Bianca’s trip to London & all about digital marketing at HeroConf 2018

The KeepCalling marketing specialist Bianca Chera was in London not such a long time ago, attending Hero Conf, an amazing event about digital marketing. 44 Sessions, 44 Paid Search Experts and 275 Like-Minded Marketers. And, of course, all there is to know about the industry trends. We asked Bianca about her experience and she gladly answered:

1. Have you ever participated in this event before? First impressions?

This was my first time at HeroConf and also my first time in London. It was an awesome experience! The conference was situated next to the London Museum, in a modern building with a great view. Even if everyone warned me about the moody weather in London, well, the city actually welcomed me with sunlight. So, one more reason to fall in love with it.
After I left the Luton Airport, the first thing that came into my mind was the song I’m an Englishman in NewYork by Sting, the only difference being the fact that in my case, my mind was playing I’m a Romanian girl in London… and I have to find my way to the hotel. Good luck with this!
With some help from Google Maps and some kind strangers, after a couple of hours, I was in front of the hotel – Phew, what a day! I made it! Both days of the conference were full of interesting topics and I must admit that sometimes it was a bit hard for me to choose the best ones. There were 3 rooms with different tracks related to Paid Search, Advanced Paid Search, Reporting & Analytics, Career Growth, Mobile & Programatic, all of them held at the same time. But even if I wasn’t able to be present in 3 places at the same time, the organizers provided us all the slides from the conference, so I can take a look at each topic.

2. What was your main focus in this event?

Learning what’s new in online advertising and what are the latest trends. Indeed, I had the opportunity to listen to some great speakers with a solid background in PPC. They shared with us a lot of interesting case studies & tests made by them or their agencies and some best practices for online advertising.

3. Was there any specific speaker/ speech that caught your attention? What did you enjoy the most there?

All the speakers had their own “secret recipe” in order to catch and hold our attention but Sven O. Wilhelm (SEM Manager at Sport-Thieme) was my favorite. While nowadays there’s a big pressure on advertisers to move away from manual bidding, well, this guy talked about Why we should (not) be using automated bidding strategies. That was a surprise, because the advertising platforms we use suggest us to do the opposite in order to increase performance. Actually, he did not tell that automated bidding is not good for us (to test, at least), but he emphasized the scenarios where automated bidding won’t make sense.

4. How do you think this experience helped you professionally?

Learning never stops in online advertising, so we can never say that we know all the trends or that we always know how to use the newly launched functionalities developed by the advertising platforms. Technology surprises us all the time and when we think that : OK, now I know how to use the new interface of Google Ads, well, Google changes it again, surpriiiiiiiiise!
Even if the conference did not come with something “new” in the industry, it offered me an overall look at my day to day job: how other advertisers optimize their campaigns, which tests made by them have been successful or not. Also why and how Artificial Intelligence can help us or how it changes our roles as marketers, what the trends in paid advertising are and what we can expect the future to bring.