With a little over five weeks remaining until the start of Europe’s leading performance marketing conference, PerformanceIN caught up with a speaker who will be tackling the topic of attribution in a panel session on day one of the Berlin event.
Kevin Van den Bosch is the Client Services Director Europe at IgnitionOne. His team of online marketing specialists are helping clients across Europe gain more conversions out of their website and attributing them accordingly across all digital channels. The concept helps them focus on brand engagement across the entire digital customer journey.
Ahead of his PMI session in the German capital, Kevin has shared his thoughts on innovation, challenges and the topics to look out for at Performance Marketing Insights: Europe.
What does your account director for Europe and sales director in Belgium role entail?
Kevin Van den Bosch: As account director Europe I’m responsible for all existing marketing automation clients across Europe. This encompasses heading up a team of local and international account managers who manage the setup, implementation, lead generation and performance optimization of these advertisers and their conversion optimization flows.
Next to that, I lead the Belgian sales and marketing activities for IgnitionOne on a local level.
What is the biggest tip you can give to a client marketing to a consumer throughout the entire customer lifecycle?
KVdB: Move away from brand-oriented advertising and embrace customer-focused and data-driven marketing. Throughout the consumer lifecycle, the consumer is susceptible to different triggers and messages. Based on the consumers profile and his behaviour you can determine what stage of the lifecycle he is in and personalise your marketing accordingly to increase its effect and performance.
You spent more than seven years at Tradedoubler, what did you take away from that lengthy stint?
KVdB: First of all, in digital marketing in general and performance marketing in particular, innovation is the key to continued success. That innovation needs to be apparent in the technology, the business models, the client service and the sales strategies. As a company, you need to evolve or die.
Secondly, as technology enables us to do business, it is easy to think of performance marketing as a technology-driven business, however, it remains a people-driven business. It is all about the people. They enable you to do business based on personal relationships and trust. They are the ones bringing new insights and innovations to the table.
What is your favourite part of the job?
KVdB: The buzz. Coming into the office every day, no day is the same. People are busy and working passionately and continuously on new projects and optimisations. This results in an inspiring high energy environment where routine hardly exists. At one moment you are in a meeting or talking to an advertiser on the phone, the next moment you are discussing with a tech guy his new and better way to integrate, profile and generate results with software that he wants to test asap. The diversity and versatility is truly inspiring.
And the most challenging aspect?
KVdB: Prioritising and managing expectations. When working on conversion optimisation for clients, the client wants to have the solutions implemented yesterday. As many of these implementations are custom, they take time to develop, test, follow up and optimise in order to have the biggest impact and uplift. Dealing with clients and commercial people across Europe and beyond, they understandably all consider themselves the top priority.
What can we expect from your panel session?
KVdB: A thorough round up of all the current and various attribution approaches, some practical tips and tricks along with a preview of what attribution could look like in the not-so-distant future.
Along with attribution, what are you expecting to be the hottest topics in Berlin?
KVdB: ‘Big data’ and data-driven marketing.
The omni-channel world and how to advertise in it.
The 360-degree view on the consumer and the consumer lifecycle.