Last week, our Houston team attended AMA MarketingEdge, a one-day mega dose of inspiration and insight from top marketers. What did they take away from it? In order to create the message that reaches the customer, your team needs to have a marketing edge. To top it all off, that edge is a moving target as the industry, and the agencies within it, evolve. Here are four takeaways we learned you should constantly be re-evaluating to give your team that edge.

1. Plan your content marketing strategy

Content marketing isn’t new, but it’s one of the most evolving aspects of the industry. It changes as the world changes. Therefore, it needs to be constantly re-evaluated. Today, we’re seeing a resurgence in content marketing because people are digesting more content than ever before. Most have access to millions of pieces of content at their fingertips. How do you make your content stand out from the crowd? You need to focus more on the quality of your content not on the quantity. Understanding what type of content attracts your audience at each stage of the buyer journey is key. How do you do this? Strategy. However, according to Robert Rose, Content Strategist at The Content Advisory, only 36% of companies have a formal content strategy in place. Read why now is the time to perfect your strategy before the rest of your competitors catch up.

1. Get to know your customer through neuromarketing

What better way to continuously learn about your customer than to better understand how their mind is working. Learn which magnet words, emotions, framework and aesthetic draws in your customer. For example, are people more likely to pay if the price is listed as $120 instead of $120.00? What about if the price is red, so customers feel like they’re getting a great deal? Do you get more click-throughs to your website if your content evokes wonder instead of urgency? Paying attention to these seemingly minor details can help you see huge effects on your ROI.

1. Explore your advertising strategy

As B2B marketers it’s crucial for us to know what is working in the industry when it comes to paid advertising. Using video to spread the word can be one of the most effective ways to share your value proposition, however, if you don’t convey it in the first 10 seconds, no one will hear it. To stay ahead of the curve, it’s important to always keep exploring the best advertising strategy that matches your objectives. Invest in a testing methodology, test the content, play with the algorithm, analyze the results. Then infinitely repeat. The digital landscape is constantly changing, so what worked for you months ago, may not work for you now.

1. Optimize, optimize, optimize

Speaking of algorithms, Google is constantly keeping SEO marketers on their toes. Pigeon. Panda. Fred. As technology hones in on customers’ evolving needs with updates like location-targeted search and high-quality content filters, you should focus on the bigger picture to anticipate what trend might be next. For example, ComScore estimated that by 2020, 50 percent of all searches will be voice searches. Voice searches pull from position zero on Google (AKA the Google snippet). How do you get to position zero? Write better content. How do you write better content? Refer back to number one.

At Fifth Ring, we’re always learning, and re-learning, trends that will make us sharper. Thanks to AMA Houston MarketingEdge for another inspiring event. This is what we absorbed in just one day, read some more of our marketing tips in our most recent eBook, here.