koks.digital 2019 – the digital marketing conference

A whole day with koks

In case you didn’t know, koks.digital was created in 2015 out of the fact that there was no modern and adequate platform for digital marketing in the Ruhr area. If someone planned to attend a conference on topics such as social media, search engine marketing, content marketing, data analysis or innovative digital marketing approaches, one had to leave the borders of the region. Due to this fact the first edition of koks.digital, the conference for digital marketing, took place in late summer 2016 in Bochum in the Ruhr area!

You’ll find this information on the koks.digital website as well, but once you’ve been to koks.digital, you’ll understand what a great format it became in just four years.

And you meet many well-known people, Peter Rossbach from Bee42 crossed my path for the first time at the traffic light, Holger Rohde from the BARSession didn’t miss the koks.digital and Christian Els from Sentin was present too and really wanted to hear Nora’s lecture. Gregor Tischbierek from the Bochumer Wirtschaftsentwicklung was of course there, as well as the dear Lenka Mildnerova from Mit KIDZ – a great project in the Ruhr area – and Mr. SEO himself, Robin Heitz, from Morefire.

The invited speakers are all experts in their fields – with heart and soul. You can see that in every lecture. Nora, our Nora, was one of the speakers and you notice again and again how much she lives her topic “In 7 steps to a digital community”. Despite a projector failure and time pressure, because the projector did not want to cooperate, she brought her topic stirringly across. It became very clear to me that we also have to define rules for our Meetup. Because the bigger we get, the more people have an opinion.

However, in this blog, I’d like to focus especially on a topic that’s been on my mind for quite some time and was lucky to see at koks.digital: Virtual Assistants

Gero Wenderholm examined the topic Voice Commerce Trends 2019 in more detail. Google Ads and Alexa were the the focus. As well as the fact that voice interfaces can solve marketing problems and eliminate media breaks. For example, you can use your Smart TV with virtual assistant to request samples of products. Thus the supplier gets my data including buying behavior without any problems and can advertise to me with other products. Great for advertisers, but great for me? Alexa always listens in, in shops and in everyday life if you want. These services are explicitly evaluated and conversations are completely recorded in order to evaluate them as well. Thus the offerer gets unfiltered and above all absolutely honest user information. Where can you really get something like that? Right, nowhere. Except when the user feels unobserved. The self-service reception is also on the move, with small steps since the user is “skittish” and abuse is always a risk. The adult user doesn’t ask the questions correctly, kids are better handling it, and you can fopp Alexa and Co:

I ask myself, only privately, just for myself, if I really want to have a medium in my private life which orders for me and which will make more and more decisions in my life.

What else was there to experience at the koks.digital?

Florian Litterst gave us 3×3 hacks for our Facebook and Instagram Ads in a very impressive way. First and foremost, it’s important to adjust to the different formats. Facebook and Instagram Stories are, of course, now pioneers – also when it comes to ads!

Marco Lauerwald from urlaubsguru.de followed with “Content along the Customer Journey”. During his presentation he had to present 98 slides in only 20 minutes. That was of course a party full of information!

A special highlight was that the BVB was also represented by Simon Mayr, Head of Digital. A great lecture, which I would not have expected in this relaxed form. He pointed out that it is important for the BVB or for other large companies to design their own presentation and not to let Facebook and Co. influence it.

But one thing became very clear in all the presentations: We have to address our users emotionally. It is important to know what our users want from us, because we do the whole thing just for them. We want to win them over. Emotional triggers are the be-all and end-all in this industry, in fact, everything that binds our users to us.

And now it’s getting difficult for us.

Emotional triggers – let’s be honest, what triggers you? We consume so many blog posts, posts, ads and videos on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Co. I consume a lot and notice more and more how impatient I get when a text or video is too long. Clicking away, scrolling further or even simply ignoring is no longer difficult for me. That’s why I don’t think that we, who are still dealing with this topic, are triggered as much anymore. We are critical, we are no longer willing users, but look at the text, the picture or the video with different eyes. But what triggers me again and again and what will hopefully never dull off is my very personal trigger team that waits longingly for me every evening when I come home and is as happy as if I had been away for months. Doro and Bruno, my dogs, who greet me every evening and immediately emotionally sweep me away. The emotions I experience in my private and real life can’t be evoked by any tool or digital marketing strategy.