Last Thursday, we hosted our final Digital Bites event of 2024 at one of our favourite venues, the Everyman Cinema in Manchester. A huge thank you to all our attendees and speakers for joining us and making it a memorable day. Since launching Digital Bites in 2021, we’ve loved bringing marketers from the North together for afternoons filled with actionable strategies, expert insights, and networking – we’re looking forward to being back in 2025!

 

Ellie Kime – Founder, Eleanor Mollie/The Enthusiast & Co

Talk: Showing off your yoU-SP

Ellie shared her insights on blending personality and professionalism in business. She emphasised that a brand doesn’t need to be entirely formal – bringing out personality can enhance relatability.

One key point Ellie highlighted was celebrating your team, recognising them as a valuable asset. She reminded us that understanding the power of your team can truly elevate a business.

Another tip was to avoid neglecting the ‘About’ page. These pages often get significant visits, so making them personable rather than filled with company jargon can make a big difference. Ellie also encouraged brands to have fun—keeping up the vibes and energy is essential.

View Ellie’s slides here

 

Chris Nightingale – Director, Can-Do Digital

Talk: From Standout to Startup: The lessons learnt from leaving a giant retailer and starting my own marketing company

Chris, who recently moved from AO to freelancing, shared his journey of launching Can-Do Marketing and building his personal brand. His journey taught him the importance of adapting to new roles and skills, as he now manages all aspects of his business.

Chris emphasised the importance of positioning yourself as the unique puzzle piece your clients need. He shared how essential networking, collaboration, and expanding your network is in today’s freelance world. He also discussed the distinction between strategic and tactical roles, noting that a manager takes a strategic view, while an exec or assistant executes tasks.

He also touched on the rise of AI, citing tools like True Clicks for PPC and ChatGPT as essentials for modern marketers. Chris ended with an important reminder: learning to say both “yes”, but more importantly “no” is key. And also accepting and learning from failures.

View Chris’ slides here

 

Broghan Smith – Fashion Key Accounts Lead, TikTok Shop

Talk: Social commerce and driving sales through TikTok Shop

Broghan presented on the explosive growth of social commerce, focusing on how TikTok is redefining the shopping experience with its seamless customer journey.

He discussed TikTok Shop’s design to make the customer journey as frictionless as possible, highlighting four native ways users can explore and purchase:

1. Shoppable video: Offers a subtle way to purchase directly from videos.
2. Live shopping: Creates an engaging, interactive shopping environment.
3. Showcase: Fuses entertainment with shopping, making browsing more enjoyable.
4. Shop Tab: Uses algorithms to deliver curated shopping recommendations.

Broghan also discussed how TikTok is opening doors to new audiences and fostering strong community engagement in the social commerce space.

 

 

Charlotte Sharpe – Paid Media Team Lead, Connective3
Talk: Leveraging behavioural science to power international paid strategies

Charlotte Sharpe, the Paid Media Team Lead at Connective3, brings over four years of experience in the paid media field. In her talk, she explored how behavioural science can enhance paid media strategies and addressed some of the current challenges facing the industry.

With CPCs continuing to rise (+10%) and conversion paths becoming increasingly complex, reaching customers requires navigating multiple touch points. Increased brand competition across markets gives customers more options than ever before. However, Charlotte emphasised that by using data and adopting creative approaches, marketers can still influence performance effectively.

She concluded her talk by discussing the future of paid media and offering insights on how marketers can adapt and thrive in this evolving landscape.

View Charlotte’s slides here

 

 

Dan Marshall – Group Head of Digital, Moneypenny
Talk: CRO > Everything else

Dan Marshall, the Group Head of Digital at Moneypenny, has over 12 years of experience in marketing. His talk introduced the fundamentals of Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) and highlighted the need to balance various aspects of marketing.

Dan shared three primary examples of CRO in action. First, he demonstrated how live chats can boost conversion rates by 12-20% and weighed the pros and cons of using AI versus human operators. Next, he discussed exit-intent pop-ups, pointing out that the average user spends less than a minute on a website, and showed how pop-ups can help retain visitors. Finally, Dan talked about optimising existing channels and understanding what truly drives value online.

 

 

Ronja Ostner – Senior Digital PR Executive, Connective3
Talk: Unlocking EU markets: The native insight advantage

With a background in social media and influencer management, Ronja Ostner transitioned into digital PR over 18 months ago and has since played a crucial role in link building across German-speaking markets.

Ronja’s talk provided an overview of the EU market and underscored the importance of native language proficiency for establishing authority and achieving “local” relevance.

In the second part of her talk, she covered the do’s and don’ts of EU link building. Key recommendations included researching the media landscape, engaging with journalists, and exploring newsjacking opportunities.

She concluded by cautioning against common pitfalls, such as expecting instant results or making direct comparisons to the UK market, as these can lead to frustration and early abandonment of EU campaigns.

View Ronja’s slides here

 

 

Andriy Starukh – Head of SEO, Iglu Cruise
Talk: Data overload? Practical strategies for managing SEO data for mid-size enterprises

Andriy is the Head of SEO at the UK’s largest independent cruise and ski agency. His talk centred on how to avoid data overload, and ways to manage SEO data at an enterprise scale.

He began his talk by sharing that enterprises are companies that have an annual revenue range of up to $10 million – over $1 billion. Andriy talked to the audience about the challenges of working with enterprises such as security concerns, change resistance and competition. He shared the model of why, how and what. Why is to feel less stressed and become more confident as an SEO, how is by using the right tools and automation and what is to track the right metrics. He advised to review your process at least every quarter for better clarity and context.

