Is This the Next Wave in Advertising?

Native Advertising is becoming an increasingly interesting topic as more companies are looking to use native advertising because of its costs and ROI.

Native advertising refers to digital ad formats where companies integrate their content, stories, and/or videos through sponsored posts on social media and editorial websites.   What’s different about native advertising is that companies seek to not only provide engaging content to attract viewers, but they usually try to give their content the same format, style, and voice to the website the content appears on.

The most recognized forms of native advertising are Sponsored Facebook Stories, Promoted Tweets, branded playlists on Spotify, sponsored check-ins on Foursquare, and content integrations on sites like Buzzfeed or Men’s Journal.

surroundsounds

Native advertising, when done correctly, consistently provides higher click-through rates than banner or sidebar advertisements.   Also, the cost-per-click is significantly cheaper for native advertisements (typically less than $.50 per click) than for standard web advertisements.

Major Benefits

Advertiser Benefits
1.    Increased Effectiveness.  Because Native ads are not banners at the top of the page, but rather content within it, site visitors are much more likely to view and interact with the content.
2.    Increased Perception.  Because the brand isn’t detracting from the user’s experience through native advertising, it actually enhances the experience.

Publisher Benefits
1.    Increased revenue due to higher click-through rates.
2.    A generally increased experience through the removal of standard interruptive marketing efforts.

Drawbacks

1.    The biggest drawback to native advertising is that you typically have a limited audience to view your content.   While major brands, like Facebook and Twitter, provide a great platform for companies to provide large-scale native advertising, many other small publishers simply don’t have the site activity that provide the necessary ROI.

Many top publishers, however, have actually developed “open” environments.  An open environment allows advertisers to execute their ads across multiple sites and platforms.  (Sharethrough has put together a great .pdf that outlines the leading players on the editorial and social platforms that provides some insight into potentially advertising through those areas.)

2.    Many consumers find native advertising to be misleading.  In fact, a 2012 MediaBrix survey showed that while only 43 percent of people felt that promoted tweets were misleading, 86 percent of people felt mislead by sponsored videos.

Native Advertising Tips

1.    Native ads are not press releases.  This is not an opportunity for companies to hard sell their products.  Rather, they are provided with a vehicle to share interesting content, case studies, or other relevant information.
2.    Learn from others’ examples.  There are a number of great examples out there that highlight positive native advertising.   Study how they seamlessly integrated their content and maximized their success.
3.    Pay attention to the audience.   What type of platform are you creating the content for?  What would interest them?  What would annoy them?

If you would like to find out more about Native Advertising, the following articles are fantastic:

1. http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/19/the-secret-sauce-of-native-ads-the-next-wave-of-advertising/
2. http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/17/the-native-ad-movement-and-the-opportunity-for-web-publishers/
3. http://blog.kissmetrics.com/native-advertising/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feedutm_campaign=Feed%3A+KISSmetrics+%28KISSmetrics+Marketing+Blog%29

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Email Analytics: What You Didn’t Know Your Emails Are Telling You

MailChimp has been my preferred email marketing vendor for quite some time.  They have an outstanding product, easy to use features, and a great company culture.

I recently came across a blog posting from MailChimp talking the importance of analytics within your email system.  MailChimp provides an array of very useful data that help marketers dial in their marketing campaigns and programs.  Unfortunately, most of the companies I work with either don’t pay attention to the data or don’t know what they’re looking for within it.

Sample Email Analytics Report

Sample Email Analytics Report

For the companies that are looking at data, they will typically focus and determine a program’s success upon two statistics:

  • Open Rate
  • Unsubscribes

And while both of the statistics definitely have their merit and can show the company some important information from the campaign, they don’t really tell the entire story of how your marketing campaign was viewed.

Dig a Little Deeper

Within MailChimp’s reports, there are a number of great statistics provided within the email in addition the standard ones mentioned above.   I want to share some of those statistics and why they’re important to your company’s marketing efforts.

Highly Engaged Viewers

MailChimp provides a rating system for your subscribers.  It’s a basic 5-star rating system where individual’s score increases as they interact with your emails.  What’s great about the rating system is that it allows you to actually segment and send material to your most engaged consumers.   You can reward people for their loyalty to your marketing campaigns.   Within the MailChimp article, a retail clothing line out of Alabama, Billy Reid, actually uses the rating system send out access to private sales and exclusive in-store events.

