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Our Top 5 Key Topics from SearchLeeds 2018

Our Top 5 Key Topics from SearchLeeds 2018

SearchLeeds is the biggest search marketing event in the North and we were thrilled to have the opportunity to see some of the best figures from the search community speaking about what we need to be aware of in our ever changing digital landscape.

Thanks to a range of inspiring talks, we took away some incredible insight and actionable advice that we are looking forward to putting in to practise. Here are some of our learning highlights from the conference.

1. Personify Your Customers

John Rowley - Creating a Data-Driven Customer Journey with Personas and Smarter Investment.

John Rowley, Digital Marketing Manager at Ferrero, provided fascinating insights in to enhancing the customer journey through personalisation and data. He explained how we can improve our digital strategies by more clearly envisioning our customers and the problems that they may face when it comes to the digital journey. He told us that putting a persona to a problem best helps to create solutions to the questions we might not realise need answering. By tailoring our digital strategy and approach to the needs of the personas we can segment, we can more effectively market to ‘individuals’.

2. Say Goodbye to Last Click

John Rowley - Creating a Data-Driven Customer Journey with Personas and Smarter Investment.

It’s too easy to attribute all the credit for a conversion to one source, however, we are all by now very aware that this one driver is not usually the only reason for a sale. Last click attribution models have their pros, but when you have a holistic marketing campaign with a range of facilitators, attributing the full conversion to one source means that you are going to be investing in the wrong channels in future. In the second part of John Rowley’s talk, he highlighted the importance of data driven attribution modelling, and correctly assessing the impact of each channel. Sure, we might have made our purchase through an affiliate, 10% cashback we’re not going to argue with that, but would we have been interested in the product without the TV ad, Facebook post or carefully timed email? With correct data attribution we can invest more accurately in the right channel – which surprisingly (or not) a large percentage of us aren’t doing! Take a look at John’s presentation on creating a data-driven customer journey with personas and smarter investment.

3. Be Creative With Your Content

Kirsty Hulse - Content Marketing Tips That Won't Break The Bank

Kirsty Hulse, Managing Director at Manyminds, inspired us to get more creative with our content and really focus on building a brand and brand stories. Taking some examples from excellent brand marketing which has been executed by Greggs and Kodak, Kirsty explained the need to become a brand expert, understand the USPs of your brand and lead with that. Budget and assets are no match for ideas, data and creative execution. Ideas for engaging content can come from product launches, business news and interviews and all of these can also be great to build links! Telling us about one of her brilliant content campaigns, Kirsty explained how she managed to create an engaging story which gained links from major publications simply from a creative idea which stayed true to the values of the brand. Is your content fairly dry? Try adding timelines, quizzes or puzzles from a range of free or cheap sources online and you’ll soon have engaging content. Take a look at Kirsty’s talk on content marketing tips that won’t break the bank.

4. Know What’s Valuable to The Media

Hannah Smith - What Happens When a Werewolf Bites a Goldfish?

Hannah Smith, Head of Creative at Verve Search, gave a brilliant talk on finding a valuable angle for content and she shared some of her most successful ideas and campaigns she devised for different clients. She emphasised the importance of understanding the media landscape; what’s valuable to news outlets and journalists ultimately has to be what’s valuable to us. One of Hannah’s examples was creating a campaign for a gaming and betting client, notoriously difficult to outreach in mainstream media. Wanting to target the entertainment press, Hannah’s team scraped box office data to create What Makes a Hollywood Hit. After weeks of no coverage, and many attempts at crafting the perfect pitch email, the campaign took off, gaining links from major sources. Her example shows how important it is to find something people want to write about or share, set it in the right context and make sure you lead with the right angle. See Hannah’s presentation what happens when a werewolf bites a goldfish?

5. Get Mobile Ready

John Myers - The Mobile Index, What, Why and More Importantly When!

Google has been rolling out mobile indexing for some time, and if you haven’t already, it’s time to make sure that you’re prepared! John Myers, Chief Growth Officer at DeepCrawl, shared the fact that 60% of users who have a bad experience on a mobile are 60% less likely to re-visit the site and make a purchase. Considering an ever-growing percentage of traffic is mobile, this is a pretty scary figure! John spoke of the importance of page parity and how vital it is to make sure that your structured data, tags, meta data and links are all in place to ensure your mobile site is ready for Google crawlers and usable for your audience. Google will not have separate indexes for desktop and mobile, but it’s not going to be as scary as it sounds.



Overall, SearchLeeds 2018 offered few surprises but some brilliant tips and actionable insights. The theme seemed to set a reminder that now more than ever users are time-poor and choice-rich, and it was great to learn that this is being felt all across the industry. Ensuring that your content is engaging and valuable and your mobile site is fully optimised will help your website to keep performing in the search indexes in 2018.

If you are concerned about keeping your website visible as we enter this more mobile-centric era of SEO, chat to one of our advisors for guidance or an audit of your website: info@m3.agency