Andriy shared the five-step process that can help you make better decisions:

• Categorise queries and pages into groups
• Track each group’s performance
• Check keyword distribution by position
• Monitor events such as core updates
• Blend multiple data sources

 

 

Lizzie Lewington – Head of SEO Strategy, Connective3
Talk: Why GEO is the new SEO, and how to master it

Lizzie shared insight on how the AI overview will kill SEO due to various the changes taking place. According to Lizzie, the AI overview does pose issues such as pushing regular search results down yet holds opportunities such as driving more clicks through to site.

She discussed the point that SEO’s need to adapt to keep up with the evolution. For example, from 2014 to present, we’ve seen the unveiling of featured snippets, product listings and continuous scroll, all of which have improved the user experience.

Lizzie went on to explain how we can get better at generative SEO, through tactics such as picking the right keywords which trigger AI overviews, ‘Ai is improving and learning through different interactions.’ She confirmed that being unique is key, and we need to provide content which matches the query intent and is reliable, so Google chooses you over competition.

Lizzie finished her session by sharing how to optimise product feeds and use enchased schema mark up for shopping with the audience.

View Lizzie’s slides here

 

 

Mercy Fulani – Marketing Executive, GatenbySanderson
Talk: It starts with a like

Mercy is a Marketing Executive at GatenbySanderson and her talk focused on the importance of taking content creation further than a like, and the importance of knowing who you are speaking to.

Mercy shared her personal story of running with a content idea without conducting in depth research of her audience’s behaviour. The content did not yield the results she anticipated as she admitted that she didn’t know anything about who she was creating for and ended up teasing a service which no-one had knowledge about.

According to Mercy, the most important factor is, ‘who are you speaking to, where do they go and what do they do’. She spoke about the best way to gain audience information, through the likes of competitor analysis, asking your core audience directly and platforms such as Reddit. Mercy’s key points to taking your audience relationship beyond the like are:

• Clarify who are you speaking to and keep messaging consistent
• Share why they should want you – share the problems you can solve
• Diversify content – short form videos are growing
• Tell a story to build deeper, lasting connections
• Be for real – authenticity can help you reach people

View Mercy’s slides here

 

 

Molly Bartram – Senior Influencer Marketing Manager, Connective3
Talk: The key to cross-generational influencer marketing

Molly began her talk by discussing that authenticity is not enough, people need great content to convert. She explained that trust is built differently across generations, and no campaign is the same. Molly believes that there is never a one size fits all model for cross-generational influencer marketing and went on to explain the platforms each generation uses the most.

She stated that Gen Z are more loyal than other generations and Millennials respond well to video content, but they are open to social content too. An important factor Molly said brands need to note is that ‘Gen X are everywhere; they don’t focus on one platform’.

She shared her insights into generation cohorts and purchase behaviour between them, a wider consensus is that consumers are trusting influencers more than A-list celebrities, and brands need to adapt and use them in campaigns if they’re not already. Molly went onto outline the key messaging for each generation:

• Gen Z like to see the good and bad, genuine content wins over scripts, so influencer briefs should be loose to let the creator lead.
• Millennials respond well to reviews, product demonstrations and discount codes.
• Gen X are price sensitive and prefer nostalgic content.

Molly finished with the underlying messaging that campaign messaging should not change between generations, the key is to keep it simple.

View Molly’s slides here

 

Chris Hockin – Director, Business Development, The Trade Desk
Talk: The future of retail explained

Chris began his talk by covering what retail media is – a focus on targeting actual human shoppers by identifying and engaging with the real people behind purchasing decisions. By focusing on real shoppers, retail data allows for refined targeting based on:

• Purchase behaviour
• Product category preferences
• Competitors’ customers
• Lapsed shoppers
• Customer life stage

Chris covered how retail data empowers brands to connect with highly engaged, relevant audiences in real-time and by using controlled activation solutions, brands can reach across various segments—categories, competitors, lapsed shoppers, lifestage, etc. Chris’ session finished with the statement that retail data consistently outperforms other data strategies, showing higher engagement and relevance, further showing its significance.

View Chris’ slides here

 

Tom Higgins – Co-founder, GIFTA
Talk: Cutting through the noise: How strategic influencer gifting at scale strengthens brands

After starting GIFTA as a passion project, Tom is the Co-founder of GIFTA, an influencer gifting business which has worked with brands such as Dove, Adidas and New Balance.

Before GIFTA, Tom was an influencer and after experiencing brands reaching out for gifting opportunities with restrictive demands, he was inspired to start GIFTA. Through GIFTA’s alternative approach to gifting, they have a success rate of 92% of products gifted, being posted by influencers which is a significant increase from typical rates of 10-20%. Tom delved into why gifting works as consumers value social media recommendations and authentic and real content that resonates with the audiences.

To finish off, Tom shared a case study of the work GIFTA did with Dove where they worked with 1,500 influencers on a gifting basis and from this they achieved 3.7 million impressions and 151,000 engagements, demonstrating the impact of gifting.

View Tom’s slides here

 

Ben Martin – Partnership Manager, Powerhouse Studios
Talk: Gen-AI & Virtual Production – Using emerging technologies to level up your visual content

Ben Martin, Partnership Manager at Powerhouse Studios began by talking about how although AI has existed since the 1950s but recent generative AI developments have raised concerns about replacing creative roles, especially in photography with it being most effective for backgrounds and environments, not final products.

