It’s great to have Marketing Town involved with PI LIVE this year as a premier sponsor. What are you most looking forward to at the event next month?
Ken Leren: I’m looking forward to meeting new people, catching up with clients and seeing old friends. PI Live is integral to the growth of the performance marketing industry as it provides a platform to discuss the most important industry topics.
With Mozilla Fire announcing its new enhanced tracking protection feature, there has been a lot of buzz around first-party data and cookie-less tracking. So I will be interested to learn about the different tactics being adopted by brands as a result.
Why should attendees come and visit your stand at the show this year?
KL: Performance marketing is quickly gaining popularity and is becoming one of the leading forms of marketing due to the increased level of transparency it provides to advertisers. If attendees would like to find out how Marketing Town can supercharge their digital marketing campaigns, then they should visit the talented team at stand 45.
Marketing Town celebrated its fifth anniversary this year – congratulations! What have been some of your key achievements during your time as a company?
KL: The last five years has provided so many key achievements with the company growing year-on-year with very little outside investment. We have retained many of our original clients, and we were recognised in Startups 100 Index as one of the top UK startups. Another key highlight was in 2018 when Mary Keane-Dawson joined us as chairperson – her tenacity for success and knowledge is, bar none, in the industry.
We couldn’t be our clients’ top marketing technology provider without the talent of our employees who work incredibly hard to help grow the business and help us raise our game.
There’s been a lot of changes within performance marketing this year, particularly around GDPR, transparency and cookie tracking. How has Marketing Town responded to some of these opportunities and challenges?
KL: As the company has been built from scratch it means we have been able to keep all regulatory and technical restrictions in mind. We operate within the rigid GDPR and ITP environments, and as a result, the company has been awarded the ISO 27001 certification which has helped us prepare for future legislation and strengthen our data security.
We have also released new features around data retention, which is compliant with GDPR, first-party cookies to server-side tracking, as well as WhatsApp integration for notifications.
Moreover, as advertisers are not currently getting an accurate count of their conversions, Marketing Town comes as a saviour to ensure efficient and accurate data capturing without privacy violations.
With Marketing Town, advertisers can track a lead even if the visitor moves from desktop to mobile, has ad-blockers installed, previously deleted cookies or uses incognito mode. In short, we are a future-proof, privacy-compliant tracking solution that solves cookie loss problems related to tracking limitations, GDPR, ad blocking and Safari’s high-security standards.
Performance marketing continues to evolve. Where do you see performance marketing heading for 2020?
KL: The key attributes which make performance marketing success will always stay the same, no matter the new preferences, behaviours, or regulatory practices. Still, evolving technology and data analysis will make it easier to add value to new trends such as influencer marketing, and Google Shopping. There will also be new ways of adding performance metrics to social media and video channels to deliver greater ROI.
However, mutual respect and understanding should remain as the core pillars in which performance marketing is built, especially as the industry continues to develop and invest in machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Following your recent guide on the 10 Commandments of Performance Marketing, what do you think are the core foundations needed to make the performance marketing channel a real success?
KL: Firstly, the focus shouldn’t be based on how quickly it’s possible to grow revenue. It’s important to have sound performance-marketing principles in place, which is easy to lose sight of in today’s environment.
To form a blueprint of success for performance marketing, we spoke with some of the most experienced people in our industry to develop the following core foundations:
- Know what performance marketing is – and what it isn’t
- Understand the need for quality over quantity
- Trust and transparency matter more than ever
- Be realistic – overnight successes do not last
- Don’t get trapped in a cashback and voucher codes bubble
- Explore new and growing trends in the performance arena
- Make the payment models work in an “attention-based” environment
- Decide how to integrate new channels into the mix
- Always remember that one size doesn’t fit all
- Never forget the human touch and the need for communication
Lastly, with Q4 on the horizon, can you share any plans you have in the pipeline?
KL: We plan to build on the success of the last five years and continue to grow the business as we move into new markets to expand our offering and reach.
To achieve this, we will be investing in talent to grow the UK office (in September alone, we hired four people), as well as investing in the development of our platform (new features).
As a result of having loyal customers and a state-of-the-art SaaS platform, we are getting ready to scale up by expanding our presence internationally. Watch this space for more information!