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This year the Cucumber team attended the 2019 CTA Unbounce conference, one of the top digital marketing conferences in North America. It can be difficult to keep up with an industry that is constantly evolving, which is why we attend conferences like these to gain additional marketing insights on how others stay fresh.
The theme of the conference was Raising Your Marketing IQ, which was broken down to six core elements:
- Spatial ability
- Language ability
- Mathematical ability
- Memory ability
- Emotional intelligence
- Strategic thinking
There were 20 speakers who spoke about a topic, which would relate to one of the six core elements. This conference gave us insight and new information that we can apply in our work!
Although it’s geared towards marketers and content writers, the topics are still relevant and valuable for web developers as well. As you may well know, web design trends change over time and it’s our responsibility as a digital marketing agency to stay on top of these trends!
Working in a small team in a digital marketing agency, it is useful to have a variety of knowledge in the field. Although you are a web developer or designer, it doesn’t mean you have to restrict yourself to learning just in that specific technical field. It would be valuable to expand your knowledge in the marketing industry to better understand your peers, your audience and your overall work.
You shouldn’t just randomly design and code because it looks nice; it’s good to have backup, knowledge on why the layout is the way it is, in order to inject marketing strategy into every consumer touchpoint. That’s how you can stand out as a web developer/designer.
As a marketing agency, we generate value from attending these conferences every year. We also see value for you in joining us for 2020, especially if you are a fellow web designer! Generally, these conferences help with how you would design and structure the website, how you build it to improve the users experience and how you can further improve the site in the future.
Here are a couple of learning points we gained from our time at CTA 2019:
Paying attention to your audience
Who is your audience
It’s important to know who your audience is and how you can make them feel included in your business. Make sure you are creating inclusive buyer personas, that way you are not leaving anyone out, and your audience can feel like they belong.
UX tools
You can improve conversions by monitoring the users experience. Learn how your audience is using your site, and find ways how you can further improve the layout to make it easier for them to navigate and absorb the information.
Using Data
Google Analytics is a great tool to use to get statistics on how the website is doing. How many people are visiting? How long are people on the site? It’s also a great tool to use for specifying what’s wrong in the site. How come the bounce rates are high in a particular page? Why are people spending way too long on this page?
There is a lot of data you can unpack, but it’s important to pay attention to the best insights. It’s important to dive deeper into Google Analytics, going past the first layer of data (usually a summary of information) to get to the second layer of insight, which provides more valuable data about how people use your pages. This can help you find errors in your site which can prevent people leaving your site unhappy.
Lastly, the conference is a great place to connect with fellow marketers! (Also, you can network while you’re eating FREE food! Who can say no to that?!?).
To summarize, you should attend the CTA conference for insights about the marketing industry, to learn and apply your new found knowledge in your workplace, connect with people, free food, oh yeah there’s also an after party!
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