Sample Viewer Engagement

Sample Viewer Engagement

Click Performance

While it’s important to know who has opened and viewed your emails, it’s much more important to know which content the audience is interacting with.   The Click Performance measure shows an overview of all of the links within a given email and the amount of times each link was clicked.   This a great way to see what not only what type of content is the most interesting to your subscribers, but also how that content was presented.  You might find people like to watch videos more than your written content or that an interesting infographic garners many more clicks than an article. (Ideally, you would actually send out A/B split test emails with the same content presented in different formats to truly understand which medium is best for your audience, but simply monitoring which has the most clicks will at least give you a good idea of what’s working.)

Sample Links Report

Sample Links Report

Open Time

Watch the open times of your emails very closely.   While you may be abiding by the industry studies that say to send your emails early in the morning on a Tuesday or Thursday, your audience might not be opening them up until later that night.   If your company sells retail goods, there are a number of times where sending your email at night makes more sense because you will have a better chance to grab the recipient’s attention.   They could be watching TV with a tablet in front of them and a simple, eye-catching email will earn a much higher response at that time.

Sample Open Time

Sample Open Time

Location Information

If you collect location information with your email sign-up (this could be as simple as a zip-code), then you can monitor where your audience is opening up their emails.  For retail companies, this can be especially helpful as it can assist your company with future location decisions.  For example, in the MailChimp article, this same retailer saw significant open rates from the Atlanta, GA and Austin, TX, which actually led the company to open a brick-and-mortar location in Austin that summer.

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How To Create A Solid Video Presence

It’s no secret that I love video for marketing.  I believe video can create connections and provide insight that other mediums cannot.   The most common question, though, is how to make your videos great and stand out from the others?

Connect With Your Audience

Connecting with your audience is the most important aspect of any video.  At the end of the day, consumers want to do business with people they know, like, and trust, and video is the best format to use. Video allows you to create personal relationships that cannot be done by written text or any other digital medium.

How To Connect

Since most company videos will typically involve you or somebody from the company speaking to the camera to introduce you or your product, there are some very important items to keep in mind.

I will break each section down and simple provide some bullet-point tips within each one.

Positioning:

1.     Stand, if possible, and angle your feet into the letter “T.” (If you must sit, stay on the edge of your seat and me sure not to swivel.)

2.     Stand at a slight angle from the camera instead of facing it directly.

3.     Position your lights to face you directly.  Light from above will create strange shadows on your face and can make you look like a zombie.

Clothing:

 1.     Wear solid colors and keep it to earth tones and blues.  (Your bright pink paisley shirt is going to have to stay in the closet.)

2.     Dress for your audience.

3.     Men – it’s okay to put on a little makeup.  It will take away shine from your face on the camera.

4.     Be careful with glasses and their reflection.

 Body Movement

1.     Try to avoid unnecessary/distracting movement.

2.     Walk with a purpose on camera.

3.     Use your hands.  Don’t go crazy here, though.

4.     If you are holding up a product keep it close to your body and by your face.

Interviews:

1.     Look at the interviewer

2.     Always allow them to finish their questions

3.     Avoid industry jargon. (Imagine you are explaining your product to a 5th grader.)

4.     Address the interviewer by name.

Connecting With Your Audience:

1.     Be confident.

2.     Rehearse beforehand.

3.     Make sure you sound like you know what you’re talking about.

4.     Don’t read your lines.

5.     Slow down your speech.

6.     Increase your energy. (The camera make you look less energetic so it’s important you take it up 20 – 30% higher than normal.)

7.  Always smile.

8.  Use your natural voice.

 Example:

Wistia has been using video to create connections with their clients and prospects for quite some time.  They do a fantastic job of creating a video presence that encourages you to find out more about their company and products.

Screen shot 2013-04-24 at 11.10.17 AM

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How To Transform Your Marketing Efforts With Video

I am a huge advocate for companies to use video in their marketing efforts.   I truly believe a well done video will produce more leads and create a much longer-lasting impression than written content ever will.

Why Video?

By combining sight, sound, and motion, video tells your story in a personal and meaningful way.  Not only does video provide insight into your company’s culture, but it is more engaging than just written text or pictures and can provide a face and personality to your company.

In addition to providing company insight, there are a multitude of case studies that show how companies that develop creative, interactive videos increase leads by 300 – 400 percent.  (You can find a number of these case studies here.)

