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

Imagine you’re one of those marketing wizards, speaking to a captive audience and receiving deafening applause. Everyone congratulates you on your incredible insights and groundbreaking (not to mention insanely profitable) work in the complex field of marketing.

Who hasn’t wished to be a guru? Move one step closer to making it a reality by practicing vicariously while listening to the speakers at TED.

If you haven’t heard of TED, understand that TED’s not a single person but a conglomeration of many people, working in the fields of Technology, Entertainment, or Design. TED’s annual conference started in 1984 and its growing library includes (free!) video presentations by some of the most creative minds in those three industries.

One of the best features of the site is the way each talk comes with a recommendation for another talk on a similar topic or theme. The practice of following up on these recommendations is what I call heading out on “the TED trail,” a practice that might lead you to some substantial insights of your own.

Be careful what you wish for, you may get it

I stumbled onto a TED trail analyzing the nature of desire as it relates to marketing success by clicking on a three-minute presentation by Renny Gleeson, Global Strategies Director for advertising giant Wieden and Kennedy (and stealer of my potential blog’s potential name: ouroborous), about antisocial phone tricks.

Gleeson’s brief talk comes with a slide show featuring a series of Kodak non-moments: pics catching people texting with varying degrees of disregard for their surroundings and loved ones, culminating in some seriously reckless multitasking.

But with the jokes come a serious question: as portable, speedy technology makes us ever more available to one another, what are the expectations and obligations that come with availability?

For marketers, this question is relevant both for our interactions with prospects and our interactions with each other. Gleeson cautions that we become not only the stories we tell but the way we tell them. Before marketers dive into the strange seas of new technology, they might consider the adage of medieval map-makers, who indicated uncharted territory by writing, “Here be dragons.”

Dragons aren’t necessarily bad, but before you brought one home you’d want to do some research on its care and feeding. The same applies with any new technological initiative. Before lining up for the next cool thing, consider whether you’ll use it, how you’ll use it, how you’ll troubleshoot your use, and how to bow out gracefully in the case of user failure (known in the Urban Dictionary as PICNIC: problem in chair, not in computer).

When you wish upon a star…

Renny Gleeson’s talk came with a recommendation for me to check out a presentation by writer and consultant Joseph Pine author of Mass Customization, Experience Economy, and Authenticity, three books analyzing the evolution of consumer desires.

Pine argues that as our desires evolve, so do markets to serve them. Back in the day, we wanted things (food, shelter, clothes) and we had a commodoties-based economy. Today, now that we’re pretty full in the things department, we want … drumroll, please … authenticity.

According to Pine, there are two ways to be authentic: you can be true to yourself and you can be true to others. In addition, a large part of authenticity, whether with people or companies, comes from understanding your heritage. Pine believes that for a business to be perceived as authentic, the actions of that business cannot deviate too widely from that company’s previously established persona.

For examples, he cites the latest disastrous media acquisitions of the Disney corporation and takes on the national self image of the Netherlands.

He also sets out three cardinal rules for companies looking to capitalize on the public’s desire for authenticity:

1. Don’t say you are authentic. With apologies to Margaret Thatcher’s theory of power, being authentic is like being a lady. If you have to say you are, you aren’t.
2. Do not advertise what you are not. Try not to create an ad that creates a disconnect.
3. Provide places—not just ads—for people to experience who you really are.

The tastiest wish in the world

Finally, TED’s database recommended that I move from Joseph Pine to one of the most popular speeches in the system: Malcolm Gladwell’s ode to Howard Moscowitz and the development of spaghetti sauce as we know it.

In this speech, Gladwell takes on some fundamental assumptions about the nature of desire. Whether or not his conclusion is fundamentally sound is besides the point. Moscowitz — a psychophysicist and consultant to whom we owe zesty pickles and extra chunky tomato sauce — is an inspiration. His journey to discover the most satisfying sauce “changed the way the food industry thinks about happiness” and should change the way product development is approached in every industry.

Instead of looking for the perfect sauce, Moscowitz searched out the perfect sauces (plural intentional). In food land, this multiplicity of choices led to forty-three varieties and six hundred million dollars in revenue for Prego. For marketers, Moscowitz’s insights might lead you to look at the choices your company currently offers. In what ways are those offerings only imitations of what your competitors offer? In what ways might you be able to refine the choices you offer or create new ones?