Ben covered that virtual production was originally used in films however has now become a powerful take in advertising. Virtual production is ideal for:

• Impossible or environmentally challenging locations
• CGI replacements, which can be costly and resource-intensive
• Transparent or reflective products, where controlled conditions matter
• Saving time and budgets, allowing for “multi-location” shoots in one place

Ben explained how generative AI is a tool, not a replacement, but it can be used to handle costly elements, freeing up budget to focus on authentic product shots. The audience were left with the key takeaway to embrace new technologies to tackle creative challenges, but retain brand authenticity by balancing AI with traditional processes.

View Ben’s slides here

 

 

Check out the event photos here and make sure you’re following us on social to kept in the loop with our latest updates!

Last Thursday we hosted the first ever Up North event and we’ve been blown away by the positive feedback we’ve received post-event. When we started planning Up North last December, we wanted to create an event that was different to your average marketing event, an event to inspire and motivate those who attended and we hope we achieved that.

View slides for stage one here and slides for stage two here.

Up North speakers

We curated a pretty special speaker line-up of speakers that included leading marketers, content creators, business leaders and we heard from leading brands including Surreal, Depop, The Diary of a CEO, CAVU, Channel 4, Adanola, AO.com, Girls in Marketing and more. When choosing the content for the event we wanted to make sure we had a varied line-up and in addition to digital marketing topics our speakers also delved into creating powerful works that connects, diversity, burnout, personal branding, causing chaos on social media and so much more. You can read an in-depth overview of stage one here and stage two here.

Historical venue

We chose the fantastic Victoria Warehouse as our venue and the location did not disappoint. The historical city centre venue was the perfect backdrop to host over 400 marketers. It was important to us that there was more to the event than just the great content and the cool and quirky venue helped us achieve that. Set across two floors, the upstairs area was where you could find networking, connective3 lounge, free 1:1 LinkedIn reviews from Girls in Marketing, professional headshots and a social area for lunch and coffee breaks. Downstairs in the basement, we transformed the space into two stages where we were able to host our 24 sessions. Throughout the day there was complimentary tea, coffee, pastries, smoothies and not forgetting our Aperol Spritz bar on the terrace to round off the event.

Thank you

There was a real buzz during the day and an amazing atmosphere and that’s a testament to the thriving digital community we have in the north, so we wanted to say a big thanks to our wonderful delegates who joined us. We’re genuinely so passionate about building the digital community in the north and creating opportunities not only for networking and knowledge sharing but for northern marketers to speak on a big stage and share their insight outside of London. We will continue to champion the northern digital community and look forward to hosting more events in Leeds and Manchester very soon…. watch this space!

Behind the scenes vlog

We filmed a behind the scenes vlog of the full event set up and the day itself, giving you a sneak-peak into what we were up to and the elements that go into running Up North.

Daniel Rowles – CEO Target Internet, Programme Director Imperial College & Host of the Digital Marketing Podcast
Talk: The future of digital marketing

Daniel is the CEO of Target Internet, training leading businesses including Google and host of the Digital Marketing Podcast. Daniel broke his talk up into three sections: Artificial Intelligence, Data and Trust and Community. Some key points:

Artificial Intelligence

• Can use AI for your keywords via a Google Chrome extension
• Increasing noise – 4 million blog posts as lots of people are pumping out low quality content so we have to cut through the noise
• There are some ethical challenges as we can’t detect whether this is AI generated content

Data and Trust

• Third party cookies are starting to be blocked
• Average click through rate is 18%
• Less transparent data
• An hour of your voice means your voice can be deepfake – can’t trust anything you hear anymore

Community

• What actually makes you and your agency human?
• Investing in brand and leaning what makes us human is important
• CRM – lots of opportunity for networking

Ash Jones – Founder, Great Influence
Talk: Building a personal brand to become a “gateway drug” for your business

Ash Jones is founder of Great Influencer, working with some of the UK’s leading entrepreneurs and influencers on their personal brands including Stephen Bartlett and Grace Beverley. Ash explained how “personal brand” has become somewhat of a buzzword and there’s what he calls a lot of “LinkedIn cringe” with people using LinkedIn for their ego, likes and validation. Used correctly, your personal brand and LinkedIn can be leveraged to become a gateway for businesses. Ash explained how showing your face is one of the most competitive advantages, and how content is key – both of these components give you and your team credibility and a good reputation. LinkedIn is a noisy social platform at the moment but if there’s loads of people doing the wrong thing, doing the right thing will allow you to stand out.

Olivia Mae-Hanlon – CEO & Founder, Girls in Marketing
Talk: Building, managing and monitoring brand perception online

Olivia is founder & CEO of Girls in Marketing, in less than four years, she’s built one of the biggest communities for marketers across the globe. How? By building and maintaining a strong brand both online and offline. It’s not just about “building” a brand, it’s also important to maintain it. Olivia explained that one of the most important aspects to building a brand is: Brand Perception. Brand Perception is the sum of a consumer’s feelings, experiences and thoughts about a product or service. It’s what people believe a brand represents, rather than what a brand says it represents. Olivia then talked the audience through four examples of good brand perception and gave some top tips for improving how your brand is perceived by audiences.

