If you are anyhow related to social media and influencer marketing this is an event you don’t want to miss. And guess what? We didn’t.

What was in it for us? Well, let’s see…hundreds of the top marketers from all over Greece, international speakers, and experts from all over the world sharing their enthusiasms and insights, what’s not to like.

Some of the most important takeaways from the conference include: Trends, influencer marketing tactics, the power of music in Gen Z, and many more topics that we are happy to share with you today.

So, let’s take a look at a bunch of good lines from different speeches that we pieced together to create our very own conference review for your eyes only.

In a world of trends, keep the pace.

Who would have thought a few years ago, that brands should utilize a famous actor’s voice to their key message, to be a part of a trend, and adopt Gen Z’s culture? But this is our world now and our reality.

Olivia Blairman, Director of Client Services, Coolr, presented thoroughly her insights on why brands should follow the trends on every platform they use.

“We believe that every piece of content should make you feel something”

According to Olivia, the competition is way too high and there is a big chance brands will miss the opportunity to blow up and expand to the audience.

As things massively change every other day in the digital environment we live in, brands need to be relatable and adjustable. A trend that went viral a week ago, is no longer working for the rest of the month. Utilizing them in a smart way through our brand’s voice, we can bring the result we need, to raise awareness, increase our sales and engagement, and become viral.

How did ordinary people become viral doing something smart, a spark that ignited collaborations with big brands?

TikTok is one of the platforms where trends are the core of its existence. So, when people jump into trends in a funny and creative way, usually they get a positive response from the audience and in turn attention from big brands.

Content Creators are not necessarily influencers.

The power of social media brings life to a simple post. Especially when this power comes from a creative perspective.

This leads us to the next speaker, that caught our attention, John Thornton, Senior Creative, SURREAL, who did not only leave the audience speechless but is truly the Master of Creative Audacity. And we will explain why.

“Social Media is about attention – Dogs are your biggest competitor”

When John was working as a Social Media Manager at Innocent, a famous smoothie brand, he experienced the funniest and worst moments of his career.

His advice? Always reply to your audience, get out of your comfort zone and don’t be afraid to say something funny. As long as it doesn’t get you fired.

After sharing a few of personal social media mistakes he committed as well as success stories, he highlighted the importance for a company to talk like a human. People don’t go on social media to search for ads, they crave human interaction, so talking like a human must be the primary instinct of a social media manager.

Aiming to entertain, inspire, and inform the audience, messing around with the posts and making “mistakes”, brings more attention to the brand.

An essential point of his view was to always keep the conversation in the comments alive. Being funny is way better than being serious and formal.

People love to see a social media manager “messing up” …so give them a reason to follow you.

Be your Own Superhero on TikTok.

Take your campaign as far as your imagination.

One of the most interesting and inspiring speeches came from Fanis Theodorou, Brand Partnerships Manager – Greece, TikTok, who talked about TikTok’s Superpowers.

Fanis immersed us in the fascinating world of TikTok, showing us with how the platform strengthens purchase intent and fires up the shopping journey.

TikTok is here to stay. The platform’s community is growing fast, spending 97mins per day on the platform, watching TikToks and interacting with brands. So, it’s all about the community, with the user being at the center of it. Brands should become part of this community and interact with users, not just reach them. As Fanis said, “66% of users are more likely to purchase from a brand that belongs to their community”.

Moreover, bear in mind that creativity is crucial. Fanis advises us to be as creative as possible with the uploaded content, as the more creative the content is the more successful it will be on the platform.

Last but not least, he talked about authenticity. According to Fanis, brands need to be more human-like and playful. 71% of users stated that authentic content motivated them to purchase a product.

Considering that TikTok has also an offline sales impact and that in sectors such as beauty, personal care and food & beverages has better results compared with TV, it opens a whole new world of advertising to us.

But what is it that really makes TikTok so powerful?

Music. The emotional connection with Gen Z audiences.

Another impressive presentation was Rahmon Agbaje’s speech, the Co-Founder of Loud Parade.  Rahmon talked about the power of music that brings different types of people together and creates an emotional connection between the audience and the brand.

Especially, with the rise of TikTok, there is a rising opportunity for brands to exploit the power of music.

“Music can be a force of action” Rahmon said. Refresh the way you think about advertising. Leverage music to spark some fun and create campaigns with lyrics that match your target audience. Then, let the music create the feeling, the energy, and the emotion that will connect your brand with the user.

Don’t forget to whom you are talking to! Gen Ζ is socially conscious and needs to see brands interact with issues that it is interested in. Create authentic content, related to this generation’s lifestyle.

Great organic content can make a genuine difference however, advertising can increase its visibility.