By The Numbers

Video usage is only growing in importance.   Over the next few years, video will become the predominant way companies introduce themselves and provide insight into their company and industry.

  • A Nielsen Online study from 2010 shows that over 84% of internet users view videos online. (Nielsen)
  • YouTube is now the second largest search engine surpassing both Yahoo! And Bing.
  • 79% of the Fortune Global 100 have a branded YouTube channel. (Nielsen)
  • 76% of marketers plan to increase their use of YouTube and video marketing. (2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report)
  • Video accounted for more than 40% of mobile data traffic in 2010 and forecasts to be over 60%. (Bytemobile)

More Harm Than Good

Used incorrectly, though, and video will hurt your marketing efforts, can damage your reputation, make you appear unprofessional, and lose sales in the process.

With that in mind I made a quick list of the 5 items that will make your video stand out or fizzle:

  1. Too long.  You have 60-90 seconds to engage your viewer.  Any longer and they are going to click away from the video.
  2. Not scripted.  It’s easy to spot videos where you know the person didn’t take time to practice or rehearse what they were saying.
  3. Too scripted.   You appear stiff and the video is too contrived.
  4. Poor image quality.  Just because you can shoot video from your smartphone or webcam doesn’t mean that you necessarily should.
  5. Poor sound.  You can actually get away with a poor image, but if your video has poor sound, you can forget about it.  Viewers will immediately leave your video.

Personal Favorite

Dollar Shave Club’s witty and original video is my favorite example of a company creatively using video to introduce their company, show off their culture, engage their audience, and gain new customers in the process.

Why this video?

  • The video is well thought out and perfectly executed.
  • The video is short (1:34).
  • The video’s writing is succinct, creative, and interesting.
  • The video is captivating. (They smartly incorporate a number of different shots and angles to keep the viewer engaged.)
  • The video is funny. (Much harder to do than most people think.)
  • The video is informative (They tell you exactly what the company does and how they do it.)

Take a look and see for yourself:

 

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How 1 Infographic Generated 3.9 Million Views

I have always been a huge advocate for value marketing. (Value marketing is where you focus your content on enriching your audience’s lives by sharing content that is educating, engaging, and enriching.)

I recently came across an infographic created by HCC Medical Insurance Services and shared by Marketing Sherpa that was so effective it:

  • Increased blog traffic by 1,000%
  • Increased revenue from email by 96%
  • Received more than 2,000 interactions on social media.
  • Received an 815% more impressions that their average social media post.

How Did They Do It?

According to Muhammad Yasin, Director of Marketing for HCCMIS, “We had to find new, nontraditional ways to reach our target customers.” Their challenge, which is the same challenge we preach to our agencies, was “turning the ‘boring’ topic of insurance into a piece of content that its customer wanted to view, talk about, and share.”

HCCMIS specializes in travel insurance, so their team decided to create a unique, interactive infographic broken into three different sections (view the infographic here):

Section 1: Anatomy of an Adventure Traveler. As you can see from the picture below, HCCMIS has pop-up buttons next to clothing items to share some of the traveling necessities.

Fig. 1 The Adventure Traveler Infographic

For example, if you click on the pop-up next to the shorts, it provides information on the right-hand side of the page about the best types of shorts and pants to pack on your trip.

According to Yasin, “One of the reasons why people spend so much time on a page with [the interactive infographic is] because there were more and more things to find.”

Section 2: Adventure Quiz. In the Adventure Quiz section visitors can check off various activities to prove their “extremeness.” Then, once they complete the quiz, they can share the results on Facebook or Twitter with their friends.

Fig. 2 Adventure Quiz

Section 3: Bucket List. This section has an interactive map of the world with various extreme activity ideas like wrestling an alligator in Florida or swimming with orcas in New Zealand.

Fig. 3 Bucket List Items

The Process

As you go through the infographic, it’s easy to see that HCCMIS spent considerable time developing the tool, researching the content, and optimizing it to be shared across multiple channels.

According to Yamis, their marketing team spends a considerable amount of time researching interesting and relevant topics to share. In fact, they said they will actually reach out to people interested in potential topics to ensure they are keying in on the most important aspects and focusing on their audience.

The Takeways

For any insurance agency or company looking to interact with prospects in a way that will engage them and lead to future sales, HCCMIS has laid out a great blueprint for success. They embraced technology to create a visually interactive marketing piece that translated into far more sales than they thought were possible.