Azeem Ahmad – Digital Marketing Lead
Talk: Bridging the gap: Aligning digital marketing with equality

Azeem is a leading digital marketer and talked to the Up North audience about the importance of aligning digital marketing with equality. On top of his day job Azeem is a conference speaker and also runs a digital marketing podcast that prioritises people that are from marginalised groups. Azeem started off his talk with some statistics:

• 60% of LGBTQ+ don’t feel safe enough to be ‘out’ at work
• Just 7% of UK ads put people of colour as the sole or main protagonist
• 84% of consumers think it’s important for brands to promote diversity & inclusion
• £252bn per annum: The disposable income of people from minority ethnic groups
• Studies show that male confidence is assumed, whereas a woman’s is earned

Azeem then talked us Dove’s #ShowUs campaign, explaining how they are getting diversity and inclusion right and how this had a positive impact on the bottom line. Azeem ended the session by talking about equality: “the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, or opportunities”. He provided us with more facts and statistics and some actions that can immediately be implemented to help align equality within your digital marketing efforts.

Rosa Mitchell – Business Director, connective3
Talk: Conquering confidence: how to improve confidence when working in business

Rosa’s talk explored the importance of having confidence when working in digital marketing and how you can start to implement some simple actions to be more confident. Rosa started off her talk by explaining how one third of young people lack confidence and how you can grow confidence to a level where you feel fine in situations where you have zero experience. Rosa then explained that resilience is “the psychological strength to cope with stress and hardship”, stating that 32% of the working population have low levels of resilience due to stress. Rosa explained how digital marketing isn’t always an easy career path, you need to combine creative, analytical, results driven, public scrutiny and you need to be confident to really harness your creativity. Rosa then explained the barriers to being confident and provided some actionable ways to over come these barriers including prioritising working on self-esteem, challenging negative beliefs and self-deprecating language, help other people recognise that they are good at and so much more.

Abi Bennetts – Digital PR Manager, Propellernet
Talk: Psychology principles to power your digital team’s success

With burnout being openly discussed in the digital marketing industry more than ever before, and many of those working in digital sharing the same traits of conscientiousness and perfectionism, Abi revealed how we can use research-backed psychological theories to help high-performing digital teams achieve success and manage their wellbeing more effectively.

Kelliesha White – Depop – Senior Brand & Cultural Impact Manager
Talk: Crafting Connections: The art of a marketer

In her talk, Kelliesha shared her thoughts on how to really connect with your audience on a tangible level. According to Kelliesha, this is key to being a successful marketer and ‘being you’ is what really allows you to make your connections, both with individuals and brands. She spoke about how the best campaigns derive from people connecting with the right people at the right time and that purpose should be embedded in every aspect of your business. Kelliesha’s three marketing truths are:

• Always stay curious
• Never assume
• Indulge in different cultures

John Thornton – Senior Creative – Surreal
Talk: How to cause chaos on social media

John shared his insights and experiences on his time working as copyrighter and social media manager at Innocent Smoothies and his current role at Surreal. According to John, the key to social media success is to make people love your brand- selling things is a second priority. You need people to feel like they want to connect with the brand product posts aren’t going to get the best engagement. Make it fun and remember that ‘behaving yourself achieves nothing’. When it comes to posting on social media, John doesn’t believe that posts need to be directly related to your brand and products – instead, you need to create a personality for your brand. This can mean that sometimes you need to be a bit cheeky. One of John’s top tips? Don’t always wait for sign off – if you’re 70% sure, go for it!

KEYNOTE: Grace Andrews – Marketing Director – The Diary of a CEO
Talk: Behind the streams: Scaling The Diary of a CEO

Grace began her talk by talking about how she had faced countless rejections when applying for jobs before she shared her infamous cover letter on LinkedIn. This post went on to open doors that she didn’t even know existed. It eventually secured her the role as Head of Content for Steven Bartlett and The Diary of a CEO. Grace discussed how this post turned her into a paid creative, secured her invites to high profile events and talks and created connections with influential individuals within the digital space. Grace went on to discuss how she joined The Diary of a CEO when the company had 11,000 YouTube subscribers – it is now at nearly 3m. She believes that the businesses success is down to its three key values:

• Hyper focus – having a vision and not letting anyone or anything break that vision
• Incremental gains – the power of consistency, experimentation and making small improvements on a daily basis
• Always being willing to break the mould – create something that evokes feelings and don’t be afraid to try something that hasn’t been done before

David White – Content Marketing Director – Connective3
Talk: The state of Digital PR in 2023

David began his talk by discussing how PR has changed over the past 10 years. He explained the importance of relevance, stating that ‘it’s not a numbers games, it’s a relevancy game’. David believes that relevance is only going to get more important too, especially as AI becomes more prevalent and as search changes. He discussed how we need to take a step back and consider how we can ensure that our content is seen by the right people and how we can answer the questions that our customers have. David explained ‘it’s no longer enough to think of an idea and push it out of the door’ – we need to research our audience and create content that suits their needs. David went onto outline the tools and platforms that can help PRs in 2023:

• Social listening – allowing us to respond to customers and provide the content they’re looking for
• The use of AI – for data capture and to support tasks such as press releases and finding sources for your content
• Influencer collaborations – working with influencers to drive trust and authority

Leigh Purves – Journalist & Broadcaster
Talk: Pitch perfect: Storytelling with success

In her talk, Leigh started by outlining how journalists today are not very accessible and this is why it’s so important that PRs and brands are pitching stories that suit the journalist’s audience demographic. Leigh shared her insights into the newsroom and explained how lockdown has meant that the media has had to adapt. She explained how establishing relationships with journalists is still extremely important and that PRs should always be proactive with their pitches and keep stories relevant and fresh in order to capture attention. Leigh’s key takeaways included:

• Make sure your pitch includes everything the journalist needs
• Images are very important
• Explain all the details, but keep it streamlined
• Listicles are always great and easy to digest

PR Panel (Q&A)

With David White (connective3), Libby Windle (connective3), Leigh Purves (Journalist & Broadcaster) & Abi Bennetts (Propellernet)

Questions were submitted around a number of topics relevant to the PR industry in 2023 and the pane of experts shared their insights, experiences and predictions. Topics included:

• The use of AI in PR
• Can every brand be PR’d?
• How we should be looking at relevancy in PR
• Is there still a need for face-to-face meetings?
• Do journalists really blacklist PRs?
• The types of campaigns and strategies that are performing well in 2023
• The biggest challenges in PR in 2023

Check out the full event wrap up here, stage two here and make sure you’re following us on social to keep up to date with everything that’s going on.

