Ayantek's First Fenway Seminar: Best Practices To Automate And Optimize Your Digital Channel

Online, May 31, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Focusing on revenue generation and ROI will continue to grow in priority for marketers as digital channels evolve and become more measurable. This fact emerged as one of the most significant trends in marketing during a panel discussion and seminar sponsored by Ayantek at the end of May.

According to Praveen Ramanathan, President & CEO at Ayantek, "By using technology to track an individual as they explore the wide range of digital content companies use to promote their services, companies should be able to develop marketing feedback dashboards to tell them which activities are contributing most significantly to sales. This will give executives significant powers of decision as they continue to seek more income for less cash outlay."

The seminar, which took place at Fenway Park in a suite overlooking first base, was an opportunity for marketing executives from a number of local B2B companies to meet and share ideas and insights. Panelists for the formal part of the event included Ayantek's Praveen Ramanathan, Ralph Folz from Wordstream, and John Moran from Blue Wave Marketing.

In addition to the lively discussion between the panelists on both the current state of digital marketing and future trends, there was much discourse on the importance of content. "Of course with all of the excitement around digital channels, it's very tempting for marketers to get caught up in delivery systems and technology," said Moran of Blue Wave during the event. "But people will always be people, and ultimately it's going to be the personal relationship you form with your prospects which will seal the deal. That's why video is such a great way to communicate - people remember more and feel more related to when they've watched a video. Creating meaningful and relevant content that can grab mind-share is the real challenge," he added. To support his claims about the effectiveness of video, Moran cited reports showing that sites containing video were 53 times more likely to show up in a front page Google result, had page views averaging 1:40 (compared to 12 seconds with text only), and generated four to seven times more response than did static text and graphics.

Highlighting the continued relevance of search in the marketing conversation, Ralph Folz from Wordstream was quick to point out that search marketing is one of the most measurable forms of digital marketing. "Paid search will continue to grow rapidly, especially since the ability to micro-target your online ads is greater than it's ever been," said Folz. He also gave an example of "search retargeting," where cookies placed as a result of completed searches triggered targeted banner ads on certain sites. "Sure you don't generally click on a banner ad - but wait until your looking for a specific product in a certain price point and you're ready to buy and then you're presented with an offer. This is very powerful technology that is available to marketers, and we're just at the beginning of what's possible with search."

"It is important for marketers as much as possible to adopt new technologies quickly, and develop systems and structures to adapt existing content to new platforms as they become available," Said Ramanathan, in closing the meeting. "While IT considerations are still a factor as companies slowly migrate away from enterprise solutions and towards SAAS, Bigger companies may find more success outsourcing some of their marketing automation tasks and mobile development to smaller entrepreneurial companies who are able to move quickly on new technologies."