years Bryant Garvin is no rookie in the online marketing community, so it comes as no surprise that, as the director of search and display advertising, he has projected Purple into an era of lightspeed growth. Video content has always been at the forefront of Purple’s marketing strategy. Video is the perfect method for launching a brand. Nowadays, you must create brand recall. After all, people remember stories 22 times more than simple facts. Bryant didn’t hesitate to share Purple’s secret sauce, explaining that the mattress company creates captivating videos by blending emotion with education. Most of Purple’s videos use humor to trigger emotional connectivity, because boring ads do not equate to shareable ads. Another unique feature in Purple’s creative strategy is the inclusion of multiple personas. Similar to Progressive’s Flo, the Geico Cavemen, KFC’s Colonel Sanders, and Frosted Flakes’ Tony the Tiger, Purple has found success in introducing relatable personas to its audiences. The Story of What’s Inside & the Power of Social Media Can you imagine your career trajectory doing a complete 180 because of your child’s science fair project? That’s exactly what happened to our guest speaker Dan Markham. In fact, he had a very successful career in Biotech sales before he published his first YouTube video in January of 2014. A simple science experiment of cutting open a baseball to see what was inside lead to a viral YouTube video—and eventually an entire YouTube Channel called “What’s Inside?” 
By August of 2015, Dan’s videos with his son Lincoln had garnered 100,000 subscribers. Now in 2018, What’s Inside? has over 5.5 million. But how did Dan and Lincoln find their niche? If you ask Dan, their formula for success is simple: Create content that is interesting, family-friendly, and educational. Dan also has things many average individuals don’t possess: an intuitive marketing mind and digital street smarts. Dan left us with six golden nuggets to take your YouTube videos to the next level: - Pay attention to your titles and A/B tests
- Include closed captioning options
- Evaluate the first line of the description
- Use the right thumbnail
- Utilize suggested traffic
- Target diverse audiences
Today, more and more aspects of our lives are powered by mobile and digital. We love our devices, but what we really love is the power our devices give us—the power to get exactly what we want, instantly and effortlessly. To have our needs not just met, but anticipated. Looking forward, we can expect this level of empowerment to only grow as technology gets better, and our expectations for getting assistance grow with it. As consumers grow more empowered, they expect a greater experience with brands. In their presentation, Luke and Bhavana shared three ways to frame your marketing approach in the “Age of Assistance”: - Show up. Brands must measure and understand the impact of all of media touch points throughout the consumer journey,
and then be there with useful information whenever the consumer wants it. - Wise up. Ultimately this means that marketers have to optimize their media for both relevance to the consumer, and lifetime value for the brand. This requires revisiting the data and audience strategy to ensure you’re building from a base of intent.
- Speed up. Speed is table stakes for consumers, and the bar for speed continues to rise. We need to get better at telling shorter, faster stories, making the right brand impression in a matter of seconds and being relentless about removing friction.
Marshall Miller is the lead adrenaline junky of the GoPro Bomb Squad, a group of individuals that film extreme sports in action with GoPro-style angles. Throughout his life, Marshall has been involved in some of the most intense stunts and coolest marketing strategies, including a GoPro skydiving shoot during the Solar Eclipse last August. In the past, Marshall has learned that the only thing that can stop you from doing the things you love and striving to create a better outcome is death. He took a nasty fall during a skydiving trip one summer and was stranded cliffside overnight, bleeding from his arm. However, Marshall didn’t let this experience stop him from continuing to jump out of every airplane and off every cliff he can. He believes the most important thing we can do as marketers and as humans is to be passionate about our work and our lives in general. Nothing makes more of an impact than the truth. You cannot fake true passion. Digital Marketing at Avalaunch At Avalaunch Media, we believe that attitude determines altitude. In the case of our Double Diamond Digital Conference, we took this figuratively and literally. From a blizzardy day on the slopes to a whirlwind learning experience, we loved hosting this Avalaunch-Google event. Our clients had a lot of fun, too: “I was blown away! This conference inspired me to leverage YouTube in ways never thought of in public education. Britnee went out of her way to make us all feel welcome. I learned so much!!! Thank you Avalaunch!” “We loved attending Avalaunch Google Day and learning more about how we can become better digital marketers. It was a really great event. Look forward to the next one!” “The ski day was so beautiful and fun! The summit the following day was in an elegant venue featuring a variety of topics presented with fresh insights and useful takeaways. It was nice to meet Avalaunch employees and their clients and prospective clients over delicious meals.” “Avalanche of snow and Avalaunch of great information. Perfect all around.” Thank you to all of the clients who came out to learn from an all-star lineup of digital marketing speakers. We’d also like to thank Google for co-hosting the summit with us and providing some awesome perks to their Google Premier Partners. We look forward to future events. Keep an eye out for that invite! 