Lily Thistlewood – Head of Performance Marketing, Adanola
Talk: From Corporate life to startup chaos and everything in between

Lily started her career at Very in email marketing 10 years ago and has come full circle to now working in performance marketing for Adanola. Part of Lily’s career journey was what she calls her “Entrepreneur era” when she launched her own performance marketing agency in 2020 called Reform the Fold. The agency worked with some of the UK’s fastest growing e-commerce brands including Michael Kors and Simply Be. She decided running the agency wasn’t quite for her due to a plethora of reasons and embarked on her current role at Adanola – a brand she followed on every platform and wanted to help grow. She’s still working in consulting and nearly a year on, she’s the happiest she’s ever been. Lily then went on to discuss the exponential growth of Adanola and the huge sales they’ve achieved.

Ecommerce Panel

With Claire Stanley-Manock (connective3), Lily Thistlewood (Adanola), Azeem Ahmad (ASSA ABLOY) & Chris Nightingale (ao.com)

They discussed: 

• The media landscape is changing incredibly fast, what are you as ecommerce brands finding to be the biggest challenge when driving performance?
• Attribution has always presented a challenge, how are you measuring performance across the media channels and how are you connecting this to your wider business objectives?
• Would you say you are ready and GA4 and how do you see the shift in the platform impacting your business?
• First party data is definitely one of this year’s buzz words, how is FPD enriching your marketing strategies?
• Looking at what’s coming in performance marketing in the next 12 months/what are the innovations we should be looking out for as search marketer?
• With the future seemingly AI focussed, how do you see the future of media changing the shape of the talent required?

Adam Oldfield – Founder & CEO, Force24
Talk: It’s time to think differently about email

Adam can fix the world with email, he’s CEO of Force24, the UKs fastest growing marketing automation platform.

Some key points from Adam’s talk:

• On average people in the UK receive 150 emails per day
• Noise and competition in the inbox is the most it’s ever been
• You need to make sure you’re adding value with every touch
• Email has a recall of about 12 hour – our brain consumes the very basics of the message
• Simplifying the message – directing the brain to get the message across in as few words as possible
• Right person, right message, right time is personalisation
• Most marketers focus on the wrong form of segmentation – the bar of competency has been raised
• Reduce the noise, improving conversion rates, reduce marketing execution costs
• Marketing should be about doing stuff that people want

Adam Hetherington – Senior Agency Manager, Google
Talk: AI Powered Ads

Adam is a Strategic Agency Manager at Google and works with top key partners in the UK and Ireland. He helps agencies understand what’s happening now and future proofing accounts. Adam explained how Google has been an AI first company since 2015 and that AI is the next big shift. AI will help to organise, visualise and write with new additions coming to Gmail. Adam delved into PMAX, explaining PMAX helps to reach touchpoints at the right time and to be agile across the different properties

Key takeaways:

• You’re not competing with AI, you’re competing with marketers using AI
• Think openly, how can you take advantage of it?
• The future of search is going far beyond the search box to help people make sense of the world in more natural and intuitive ways

Claire Stanley-Manock – Paid Media Director, connective3
Talk: Humans vs machines: AI in paid media

Claire started off her talk by emphasising that the dawn of AI is upon us, she explained that it can be a help, a hinderance and an unknown, but harnessing it correctly in Paid Media will lead to great performance wins. Claire focussed on where AI is present across paid media, pitfalls to watch out for and provided hints and tips on harnessing AI to drive performance.

Key highlights:

• 56% of campaigns performance can be attributed to creative
• We all scroll the height of the statue of liberty everyday
• Test creative before it goes out with AI
• File names are important, make sure you include the keyword, one of Claire’s campaigns experienced -44% CPA by just changing the file name
• Use learnings from paid social media into PMAX campaigns
• Not all conversions are equal – you need to look at lifetime value and focus on what metric is most valuable to you

Key takeaways

• AI doesn’t know what’s most important to you and your business
• AI can help our campaigns work harder and find new opportunity
• There is nothing like the human touch especially when it comes to creative

Abi Carey – Head of Paid Social, Overdrive Digital
Talk: Preparing for Q4 success now

Abi Carey is Head of Paid Social at Overdrive Digital. In her talk she explained how no-one knows what Q4 2023 is going to bring. We can sit in the corner and cry OR we can get our Meta ad accounts in the best possible position ready to tackle whatever Q4 throws our way. She provided the audience with loads of actionable insight and advice.

Helen Pollitt – Head of SEO, Car & Classic
Talk: Unlocking Growth – The Power of Company-Wide SEO Education

With 15 years’ experience in digital marketing, Helen explained to us the importance of training your team in SEO so it stays at the forefront of their minds when making big decisions.

Whilst that might sound intimidating – to both the trainer, and trainee, she made it clear that despite SEO being a broad subject (and not just keywords and meta) not everyone needs to know everything, and it’s important to identify those who can impact SEO within your business and group them by their training needs – whether they need more of a contextual overview or skill specific, in depth training.

