What are the key trends that are making digital marketers in South Africa tick and driving digital decision making? The team from Exponential South Africa, together with APAC MD John McKoy and eX Insights team guru Bryan Melmed sought to uncover this important info at the 4th Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Conference on October 15 and 16 in Johannesburg, with Exponential featured as a key sponsor.

The conference hosted some of the top marketing minds in the country, showcasing the new trends of the various communication disciplines, with Exponential featuring on the speakers bill as an expert in audience insights data, delivered through it eX platform, whilst also offering debate and discussion around “click” behaviors and metrics in digital campaign activity.

Bryan and John delivered deep expertise on digital marketing, showcasing the e-X intelligence platform and defining audience data and key campaign success metrics. Key to their story was highlighting the need to understand your audience be looking at their behaviour, contextual relevance… What are they doing? What are their interests? Do they have matching behaviours? The effectiveness of modelling audience targets around behaviour and was demonstrated with great effect to the marketing industry audience.

So, what did South African marketers take away from the session? International insights from Bryan Melmed debated the true value of CPCs and “distracted clickers” as a foundation for digital media planning and buying. Bryan likened display ads to billboards, where those who click or “clickers” are really like “distracted drivers”. Brands want to connect with engaged, active audiences that are ready to act or buy, and with CPC models, we’re essentially asking drivers to stop in their tracks and “pull over” from their online journey. Delegates at the conference learned that true success in digital campaign activity comes from a combination of art (great creative and rich media) and science (leading audience targeting and tracking technology). Marketers need to better monitor their customer’s behaviours and demographics, rather than just campaign performance metrics like clicks to ensure campaign success.

Overall, 220 brand marketers attended the IMC workshops from key market categories including banking and financial services, media & entertainment, travel and major media buying agencies.

See below for Bryan Melmed’s presentation from IMC Conference: