MarketingExperiments Blog: Research-driven optimization, testing, and marketing ideas

What makes a message go viral? More importantly, how can you position your marketing messages to go viral?

Here at MECLABS, we recently had a front-row seat to just how easy it can be for a message to go viral. Senior Marketing Manager Justin Bridegan attended a rally at one of Mitt Romney’s events here in Jacksonville. During a break in Mitt’s stump speech, in which the former governor was attacking Newt, Justin yelled out, “Send him to the moon.”

With that comment, Justin changed the course of history. Or at least had a big impact on the latest message to go viral in the 24-hour news cycle.

Mitt started on to his next point, but then spun on his heels and asked, “What did you say?”

Justin, ever the marketer, sold the line even better the second time, “Send him to the moon.”

With that, Mitt changed the course of his speech to talk about Newt’s moon colonies, and within just a few hours, this interaction appeared on sites from New York Post, Los Angeles Times, and 7,131 other related articles.

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“I never thought what I said would be repeated or shape some of the political discussion or landscape for the day,” Justin said. “Only after posting my video did I realize my comment had been used across the country in many of the major news affiliates.”

“It really comes down to being at the right place, at the right time, and then seizing the moment. Today I witnessed firsthand what real-time marketing means.”

Of course, we were eating it up here in the office every time the quote was picked up in another major news source. (One of our favorites was a comment on a New York Times article claiming Justin was a plant for the Romney campaign.)

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How can you position your marketing messages for virality?

Just like that, with a quick spur-of-the-moment shout, Justin’s message went viral. And that’s just how easy it is.

Deceptively easy. Because, unlike, say, crafting a message in paid media, you have little control over how to get that exposure to your message.

So, I’m not going to tell you how to make your messages go viral. I simply haven’t seen anyone that can force virality. However, here are a few tips to help you at least prepare for that possibility. To remix Seneca … virality is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

Get involved in the conversation

If there is anything we can learn from Justin’s experience, it’s that it never would have happened if he weren’t at the rally.

So what does that mean to marketers? As Woody Allen said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” You should be present and engaged anywhere your audience and customers are engaged in a conversation. For some, that is Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. For others, that may be online forums. For a local business, it may mean joining local civic organizations.

Being an upstanding member of these offline and online communities, and being a legitimate part of the conversation, increases the likelihood that the early adopters and influencers will start to spread your message.

But, don’t be a faker and try to force it. Or it could blow up in your face.

Understand the zeitgeist of your audience

That’s a fancy word for saying the “defining spirit or mood.” Being present in the community will help you keep a finger on this pulse. Genuinely serving your audience and responding to their needs don’t hurt either.

And, if you’re really engaged, it will pay off in myriad ways in your marketing. In this case, understanding the hot-button issues to push when creating a message you’re trying to spread virally.

Don’t be salesy

It sure is exciting that your winter whites are on sale for 20% off … but highly unlikely that it is a message that will go viral.

In testing conducted for “Can viral video clips drive targeted traffic to your web site?,” we found that although the 28 video clips we experimented with had no promotional message or content, 1.49% of viewers went on to become newsletter subscribers. In just 60 days, our videos were viewed more than 324,000 times at no cost to us.

The research goes on to recommend, “Be cautious about including commercial or promotional content. The most powerful short videos are those that are purely entertaining. It’s when people click through to your site that the time is right to add your sales message.”

Don’t overlook direct media outreach to help germinate your message

While there is nothing I detest more than the traditional spam press release that jams up my inbox, don’t forget that including digital and mainstream media in your viral campaign can be a helpful tipping point to virality (and, of course, the inverse is true as well – a viral idea can help lead to earned media mentions).

For example, Sunflower Market, an organic foods retail brand, sent branded flower pots to key media contacts six weeks before a store opening (the amount of time it takes a sunflower to germinate, natch) to support a downloadable desktop plant application they were trying to spread virally to promote a store opening.

As a result, they received 1,631,862 media impressions in the Indianapolis area, and beat the opening week store sales forecast by 24%.

Related Resources:

Romney urges sending Gingrich to the moon (good video here of how it all went down … starts about 1 minute into the video)

What do great viral videos have in common?