Here are some suggestions to get your agency started:

1. Be Visual. When creating marketing pieces, the more visual it is, the more success you will have. People are drawn to pictures, graphics, and statistics.

2. Embrace Technology. By creating an interactive infographic instead of a static one and adding social sharing buttons, HCCMIS saw their program go viral.

3. Content. By focusing on content that is relevant to their audience, HCCMIS was able to convert far more prospects into sales.

 

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5 Tips To Creating Awesome Infographics

It’s no surprise that consumers are interacting more and more with visual material than written content.  Videos, photos, and infographics are quickly taking over as the preferred method of consuming information.

Done correctly and an infographic drives traffic, builds links, and creates brand awareness.   Don’t incorrectly and all of you have is a colossal waste of time.

Here are 5 tips to creating an awesome infographic:

1. Don’t Talk About Yourself.  Infographics shouldn’t be salesy.  Rather, they  should provide industry insight, interesting statistics, or even humor.   For example you can:

  • Explain your industry’s history and future.
  • Show interesting facts about your industry and company.
  • Compare different products.
  • Show geographic, gender, or economic differences.

Also, be sure the information you are sharing fits your target audience and customer.
The following infographic, done by Viator, does a fantastic job about sharing insight (in this case the London Olympics) without pushing themselves or their products on the consumer.

London Olympics Travel Infographic

2.    You’re not original or interesting.   Do you have any unique insight you can provide to your audience?   Do your customers have common questions you can answer?  Is there any insight into your industry that others would find interesting or relevant?

While you should always use other infographics for design and content ideas, you should never just rip off their information and call it your own.  It’s so easy now to compile interesting information on any topic that you should never have to resort to copying others’ information.

For example, once I find a topic I want to share with others, I like to use FactBrowser to see if there are any relevant statistics that I can share.  (FactBrowser is great.  They have a ton of good information from reputable sources that is in a quick and easy format to add to your infographic.*)

*Be sure to mention your sources.  Just like with a research paper your information becomes more reputable and shareworthy when the consumer knows it comes from a good source.  Also, it’s always a good idea to check multiple sources to verify the information you are sharing is correct.

The following infographic done by DigitalSurgeons shows a number of interesting and relevant information related to Twitter users including their interaction with Twitter, gender, economic status, age, and education.  (Notice they took the time to reference all of their sources within the infographic.)

twitter-infographic-stats-facts-2010-2011

3.    Keep it Simple.  While infographics are great for sharing industry insight and interesting information, you must also make sure that you don’t share information that is too complex for an infographic.   On the flip side, you want to make sure you aren’t just sharing superficial or common knowledge information.  You should truly strive to provide insight through the information being shared.

The following infographic, done by Online Colleges, does a fantastic job of sharing insightful and interesting information without overwhelming the consumer.

HeaviestPriceEducationCollege

4.    Design matters.  Something as simple as using the wrong colors could doom your infographic.   So how do you make sure your infographic stands out?

  • Use bright, simple colors images and graphics.
  • Keep your infographics length short.  Go too long and people won’t read it all the way through.
  • Cut down the size.  (keep the image below 1.5 to 2.0MB so people will download the image)
  • Keep a logical flow to the information.  You don’t want viewers eyes to have to jump around and worry about missing information because there’s not a logical pattern to the information.
  • Use different font sizes to grab attention.  Also, use simple, easy-to-read fonts that don’t require a lot of work to scan through.
  • White space is good.  If your images and text are too croded then people won’t read the information you are providing.

The following infographic on the largest bankruptcies has achieved a great design balance. It’s eye-catching, easy to follow, and keeps a logical flow.

Bankruptcies
5.    Have a plan to get it out.  Make sure you have a plan in place to gain as many possible views as you can.   The best plan for your company will depend upon your target consumer.  For some, social media is a great way to send out information, while for other companies, it could be sending out individual messages to industry leaders.   Whatever your best method is.  Be sure to plan it beforehand.

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Sports and Business Part 3

Performance Evaluation

This may be the area with the most drastic difference between the two.

Sports World

Athletes’ performances are constantly scrutinized.  Imagine if you were reviewed daily by talk shows, radio shows, Sportscenter, blogs, and message boards.