Not only does SEO knowledge amongst your team prevent mistakes and correct misinformation around SEO, but can look great on employee’s CVs.

Dan Morehead – Lead SEO, Channel 4
Talk: SEO For Streaming

What do you call Channel 4’s streaming service? 4Od? All4? An amalgamation of them both?

If you said any of the above, you’d be wrong. Channel 4’s very own Dan Morehead explained that Channel 4 are changing the name of their video on demand service again to simply ‘Channel 4’. Why? For SEO purposes of course!

Through the streaming service’s many names and identities – they noticed that they were consistently seeing searches for ‘channel 4 iplayer’. Dan walked us through the rebrand of the site – which is the UK’s biggest free streaming service, and how one of their primary focus is to optimise the site for live events (such as sports events) through the likes of stingers, creating brand pages and reaching put to affiliates to link through to the page.

Sanjay Purewal – SEO Manager, CAVU
Talk: How to use the SERP to guide your organic strategy

Working in SEO since 2016, Sanjay used his talk to explain why we should use the SERP to influence and guide our organic strategies.

He explained that SEO is like a house – whilst the technical side is the foundation, it’s the content and links that complete it (and are also the parts we see!). One of his key points was to keep it simple, and more descriptive search terms will bring up more transactional results than informative. He used phone insurance as an example, that ‘phone insurance’ is searched for 4x more than ‘iphone insurance’ likely down to more people looking for information around phone insurance than the product itself.

He stressed how important it is to invest in different types of content for your site – especially in informative content alongside using a content calendar to publish the right content at the right time.

Kenny Metham & Andreea Popa – Senior Social Media Manager & Head of Paid Social, connective3
Talk: The Secret To Driving Value With Social

Connective3’s very own Kenny and Andreea walked us through how to use organic and paid social together to drive results.

They taught us that it’s important to factor boosting ads into your content plan, and to treat organic as a playground – analysing what content is doing well to inform your choices on what should be boosted and what shouldn’t.

They explained that the key overlap is a trusted source in the middle – especially if your audience is Gen Z, with most of that age range trusting influencers and ‘everyday’ people they see on social media over brands, even if they’ve been paid to talk about the product.

Lauren Hughes – Head of Strategy, Social Trinity
Talk: TikTok: The misconceptions, where brands are getting it wrong and how to get it right

As much as we might not want to admit it, TikTok is here to stay, and as marketers – we need to embrace it.

Lauren talked us through the misconceptions around TikTok, and that it isn’t only just teenagers that are using the app, with more and more people spending the most time on it out of any other social media app, as it shows consumers material they want and like through it’s AI algorithms. It also can make a difference to a brands revenue – using Duolingo and their iconic TikTok’s as an example. Even Instagram, who adopted a similar AI algorithm for it’s Reels feature, has reported that it’s a driving factor for consumers spending more time on Instagram.

She explained that users prefer authenticity over aesthetic, and whilst having consistent and eye-catching branding is important, jumping onto trends and sounds popular on the app (if it links back to your message or product) is a great way to get your content to those who will appreciate it.

As a part of the Leeds Digital Festival, we hosted our yearly Digital Bites Event in Leeds at Avenue HQ. The sold-out event took place on Thursday 21 September, with over 80 attendees and six insightful talks from our speakers.

After the massive success of our digital marketing event Up North in June, it was nice to gather a smaller audience for an evening of inspiring and educational talks.

Digital Bites: A bite-sized digital marketing event

We’ve been running Digital Bites in Manchester and Leeds since 2021, with a big focus on short, informative, and actionable insight.

Our next Digital Bites will take place at the Everyman Cinema in Manchester on Thursday 2 of November – tickets will go live soon, so keep an eye out! We’re big enthusiasts of in-person marketing events. We’re passionate about creating experiences for northern marketers to get together knowledge share and network.

If you’d ever be interested in presenting for a small audience, why not pitch your idea to us for the next Digital Bites event?

Thank you to the speakers and attendees

Though we can plan and organise everything to the smallest of details, this event couldn’t have been possible without our speakers and our audience. We wanted to extend a big thank you to everyone who showed up to the event for the talks and networking (and let’s not forget about the free food & drinks).

Another thank you goes out to our speakers. Presenting at an event can be daunting, but the speakers truly made the event unforgettable with their talks. Every speaker smashed their presentations and received rounds of applause from everyone in the room.

Event recap and the presentations

Journalist Relationships: How to Make the Most of Your PR Outreach by Will Waldron – Senior PR Strategist, connective3

Taking to the stage first was connective3’s Senior PR Strategist, Will Waldron. His talk covered how to build lasting relationships with journalists to make the most of your PR outreach.

He discussed the current journalist pressures, such as receiving double-digit pitches every day outside of your spam and internal emails, and 38% of journalists are under pressure in the UK from downsizing.

Will also touched on the topic of pet peeves in journalism. What do journalists hate about PR pitches? It turns out that tailored outreach is key, as journalists hate irrelevancy and lazy pitching. And above all else, don’t chase them to the end of the world, once or twice will do it.

Key takeaways from his talk were:

• Journalists are under pressure from inside and outside forces
• A tailored approach is always the best approach
• Format your press release well and keep your story trendy
• Include keyword research and bespoke data
• Add the human element of a ‘thank you’ when a journalist covers your story

To read more about Will’s presentation, please find his slides here.