Social Media Marketing: Viral sweepstakes targeting moms grows Facebook audience 4,488%

Content Marketing: Microsoft crowdsources content ideas with a viral contest for new Windows Phone 7 platform

Long-time MarketingExperiments readers will notice that we have shifted to a video-centric format for our Web clinic replays, which aim to deliver actionable marketing advice based on our optimization discoveries …

And we realize we still have a long way to go to fully optimize this new channel to ensure it provides the most value and most compelling experience to the audience of marketing managers and advertising creatives we seek to help. But we also realize we’ve come a long way from our previous format as well.

Since many marketers are increasingly looking to add more video into their marketing mix, in today’s post, I wanted to share a few basic lessons we’ve learned at this early stage in the process:

Get the right people involved

We never would have been able to produce a video like this without the deep technical know-how of one of the newest members of our team, A/V Specialist Luke Thorpe. While there are simpler ways to do video, we wanted to create an experience that would really grab the attention of marketers, a group that is accustomed to impressive production values. Also, we wanted the format to reflect well on our brand.

For example, the video above was shot in our green screen background, utilizing six layers of animation over the green screen. We never could have done that without the MECLABS Spielberg himself, Luke.

Make sure video is right for you

Just because lots of people are doing video and a video about a kid biting another kid’s finger got 411 million views on YouTube, doesn’t necessarily mean video is the right channel for your audience.

“There is a lot of information in our one-hour Web clinics,” Luke said. “Video gives our presenters the ability to engage with the content and guide the viewers through each step of the presentation. I believe connecting on this additional level (video) will facilitate learning.”

Practice makes perfect

Before we created the video you see above, Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS, recorded two other Web clinic replays that we never released. When trying something new, give your team some grace to figure it out well before any deadlines. That said …

Your first release won’t be perfect

So decide what is good enough to release. And keep working to make it better, because …

The medium influences the message

And opens up new possibilities as well. Producing video has caused us to take a second-look at everything … from how we organize our Web clinic replay landing pages, to how we produce the Web clinics themselves.

We don’t have all the answers yet, just lots of questions. And a good question is always the first step to true optimization. So keep in mind that …

Optimization never ends

This certainly isn’t the end of our efforts to optimize the channel … more like a new beginning.

“There is still a lot of room for improvement with our current presentation,” Luke said. “On the surface, we are improving the sound and picture quality, but more important will be the playback setup. For example, there are many ‘video players’ on the Web that allow you to add bookmarks at key points and give the viewer the ability to place bookmarks of their own.”

“Moving further along, we hope to enable the audience to more easily share these key discoveries with their peers and colleagues.”

Related Resources:

MarketingSherpa’s 30-Minute Marketer: How to Create SEO-Friendly YouTube Content

What do great viral videos have in common?

Inbound Marketing: Small business builds YouTube channel from the ground up, expands to 40 countries

Improve Search Visibility with Video: 5 Strategies

The thing about pay-per-click ads is … well, you’re paying for every click.

So how do you maximize the value you get out of this online advertising?

In this Wednesday’s Web clinic – Online Advertising Forensics: We investigate how and why a text-based PPC ad produced 47% more conversions – MECLABS Managing Director Flint McGlaughlin will share our top discoveries on increasing the ROI of your PPC ads.

First, let’s look at some top advice we received from your peers …

Always run two ads

Whenever I create a new campaign or a single group, I always run with two ads. I run with words that I think will generate interest and flow into the landing page that I create. I generally start with two similar ads but, every now and again, I will try an ad that is not similar at all just to see what the market likes and dislikes.

Sometimes I look at the competitive nature of the keyword in the search results, and then look at who is in first place, then try to match my words to the similar ones.

This all depends on if I have worked in this area or not … if I know the targeted niche, I stick with what I know has worked in the past.

When creating the ad groups, I will use a small number of keywords and nine out of 10 times use these keywords in the title of the AdWords ad itself. Now that Google doesn’t allow capitals in the URLs, I have started using the URLs with capitals in the body content on the AdWords ad, this has definitely helped keep the CTRs higher.

