At the National Digital Media & Marketing Summit

We attended the National Digital Media & Marketing Summit in Croke Park yesterday.  The event brought together Ireland’s experts in online advertising and social media marketing to provide insight and guidance in formulating user-centric online marketing strategies. 

An informative event for those interested in online brand positioning and promotion, consumer trends and customer communities.  The presenters outlined various successes and failures on the most popular digital platforms from ‘apps for apps sake’ to consumer driven viral marketing campaigns through social media networks which have gone down a storm internationally. 

Some of the facts and figures presented during the sessions ranged from the predictable to the bizarre:

• 3.8 billion people worldwide have access to adequate sewage systems, 4 billion have phones
• 380% increase in smart phones in Ireland in last 12mths - 48% of us now have smart phones
• 6% of all time spent online in Ireland is via Smartphone – and growing
• 1 in 8 people use mobiles in toilets
• 76% Irish people on Facebook, 1.9 million Irish now on Facebook, 1 million log in everyday
• 80 Million people use Farmville on Facebook.
• 22%  of Irish are ‘Linkedin’
• Website content personalisation can increase traffic 20-25%
• 11% of Media spend in Ireland is on Digital.  Compared to 25% in the UK.
• 4064 tweets per second during Super Bowl.
• Less than 10% of business in Ireland have an email marketing system.

The #ndmms twitter activity ranged from complementing shoes, to congratulating the presenters and digital artists on their slots, to seeking coffee refills.  As the day progressed it became ever more evident that this event is largely preaching to the converted.  Some attendees repeatedly highlighted this, tweeting on the online availability of the presentation information and sound-bites and that the fact that the rest ‘was common sense’ suggests that companies are seeking more strategic insights than overview. Saying that, the twitter feedback was in the main positive, with attendees widely agreed that ‘Online TV, social and mobile are the 3 key platforms for opportunity going forward’.    

Some comments from the #ndmms Twitter feed:

• AlanJamesBurns “I feel I understand a little more but I don’t feel like I learnt much more than I knew already. But like I said im not a marketer #ndmms”
• csmythser “Great day in Croke Park! Thanks #ndmms”
• smcgui “really enjoyed #ndmms today, great speakers with quality content, thanks to all involved”
• brendanmccoy “RT: For every €1 spent building a site, you need to spend €5 promoting it.”
• Brandnua “Americans watch 7 Hours of TV a day, Europeans watch 3-4 hours”
• ciaraosullivan “Internet is not a broadcast medium, it's an interactive one-to-one dialogue”
• Overheard_it “Overheard at #ndmms; 'I don't really get this twitter thing' black shirt, grey suit *tee hee hee*”

Overall the National Digital Media & Marketing Summit suggests that Irish businesses need to continually review the value of online marketing and accept digital marketing as an integral component of the marketing strategy rather than the ‘new media’ factor.

I increasingly find that if I can’t easily find a business online via my mobile, it doesn’t exist in my world.  Harsh as that may sound this was a case-in-point underlined at yesterday’s event... with the ‘one to watch’ being  the growth of ‘mobile internet platform access’ and was touched on by almost all of the presenters.

To borrow a phrase (on behalf of Ireland’s digital media marketing sector) ‘a lot done...a lot more to do’!