Coaches are also continuously reviewing their players’ performances and, most importantly, helping them improve.  They applaud the good and critique the bad.  They show them better techniques to eliminate mistakes.  The best coaches will even find a way to inspire the poorest performers to improve themselves.

Business World

Contrast now with the business world.  How often do managers evaluate their employees?   Do they consistently applaud the positives and critique the negatives?

Most companies try to do this on an annual basis (assuming it’s being done at all).  And even then it’s not a true annual evaluation.  This is because the person performing the evaluation usually doesn’t document things that transpired during the entire year.  Rather, they try to remember a few positive and negative events from the month prior the evaluation and base everything on that.

Can you imagine if a sports team only evaluated their players on an annual basis?   “That was a rough game you had in the 2nd week of the season and I saw some things for you to improve on.  Too bad the season’s already over, I guess we’ll just work on it next year.”

Message

Have weekly reviews with employees even if they’re only 5 minutes.  This way you can address things have just happened.   You can immediately correct poor performance and applaud positive performance.

Conclusion

Look, I know many companies are operating on skeleton crews and paper-thin margins, but if you can just implement a few things sports teams already do on a consistent basis, then I promise you that employee and company performance will improve.  By sharing your vision, preparing your employees, and evaluating their performance, you will be well on your way to success.

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Sports and Business Part 2

Preparation:

Could you imagine a sports team taking the field without have met or prepared beforehand?   “Hey guys, I know we haven’t practiced this week or discussed our opponent, but I’m sure you’ll be fine.  Now, go get ‘em!”

Sports World

Did you know football teams spend a larger portion of their week preparing for games in meetings and watching video than on the field practicing? Why is this?  Because the coach has to ensure every player understands the team’s strategy and how their individual roles work within that strategy.   If just one player does not understand his role, it could cost the team the game.

The players also need to know what their opponent is like and how to best prepare for them.  What are their weaknesses?   How can we use our strengths against them?   Which players will need to play a larger role for this game?    Without prior preparation and guidance from a coach, even the most talented teams will struggle to win.

Business World

What type of opportunities does you company have coming up this week?   Are there any big leads you are meeting with, or are there any large clients with outstanding issues that need to be resolved?   What are you trying to accomplish this week, month, and year?

Do you have employees who may need to step up and fill a larger role because other employees are sick or on vacation?  What kind of new sales ideas do you have?  Do you have any new marketing ideas you want to implement?

These are all very real questions that come up every day for companies, but the information isn’t relayed appropriately to the employees.  Rather than using a meeting to discuss these types of issues, owners and managers will often just disseminate this information via an email.

Message:

Coaches don’t just send out the game plan via email, and neither should you.  Coaches meet with their players individually and as a team to ensure everyone is on the same page.  Use meetings to implement any new company policies or strategies.   This will help your employees feel more like a team, and help you know that everyone knows what needs to be done.

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Sports And Business Part 1

I love sports. I love everything about them: the competition, the teamwork, the strategy. etc.  Having played sports my entire life, I like to compare specific things you see sports teams doing with the business world because I feel there are things that businesses can take from these teams to help improve their own performance.

There are three areas where I feel sports excel and business should try and follow: vision, preparation, and performance. In three separate posts, I will expand upon each one of these items.

Vision:

Every successful team can attribute a large portion of their success to the vision given to them by their coach. Successful coaches will consistently share with their teams their vision of where they feel their teams can be and what their players can accomplish. Before the season even begins, players know what is expected of them, and how they can contribute to the success of their team.

Coaches will post their vision in locker rooms, in tunnels, in meeting rooms, on t-shirts, in notebooks, and anywhere else a player may come across it.   They want it to be very clear to all of their players what they are trying to accomplish during the season.

Now contrast that to your company: Do you know what your company would consider a successful year? What kind of goals and aspirations do they have? What is expected of you as the employee? Where does your company want to be in 5 years, and what kind of role do they want you to play in it?

Most business owners know the answers to the questions above. However, they do a very poor job of disseminating this information to their employees. Employees are often confused as to the specific role they play within their company. Yes, they may understand their job duties, but they don’t know how this specifically contributes to the overall success of the company.

Message: Business Owners share your vision! You know where you want the company to go. You have an idea of what it can become so share it with your employees.  They want to know. Employees, just like athletes, will perform better when they know what their role is and how it will contribute to the company’s overall success.

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