Say, for example, I am selling Organic Cat Food … and own the URL … I will paste this URL with caps between the words in the second line of the AdWords ad …

For example:

Your Cat Loves This?
www.OrganicCatFood.com
Freshly Made & Delivered For Free
organiccatfood.com/LoveCats

You also must consider not just clicks but conversions.

As I said, always have two ads running for the same ad group.

Set the account to rotate your ads evenly so that you can see what ad converts higher or has higher clickthrough.

You may have an ad that has high clicks but small conversions compared with an ad that has lower clicks but higher conversions. This is important to measure. It may mean that your ad, even though it is generating great clicks, is not returning the conversions. So instead of just changing your ad content, have another look at what keywords are converting and refine if necessary to ensure your quality of visitor is high.

After you have made these tweaks, test again for another period and then measure the success of the two ads running for this group.

Having the correct keywords is as important as having the two sample ads running. Keep testing and adjusting to fine-tune your account.

– Dave Lemmon, Director, Redcow Marketing Limited

3 key factors to PPC success

1. As far as performance of ads is concerned, A/B tests are the best way to check and optimize. Run different variations of images, text and calls-to-action to zero in on what is getting the best response. Study the ad analytics well because optimizing ads is a continuous process as long as your campaign is running.

2. Targeting is the key to PPC Campaigns. Have a clearly defined audience, and design ads according to their preferences. Engage directly with your prospects – don’t show your ad to people who don’t need to see it. Online advertising has this huge advantage over traditional print and TV – so make use of it.

3. Never forget the bigger picture – landing pages and conversions. The objective of an ad campaign is not to just “drive traffic” to a particular webpage but to secure business from it. To assure you are getting value or a good ROI out of online advertising, have a well-designed landing page to make sure that a decent conversion rate is in place, or else, the campaign is just wasting dollars.

– Nivesh Jain, Senior Marketing Executive, Invensis Technologies Pvt Ltd

Get everyone involved

Here’s sort of a “different” answer …

I have my co-workers write ads to test. I give them the parameters and the ammunition (landing pages, features, benefits and other good stuff for ads) and run a little contest with a prize for the winner.

What’s the point? Many times “professionals” and those closely associated with marketing can get too “markety.” We start using fancy words and lose sight that there’s a real person searching with questions they want answered.

Getting others involved that don’t know so much about the campaign can lead to some great ads as they use different language and come at the problem and solution from different angles. Plus, it’s a lot of fun!

Don’t get caught thinking that these ads can’t be winners. You might be surprised!

– Mike Fleming, PPC and Analytics Manager, Pole Position Marketing

Great minds think alike, Mike! Right now, we’re running our own PPC ad writing contest right here on the blog, because, as you suggest, we too think it is critical to case a wide net. The winner receives a free PDF copy of MarketingSherpa’s 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – PPC Edition (a $397 value).

Related Resources:

Online Advertising Forensics: We investigate how and why a text-based PPC ad produced 47% more conversions – Free Web clinic, Wednesday, February 1, 2012, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. EST

PPC Ad Writing Contest: Win a $397 Benchmark Report while building your optimization peer group

This Just Tested: How PPC specificity drove 21% more clicks and cut costs 66%

Converting PPC Traffic: How clarifying value generated 99.4% more conversions on a PPC landing page

PPC Advertising: 5 winning display ad tactics that increased paying customers by 2,900% and dropped cost-per-lead 37%

Great things happen … when you extend your manufacturer’s protection right away!

I recently wrote a blog post about the audacity of hype – how companies can overreach with their advertising claims … and the potential customers who just don’t believe them.

So today, on the flip side, let me address the copywriting that doesn’t say anything at all. Take the above headline, for example. For lack of a better word, let’s call this …

Blandvertising

Blandvertising is a wishy-washy marketing claim. Like the italicized headline above, it wants to mean something … but it just doesn’t mean anything.

Maybe because the marketer didn’t want to have to deal with Legal. Or maybe because the marketing manager or copywriter had an empty text box in InDesign and just had to throw something in there.

This background noise, this elevator music copywriting is a total waste of your marketing budget. If you’re paying for the opportunity to say something, whether with a direct mail piece, a PPC ad, on product packaging, or just on your website … then actually say something.

But what exactly? You’re crazy busy. Perhaps you’re not a writer. And you have an empty text box staring you in the face. What do you put in there?