(Hint: Cable companies who only offer three packages and don’t allow viewers to customize their channel selection, I’m talking to you…)

Click your mouse three times…

And go visit TED. I recommend it as an antidote to mind-numbing meetings and wallowing in whitepapers. Whether or not it gives you ideas that you can apply directly, TED features people who are thinking deeply about what people want and how people work. And that’s what you, future gurus, marketing scouts and trailblazers, are doing too.

General, Marketing Insights, Video

This post is the first in a new series about using video effectively on your landing pages.

Many marketers assume that putting a video on a landing page is going to automatically lift conversions. As much as I wish that were true, results have shown otherwise.

Your video can have the best production value, best talent, best message, etc. — but if you don’t deliver the video in a certain way, you can actually hurt conversions.

There are many things I want to say about online videos. However, I’d like to start where your visitors start.

Your visitors need a reason to watch

The truth is none of your visitors start with a reason to watch your video.

Whether it is an email capture form or a registration page, as we have discussed in recent web clinics, your site must give a reason for every action you ask your visitor to take. The same applies to video.

You should not assume that viewers will automatically be drawn to your video. For visitors, there are many potential annoyance and risk factors associated with videos: How much time will this take? Will this have any good information? Will I have any technical difficulties?

Another way to say this is that watching a video has a value proposition associated with it. You must make sure that you are communicating this value to your visitors just to get them to watch the video.

For instance, maybe the value of the video is that visitors can get all the information of a page in less than a minute and they don’t have to read the full page. Maybe the value is that you can see and hear the CEO of the company speak about the product. Or maybe it’s a demo of the product or testimonials from other people who have used it. Whatever it is, there must to be some value that is expressed to the viewers up front.

How you communicate that value will vary. Video headlines, subheads, descriptive tags, thumbnails, and play buttons can all be used for this for this (see illustration). If you do this part right, you will see significantly better results from using videos on your landing pages.

For my next post, we will look at the relationship of the content of a landing page to the video, drilling down on what kinds of pages most effectively utilize videos.

Marketing Insights, Practical Application, Video

It’s always fascinating to see smart, unique, and occasionally crazy concepts come to life. Most interesting are those that somehow connect with a brand and really support brand awareness.

Just a couple weeks ago, Ad Age released its Viral Video Chart for the week of April 6, 2009. Here a few of my personal favorites from the complete list:

• E-Trade’s babies (229,799 views that week)
• Samsung’s Extreme Sheep LED Art (1,114,491 views that week)
• Cadbury’s Eyebrow Dance (438,407 views that week)
• T-Mobile’s Dance (742,120 views that week)

Besides being funny and eye-catching, what have these videos done right?

They connect in a personal way with our minds and more than grabbing our attention, they create a rush to share them with friends.

However, we can share videos all day long and enjoy happy feelings, but still be left with no connection to any brand in particular. Here is where, I think, great videos differentiate themselves.

The power to make connections

What really makes some of these videos stand out in terms of their marketing objective is how they help viewers intuitively connect the message with the product or brand.

For example, E-Trade jokes that babies could master their product but, within the joke, manages to plant the idea that their product is seriously easy to use. In other words, E-trade’s video overtly displays their product strengths and subtly addresses the anxieties prospective customers might feel about getting involved in the online stock market.

By showing shepherds developing a sheep-borne light show, Samsung engages the “can-do” energies of creative and scientific professionals who will watch the video and simultaneously be amazed and think, “I can top that.” ( Doubt me? I forwarded the email to two performance artist friends and within a day received their email proposals for mobile LED displays based on four-legged, two-legged, and wheeled choreography.)

Furthermore, Samsung’s video showcases the same energy and teamwork that goes into any performance and also points out that their product is tough, versatile, and will perform in difficult conditions.

Engaging viewers is merely the beginning

It is important to have an engaging concept for your viral video. That’s what makes people watch, and more importantly, forward or, even better, stick that link on the ol’ Facebook page.

But it is vital for the success of your campaign to choose a creative concept that makes an intuitive connection with the benefits and advantages of your product, service or offer. Then you’re not only making a video people will pass along, but spreading a brand that viewers will want to remember and reengage with.

Internet Marketing Strategy, Social Media, Video

We know that most viral campaigns do not go viral; at least that much is predictable. However, is there a way to know what might cause something to go viral or not?

Testing over the past few years shows that viral marketing, like other aspects of marketing, can not only be tracked, but also predicted.

The components of what causes videos, blog entries, or any web-based media to go viral can be separated, analyzed, and adjusted to increase what has been called the “social velocity” of the medium. After years of testing, we are discovering which steps are instrumental in making a viral marketing campaign successful.

