A MARKETING professional was picked to address a major conference whose keynote speaker was Star Wars legend Mark Hamill.

Mark Masters, who owns the ID Group in Poole, was named among the 20 most influential speakers at Content Marketing World – the only non-American on the list.

He was among 4,000 people in Cleveland, Ohio, for the conference, which he called “a brilliantly insightful event to be part of”.

He said the event had shown that the most successful companies at promoting themselves online were those who engaged with an audience and then found ways to increase its scale.

Those who failed were those “where measurement is still based on volume – adwords, search engine optimisation and a sporadic campaign mentality”.

Mr Masters said companies were turning online activity into business when they created “deeper” content and told a distinctive story.

“We have to think deeper. We can’t just keep on putting more content out there. People reading on mobile phones are reading longer-form content. Our attention spans are not diminishing,” he said.

He said it was important for businesses to commit to content marketing long enough to build audiences.

“Everything stems from management saying ‘We’re going to give this a go’ – for more than two months,” he said.

“The measurement metrics have to be different. Slow and steady wins the race. It’s still driven by volume. More is only better if it creates a reaction in someone else.”

Mr Masters, author of The Content Revolution, was named a top speaker by influencer marketing platform Traackr.

The conference ended with a talk from Mark Hamill, who told the story behind his brief appearance as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

“He said he was in training for 40 weeks just to take the hood off his head,” Mr Masters said.

“His talk was about doing the thing you totally believe in and have a passion for and have a fire in your belly for.”

“He was really engaging. It was a nice way to end it,” he said.