8 Common Digital Marketing Mistakes – In 8 Minutes

Laura Holyer – Digital Marketing Consultant, One-Two Digital

Laura’s talk brought on the topic of digital marketing mistakes. It was an informative talk that reminded us of how not being dynamic can bring on challenges.

One of the mistakes Laura mentioned was ignoring the top of the funnel. Laura went on to discuss how putting your budget where the highest ROI driving areas are can cause you to lose potential customers and your brand awareness can take a hit. Another mistake was placing all your trust in one project or channel. The moral of the story here is that social media changes. If you’re not prepared because you’ve only put your eggs in one basket, you’re in trouble.

She also mentioned that another mistake was not utilising video. With social media, such as TikTok and Instagram, our attention span is limited, so you should be looking into testing out video content.

The last mistake Laura mentioned was setting and forgetting. This can lead to wasted media spend and missed opportunities. To fix this, make sure you go through your project and review and optimise what you can.

Key takeaways from her talk were:

• Don’t put your eggs in one basket
• Don’t be impatient – things take time
• Utilise video content
• Don’t forget about your stakes and goals

To read Laura’s talk, please see her slides here.

How to Proof your Work (From a Writer who Hates Proofing)

Catriona Cherrie – Senior Content Writer, connective3

Who hasn’t sighed in frustration at the thought of proofing a long document? In her talk, Catriona discusses how she, a Content Writer, deals with the idea of proofing when it’s part of her job role.

She quoted her colleague, Matthew Fischbach, “The first 10 minutes of any task will always suck”, which is why she also brought on her four truths.

1. Proofing doesn’t have to take forever
2. There are software and tools to help you
3. You will get word-blind and need to take a break
4. Proofing is a necessary evil

Accept the four truths and reward yourself with chocolate or whichever sweet you crave, and proofing will be done faster than you might think!

On software, Catriona mentioned Grammarly, but also a Bionic Reading Extension. This extension was originally designed to help people with neurodivergence by highlighting the first four letters in a sentence. This can help readers concentrate on the task at hand.

Key takeaways from Catriona’s talk were:

• Proofing isn’t fun, but there are ways to make it easier
• Software and tools can make the task ten times easier
• It’s ok to take a break from your work and come back later
• Your team/external people can help you if you’re stuck

To read Catriona’s slides, please check the presentation out here.

From ‘Skins’ to ‘Fisica o Química’: How to Consider Cultural Nuances in your PR Ideation

Laura Miguez – Senor Digital PR Strategist, Distinctly

Sometimes it can be easy to forget to consider cultural nuances in our digital PR work, especially if you don’t have an international team to help you distinguish the differences in cultures.

Laura Miguez covered the topic of how to consider cultural nuances in your PR ideation. She drew parallels from the hit TV series, ‘Skins’, and a Spanish TV series called ‘Fisica o Química’, both of which target young adults and teenagers in their prospective countries.

She discussed how important it is to understand cultural differences, and that not setting aside time to do this in practice can damage your campaign. For all countries you target, she said you need to consider these key factors:

• Understand the media landscape
• Understand your audience
• Understand the differences in culture

A tip she shared was to take a proper look at the news in your target locations to see what resonates with the audience. What headline are they using? Photos? How do they write their articles?

Key takeaways from Laura’s talk were:

• Understanding cultural differences is a must for international campaigns
• Don’t use the ‘one size fits all’ approach
• Practise transcreation – this means to ensure messages are felt on an emotional level

To read more about Laura’s talk, please find her slides here.

Fact VS. Fake News: Keeping it Real in an AI World

Katie Taylor-Thompson – Managing Director – Katie Lingo

Covering the topic of AI, Katie discussed how we can keep it real in a world becoming more and more intrigued by the idea of Artificial Intelligence. She mentioned that at best, misleading content can erode trust, but at worst it can be destructive to people’s lives.

To fight misleading content, she came up with a few tips and tricks:

• Ask yourself who said it? Does the author of your article/video/content have clear expertise in the field they’re covering?
• Could the person creating the content be biased?
• Do people cite their sources, and do they reference relevant data that are important to the story?
• How are their online reputations?
• Some content is created to entice an emotion, but if an article or other content makes you feel angry, sad, etc., it could be worth checking the sources of that article.
• If ever in doubt, send a freedom of information request to the government. This way, you can get trusted data that will tell you if something is true, or not.

Some helpful tools that Katie mentioned to use when checking the reliability of your article were:

• Full Fact – a charity that fights misinformation
• Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program – a partnership with the International Fact-Checking Network
• Google’s Image Checker – this tool offers information about the photo

Key takeaways from Katie’s talk were:

• Misinformation can destroy lives
• Make sure to build trust – people don’t always believe the content they read
• AI content can be inaccurate and dangerous
• Never be scared of asking for the sources or conducting your own research

If you want to see Katie’s deck, please click here.

Storytelling for Performance: Balancing Brand with Emotion

Kenny Metham – Senior Social Media Manager – connective3

Our last speaker of the night was Kenny Metham from connective3. He discussed the importance of balancing brand with emotion. He mentioned that it’s a marketer’s job to build a brand through storytelling and appeal.

Kenny went on to say that it can be easy for brands to have a warped sense of how you see your brand because you work on it day in and day out. But, by thinking objectively, your campaigns can shine.

On what makes a good story, Kenny mentioned a few key factors:

• A story doesn’t need to be linear
• Emotion equals connections
• Personal experiences reign supreme

Cramming too much information (sales) into your content can cause your audience to lose interest. Chasing short-term wins can actually harm your brand’s longevity. Just because ROI can’t be directly tied to the top of the funnel doesn’t mean it should be ignored, Kenny explained in his talk.