The Future of Performance is Based on Peoples’ Terms

“Changing is part of our DNA and yours. When customer behavior swifts, we have to swift”

Agnieszka Jaworska, Product Marketing Manager CEE at Meta, was the first presenter and she gave us the opportunity to learn about the latest updates on Performance on People’s Terms and shared Meta’s vision on the future of Measurement on Meta platforms.

As Agnieszka mentioned, more and more people opt out of sharing their data, while Policies and Regulations give us the opportunity to limit how data is collected from businesses. As a result, not only the picture of the consumer journey is no longer complete, but also it is difficult for Meta and businesses to have the whole picture of how the users act.

This is the reason why Meta is evolving its advertising system to deliver performance on people’s terms.

According to her, personalization and data privacy can co-exist. We can personalize our services while we respect people’s privacy, always striving for performance on people’s terms. In this way, businesses can take advantage of strong ROI and cost-efficient results, while users can benefit from understanding how their data is used while at the same time discovering products and services that delight them.

“We are building some of the most advanced infrastructures in the industry across our ad systems”

Aiming to achieve a personalized ad system, while respecting data privacy, Meta has proceeded with two multi-year investments. The first one is Conversion Modeling, designed to provide a more complete view of campaign performance when data is missing, or is partial, and the second one is Privacy-enhancing Technologies, which use techniques like encryption and aggregation to make the most out of data in a privacy-preserving way.

But how can we achieve the best results during the upcoming festive season?

The challenges are more than you can imagine! During the festive season, advertising cost goes up, users are bombarded with ads, discounts lower your profit margins, and profitably scaling budget is very technical.

However, as Manel Gomez, Facebook Advertising Specialist, ScalingPro.io said “The biggest opportunity is in front of us”. He explained that November and December are the biggest revenue months of the year for the majority of eCommerce brands, and shared with us his valuable knowledge, talking about some of the best practices.    

Want to stay in the loop? Create your campaign calendar and start the earliest possible to make the most out of the festive season.

Content is king! Take advantage of winning ad creatives. The ads must be clear and sharp. The user must understand what you offer and what are their options in one single image, as quick as possible.

We tend to react to urgency. Using “the urgency bias” can get your campaigns off the ground. “Hurry Up”, “Our biggest sale of the year ends in 09:05:22 hours” are some of the messages that you can include in your ad’s copy and use urgency to your advantage.

The ad spend is not everything! There are plenty of examples of excessive investments with deficient results. The secret lies in scaling. Scaling with options allows you to have the ultimate impact. From increasing the budget, changing the audience, and launching a new ad similar to the previous winning one, to altering 7-day click +1-day view to 1-day click only, the choices are limitless.

But what is the role of influencers in the digital and social media landscape?

When you don’t know who to trust, turn to someone you know.

Scott Guthrie shared with us his insights about the utilization of influencers during uncertain times and how influencers are more beneficial than ads.

With Instagram being the first social media platform in the digital era, influencers occupy the first place in collaborating with brands.

“Global influencer marketing size is expected to hit $22.2 billion by 2025.”

In 2020-2021 during the pandemic there was an increase in influencer marketing, as more people were at home, thus they turned to social media. Influencers became a source of entertainment, communication, and information and created a sense of community. People realized that they could trust them more when it comes to recommendations for purchases.

When people see an ad post from their favorite influencer, they are 13% more likely to feel a strong positive emotion to this exposure. Therefore, it is important for brands to have mutual respect with the influencer towards the audience.

Right below Instagram, TikTok is, slowly, winning its place at the top. Starting from a low position, researchers show that it will overcome YouTube by 2024.

In this dynamic environment, Influencer Marketing is all about empathy. First and foremost, influencers are humans just like us. And the audience connects deeper with human interaction and someone who can actually experience and share the brand’s values.

This year’s conference was packed full of informative content, useful insights and trending topics that can help us rise better and stronger into the new world of social media and influencer marketing. While what we’ve learned from a conference could certainly fit an entire presentation, we’ve gathered for you our top 5 learnings.

Key takeaways:

1. Get on top of trends! But be cautious – not every trend is a good fit for every brand.
2. Feel free to get out of your comfort zone, when posting online. Use your voice and character.
3. TikTok will overcome the social media world as we know it. Creativity, diversity, authenticity, and music seem to create a stronger bond between the brand and the audience.
4. Changing is part of META’s DNA and the platform is evolving its advertising system to deliver performance on people’s terms.
5. In Influencer Marketing, share the brand’s values, not the numbers. There needs to be a balance between data and humans.

We are always present to see, hear, adopt, and experiment any new takes in social media and influencer marketing. Join us to bring your brand to the next level and conquer the social media arena with best practices, expert knowledge, and a fresh perspective to any given scenario.