Get to know Anders Hjorth, Digital Marketing Strategist at Innovell

What can we except at SearchStars from Anders Hjorth, Digital Marketing Strategist at Innovell. Here is your chance to get to know Anders Hjorth before the conference – Enyoj!

My first question to you is, could you tell me a bit more about what you do at work? What is the highlight of your working day and what kind of projects excites you the most?

The highlights of my working days are often that moment when we receive new survey reponses for our research. That has the potential to take my attention away from both social media notifications and unread email.

The survey responses are part of the research projects I carry out with co-authors and they are a way for me to keep on top of everything that is happening in the digital marketing space and share with a wider public. The research turns into reports like the Search Strategies report we published in February and the Amazon Marketing report due later this year.

I am also a judge on Search and Social media awards internationally and do various training and consulting missions as well as advisory board work. And then I write articles and speak on conferences like SearchStars ? 

When and why did you decide to start working in digital marketing?

I started using the world-wide web around 1994 while I was still studying. It was a revelation for me as it combined what I liked (computers and technology) with what I was studying (marketing, economics). I actually thought that the internet was going to change the world back in 1997 when I started working with digital marketing… what a silly thought. 

What do you think is the most important thing for new businesses to start off with when it comes to digital marketing?

Knowledge acquisition is the one key thing to succeed in digital. 

There are still a ton of companies trying to buy their way out of it, but there is no choice: you have to learn. You have to get your fingers dirty. You have to understand how digital works – before you hire agencies or digital marketers – before you invest any money. All the knowledge for getting started is out there available to anyone who wants it. I know it is like homework – they’d rather not do it. But in digital marketing you have to!

How do you keep up to speed on everything that is happening in digital?

As a judge on various awards, I am very fortunate to see some of the best work performed by agencies and inhouse teams. That brings me a lot of inspiration and also allows me to understand the underlying trends. Additionally, I extract a lot of knowledge from our research. 

And as a speaker on conferences, I try to actively exchange with my audience to learn from them and always spend a lot of time listening to other presenters. 

At October 10 we will see you speaking at SearchStars, what can the audience expect from your speech?

They can expect a peek into what some of the best teams out there are doing in paid search in the form of case studies from our reports. And hopefully also with a preview of a new case study from the upcoming Amazon Marketing report. These case studies illustrate winning strategies in digital marketing from award-winning teams. Yummy

Thanks for your time, see you soon!