Through our testing, we have found that …

Your customers may be flat out ignoring your latest news, offers, and ads. Don’t blame them. It’s simple human nature.

Take a quick look at your surroundings – your cubicle, your office, your solarium – wherever you’re reading this. How much do you notice what’s around you? I mean…really notice?

Not as much as you think you do, I’m guessing. Take a recent experiment run here in the labs. And by “experiment” I mean “practical joke run by our Associate Director of Optimization, Adam Lapp.”

Adam Photoshopped a picture of one of our Research Analysts, Ashley, posing with a friend. It’s the picture in this blog post. Perhaps it looks normal at first glance, but if you take a closer look, you can see that the blonde woman on the right looks a little, well, masculine.

That’s because Adam Photoshopped the face of a male Research Analyst over the face of Ashley’s female friend. He then replaced the photo she had hanging in her cubicle with this photo.

And, Ashley didn’t even notice her friend’s metamorphosis until someone pointed it out to her. Even though it was right in front of her face all day. Why?

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People don’t notice subtle changes in familiar environments

Now I don’t want to throw Ashley under the bus. I fully admit, I’m no better (and neither are you…or our customers).

For example, we recently moved the official offices of MarketingSherpa from Rhode Island to right here in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. I’ve been very cognizant of the need to look for where changes of that address need to be made on our many Web properties.

But I didn’t notice that the change wasn’t made on the MarketingSherpa Twitter page – even though I look at it at least five times a day.

However, when I was interviewing Ryan Amirault, Digital Marketing Manager, Whole Foods Market, for his case study at Email Summit 2012, he instantly noticed the location and started talking about Rhode Island.

So while being new to, say, a landing page, makes the customer more likely to notice the discreet marketing message, even novelty may not help…

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Invisible Gorilla Test

What we’re really talking about when we say “banner blindness” is a phenomenon scientists refer to as “inattentional blindness” or “selective attention.” The typical person is overloaded with visual stimuli and inputs of all sorts, making it simply impossible to focus on everything. So, people often overlook things that are right in front of their face.

One of the most famous examples of this is the Invisible Gorilla Test…

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Now, I may have already primed you to see the gorilla in the above video. However, when Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Christopher Chabris of Harvard University ran this test, they found that, in most test subject groups, 50% of the subjects did not report seeing the gorilla.

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How can you get your customers to see your ads?

So if a gorilla doesn’t work, you might be thinking , “I need to go one step further. From now on, every ad I run will have a tap dancing chimpanzee with a neon tracksuit.”

Easy, big fella. You need not become a carnival barker to grab your audience’s attention. All I want to draw your attention to is the fact that what is obvious to you (since you likely eat, sleep, and breathe your marketing message) is not always readily apparent to your audience. And don’t take for granted that your message got across just because you put it at the top of your homepage.

Here are a few common sense thoughts to keep in mind as you seek to overcome banner blindness:

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Contrast: The more an object can stick out, due to bright colors, crazy patterns, or motion, the more people are likely to notice it. (Keep in mind, if you are running a pay-per-click ad, you want more than attention and curiosity clicks … you want quality clicks.)

Here is an example from the MarketingSherpa site. There is a clear contrast between the ad and its surroundings, thanks to the different color, the bright visual, and even in how “Reserve Your Seat” interrupts the “Limited seating still available” rectangle (please note, it comes out a little brighter on the screen than it does on the screen capture below).

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A Multichannel Approach: Don’t think that just placing a message at the top of your homepage, smack dab in the middle (especially in a similar font as its surroundings), is enough to get your message across. I’ve made this mistake myself before. “What do you mean we didn’t tell people? It’s right there at the top of the homepage.”Most people won’t even see it. Especially if they visit your site often.

That doesn’t mean you can’t put your message there, it just means to reach your potential customers in as many way as possible with the message – email, social media, dedicated landing pages, offline communications – and not take for granted that the message was received just by placing it on your homepage.

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Get in the Middle: There are certain areas of webpages that most people usually relegate to background noise – the top and bottom headers, the right and left columns. When placing an ad, or putting information on your own site, try to get right into the middle of the content.

