Last Friday Skout PR attended Digital SWOT 2014, a major new conference in Manchester examining the increasingly pervasive digital revolution from a business point of view. The conference offered guidance for how companies and/or their agencies should re-examine their commercial performance from a digital point of view.
Although fairly consumer-focused, there were a number of interesting points raised on the day that are worth considering from a B2B PR perspective.
Firstly, speakers at the conference which included digital experts from the BBC, Google, BetFred and Lambeth City Council almost all shared the view that digital channels simply exist to speak to customers in as many ways as possible. Today, organisations need to think about their roots to market as customers exist in an ‘always-on’ environment and if you’re not prepared to go to them, they may no longer be prepared to come to you.
Bookmakers BetFred are a great example of this as with 50% of all online bets now placed online, it needed to make sure it still gave its customers a reason to come into its high street shops. It has achieved this by creating its own TV channel and broadcasting sporting news live into its shops.
From a B2B perspective the lesson here is to take advantage of digital technologies and use them effectively to enhance your business and speak in as many ways to your target audience as possible.
Another interesting point that came out of the conference was should companies have a social media specialist team or should it this specific skill be ingrained into everyone’s roles? The message here was loud and clear – we should all just embrace social media and don’t wait any longer to discover what it can do for our businesses.