The key takeaways from Kenny’s talk were:

• Not every action can be acquisition-based
• Cramming too many sales into your story can cause your audience to lose interest
• Staying objective is key to creating a good campaign

To read more of Kenny’s slides, please see the deck.

Now that you’ve read more about the talks at the Digital Bites in Leeds and are interested in perhaps joining us for the next Digital Bites in Manchester, please visit our events page to find more information.

We’re so excited to announce that we’re back with Up North for 2024. Our one-day marketing festival is back in the heart of Manchester at Victoria Warehouse on June 13, 2024. With speakers from Luxe Collective, Lounge Underwear, REFY, Google, TikTok Shop, Look Fabulous Forever and more – it’s set to be an event to remember!

connective3’s heritage in marketing events

We attend, plan, and host an array of digital marketing events and it’s something we are so passionate about. Over the years we’ve been to hundreds of marketing events, and we’ve run everything from conferences for thousands of people to small seminars, breakfast events, marketing meet-ups, and everything in between. Shout out to those who remember SearchLeeds or Leeds Loves Search, hosted by Charlie and me.

Over the past two year’s we’ve a Marketing Mixer with Don’t Panic and countless Digital Bites’ events across Leeds and Manchester, creating a community of over 1000 marketers and welcoming over 50 new speakers to the stage.

SearchLeeds 2018 stage and audience hosted by connective3’s Charlie Harris & Frankie Bisi

Our first Digital Bites event in Manchester, September 2022

A one-of-a-kind digital marketing festival

We felt there was a gap in the market for a northern marketing event that’s both informative and inspirational, too. We wanted to create something different, something that brings together leading marketers, inspirational thinkers, and entrepreneurs for a one-of-a-kind event with inspiring and innovative content that not only helps you with your day-to-day but inspires you for your next five years. And that’s where the concept for Up North was born.

What to expect

Up North is not your average marketing event. Up North is a full day marketing festival with 24 speakers and 2 stages with content on all things digital marketing, business strategy and personal development. Talks that will help you think bigger, work smarter and inspire you to get more from your marketing strategies.

We’re working tirelessly behind the scenes to bring our vision for this event to life and are curating a killer speaker line-up and can’t wait to reveal more for what we have planned for the day.

Event details

Now the important part, the event will be taking place on Thursday 13th June at Victoria Warehouse. Victoria Warehouse is a truly stunning venue and we knew it was the venue to host Up North from the moment we walked through the doors. Set a stone’s throw away from Old Trafford, the former cotton store is a uniquely designed event spaces, perfect for a gathering of Northern marketers. Expect plenty of exposed brick and dramatic lighting – throw in a few stages and 400 digital marketers, and we’re sure to have one hell of a day.

 And the best part? Tickets are completely free. Register for free here.

Championing events in the north

Attending in-person events offers a valuable opportunity for marketers to share thought leadership and connect with peers which in turns helps the industry grow and flourish. Historically and still today, when looking for events to send our team to in the north, and particularly Manchester, we noticed there isn’t always a great deal of choice. Ticket prices and traveling down south can provide a barrier for people attending marketing events outside of London, so we wanted to change that.

We chose to host this event in Manchester, as we’re passionate believers in the value of uniting the digital community in the north. We have our second largest connective3 office here, have built our Digital Bites networking events here and felt that this city had to be the home for Up North.

Meet the Up North Organisers

Put simply, Up North is a passion project, created by the connective3 marketing team. With over 8 years of events experience under our belts, myself (Frankie Bisi) and Charlie Harris came into 2023 with an ambition to bring back a big marketing event to the north.

Career wise, SearchLeeds was an incredible shared experience, that allowed us to bring together over 2000+ marketers across the north for a day of networking and sharing. We both loved it, and we miss it.

Up North was born out of the same passions and motivations that made SearchLeeds so great. We have been to 100s of marketing events across the world, and we’re excited to take our collective experiences and use these to build what we hope will be our best event yet.

We are so excited to host this event for the second, and we have so many great things planned that we can’t wait to share with you over the next few weeks. If you don’t already, make sure you’re following us on LinkedIn for the latest updates.

Where is Up North?

Up North is being hosted at Victoria Warehouse, Manchester – full details on how to get to us can be found here – please note there is limited parking on-site, and this is fully reserved for those with access requirements who have prebooked.

Alternative parking can be found via this link.

Still a bit stuck on how to get there? Check out this video showcasing the route to take from Manchester Piccadilly train station.

What is going to be happening at Up North?

We’ve got an agenda JAM PACKED with great talks, panels, networking, and more. From morning pastries and teas & coffees on c3 to give you that all-important brain power for the day ahead!

Alongside our amazing agenda of talks, a few of our sponsors are exhibiting, there will be lots of networking opportunities throughout the day, delicious lunch available to purchase on-site, and a post-event with a drink on c3 in the evening.

There will of course be free wifi on the day. The password for this is Connective3. However with 400 people trying to access the network, it may be a little slower than expected at times, so please bear with us.

Not sure what to expect? Check out the behind-the-scenes vlog from Up North 2023:

When

Last and most importantly, the when – join us on Thursday 13^th June at Victoria Warehouse, doors open at 8.30am with talks kicking off at 9.30am. With lunch onsite, networking, and an after-party, we’d love to host you right up until the conference closes at 7pm. We’ll see you there!

For any additional information, please check out our FAQs

If you’d like to register for one of the last remaining tickets, you can here.