Our sister company, MarketingSherpa, in collaboration with Yovia.com, recently put together some videos answering some of the top questions we get from marketers concerning viral marketing…

Video: Is Viral Marketing Predictable?

See these other questions answered here:

Does viral marketing work for B2B?

Can viral marketing be tracked?

Is viral marketing predictable?

Is viral marketing free?

Does viral marketing require a large budget?

We’d like to get your take on these and other questions surrounding viral marketing. And if you’re looking for ways to improve or get started with viral marketing, don’t miss MarketingSherpa’s upcoming “How To Viral Market” webinar on Wednesday, December 10.

For additional ideas on video, check out our previous blog post: “What you need to know about using video online”

Marketing Insights, Video

We received a lot of questions about testing and using video at our recent Web clinic on testimonials. Some examples:

• How do I use video to help my landing page increase sales or subscriptions?
• Which kind of videos work best? Short or long? Autoplay or Userplay?
• Should I edit my videos or just leave them raw?
• Are there specific bandwidth or file format issues that might hurt my conversion?

Before we answer, it’s worth noting where we are today with video as compared to just a year or two ago. Much like the ramping-up period for RSS feeds and corporate blogging, the examples have been around for a while but bottom-line numbers remained elusive.

For the past few years of testing here at MarketingExperiments, the results we’d seen from video had usually been underwhelming, mainly due to bandwidth. So our response to questions about video was often that “they generally hurt conversion.”

More recent test results are hinting that online video has grown up. Fast.

For example, SiteSell.com recently shared that adding video to their landing page increased conversion to around 20%. What’s interesting here, besides the increase, is that the video was used as core content stating the company’s value proposition, not just tucked away in a sidebar.

Another example is a recent Sherpa case study where a UK Entertainment Brand site embedded a 1MB video into an email and achieved a 50% increase in conversion. They also split tested the subject lines: the email that mentioned the video had a 14.6% higher open rate than the one that did not.

And in our own research, a redesigned page that featured a video testimonial yielded three times the click rate of the control (discussed in the testimonials clinic).

So while we’ve seen video reshaping the Web in terms of content for a while, we’re now seeing more numbers on the marketing side. And now that test results are justifying further exploration with video, and the audience is much larger than early adopters, our analysts are working to answer many of the same questions as you — including those four queries above.

However, like other aspects of marketing, there are few if any easy answers. The real answer is you have to test and retest.

Much like long copy vs. short copy, call-to-action button styles and colors, or form length, the answers will change with the context in which these elements are used. To find out if a longer video will outperform a short clip, you’ve got to test it and break down the variables involved: the content of the clips, the audience and its expectations from the page, the goals for the page and video, and so on. The same applies to bandwidth, editing, autoplay, etc.

Before you can answer the broader types of questions, consider the context of your videos and look at friction and usability; for instance:

• What are you asking/expecting visitors to do with your video?
• Do they need to watch all of it to get through your conversion process, or is it an add-on to complement a registration process?
• Is it a testimonial, a how-to or a product demo?
• What need is the video trying to fill, and is it in the proper place in the conversion process?
• Does the video create friction with longer page load times, or by interrupting the site flow or eyepath?

The most reliable answers are specific to the usage and take the context into account. You’ll get those answers from tests that are set up and measured with the right research questions (see our recent clinic on testing).

Let us know if you’d like us to cover this topic in more detail in an upcoming clinic. And if you’re getting results from your own video tests, feel free to post about those here, too.

Austin McCraw, audio/video producer for MECLABS, contributed mightily to this blog post.

Clinic Notes, Internet Marketing Strategy, Marketing Insights, Marketing Q&A, Video

We were surprised (as we sometimes are during tests) to find that a newly designed offer page advertising an online subscription product which included a video from the founder of the company, explaining the product, converted much lower than the same page without the video:

Figure 1: Percentage of users who continued through each step of a subscription offering, by offer.

This was confusing to us. Shouldn’t the founder of a company personally explaining the features and benefits of a product sell the product better than a plain text/graphic page?

What we found was this:

A portion of the users could either not hear the sound or watch the video altogether, therefore missing out on the main point of the offer.

Those that did watch the video (indicated by the fact that they also made it to the next step of the registration process) were much more likely to continue the process.

If a user actually watches a video, it appears it does increase the overall conversion rate, however if they miss it somehow, due to technical issues, then they are not as likely to purchase or take action.

Video