If you aren’t able to, try to make sure your information is at least at a natural stopping point for the content – for example, just to the right of or below the end of a blog post or article.

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Break out of the Box: Many marketers place information in a box on their homepages or landing pages that doesn’t necessarily need to be in that box…and therefore their audience is overlooking it.

From a headline on a homepage that is placed in a box (and therefore ignored) to testimonials that look like text-based ads, this mistake is all too common. When you’re on your own website, make sure you are not inadvertently making important information look like a banner ad that will be — you guessed it — totally overlooked by your visitors.

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Related Resources:

The Ultimate Click: How to get what you pay for with pay-per-click advertising

Banner Blindness: Optimize your online display advertising to stick out (or blend in)

Online Advertising: The 3 obstacles you must overcome to create an effective banner ad

Banner Ad Design: The 3 key banner objectives that drove a 285% lift

Banner Design Tested: How a 35% decrease in clicks caused an 88% increase in conversion

This time of year, many marketers are beginning to execute on their new marketing plans. However, sometimes you have to deviate from the plan and just need a sale or lead generation lift… RIGHT NOW!

When your boss or client challenges you to gain a quick conversion increase on your landing pages, what tools do you turn to in your marketing toolbox?

In Wednesday’s Web clinic – Rapidly Maximizing Conversion: How one company quickly achieved a 53.9% lift with a radical redesign – MECLABS Managing Director Flint McGlaughlin will share our top discoveries around how to quickly improve your conversion rate.

But before we share what we learned, we wanted to hear from you. Here are a few of our favorite “quick hit” tips from your peers …

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Headline optimization

I have found that headline and subhead optimization works well for the B2B SaaS clients I typically work with. Even after I think I have tested my way to the perfect headline, I run more tests and get more lift. I regularly get 10% lifts from this tactic. If I have more time to gather data, I will multivariate test headline, CTA button and benefit/bulleted text.

Finally, if you haven’t already, make sure there is just one key CTA button which is huge and obvious. I’m always surprised at how many sites don’t do this.

– Chris Neumann, General Manager, TextMarks

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5 Quick Tips

A few quick things come to mind:

1) Drop prices and provide free shipping: This one is pretty obvious, but nothing converts like low prices and free shipping.

2) Add security/trust logos and other “credibility” links (security policy, etc.) to checkout process: These types of additions have proven to immediately bump the conversion rate by providing a visual feel of safety and security, even if the users never do anything besides see the presence of the icons or links.

3) Simplify checkout process, including NOT requiring users to create an account in order to checkout: A simple checkout process reduces the likelihood users will drop-off.

4) Increase frequency of targeted email campaigns: There is so much email going around these days, from so many different sources, for so many different purposes. Research and testing has shown that sending a single email campaign up to 9 times can continue to provide incremental benefit in sales, with very little subsequent downside in customer satisfaction. The truth is, most people don’t see a very high percentage of their email.

5) Implement abandoned cart targeted emails: Enticing users to complete the checkout process can be very effective because you are targeting shoppers that you know are already interested in some of your products.

The above items are all proven to increase conversion – some are more quickly implemented than others.

– Todd Stalter, Senior Visualization Analyst, OneSpring

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Contests and chatting

For quick results I would implement the following:

1. An online contest where all the visitor needs to do is provide a name and email address, Facebook “like,” and/or Twitter follow, depending on what kind of lead capture you want. Online contests with enticing prizes can go viral and get you many followers quickly.

2. Implement a live chat feature on the site to make it easier to interact with visitors. However, I have found that live chat software with the standard popup window do not convert as well as the newer live chat programs such as Zopim and Olark that have a more social feel to them. Another option is to implement a video live chat program so customers can see the site representative on video, which helps even more with building trust in your company.

– Shai Atanelov, CEO & Founder, BigtimeWireless.com

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Related Resources:

Rapidly Maximizing Conversion: How one company quickly achieved a 53.9% lift with a radical redesign – Web clinic

Most-Tweeted Posts of 2011: Social media marketing, copywriting, email testing and more …

Landing Page Optimization: How to plan a radical redesign so you get a lift AND a learning

Marketing Campaign: Landing page optimization can help improve the return on your media spend