Tag: semper

Facebook Updates Marketing Resource Blueprint

Earlier this year, Facebook launched Blueprint, an education program that trains agencies, partners, and marketers on how to use Facebook to create better campaigns that “drive business results”. It includes online courses as well as in-person training and certification.

The company just made an update to the program, which enables those taking courses to more easily share their progress with those concerned with it.

In an email, Facebook is telling marketers using Blueprint:

As a valued participant in the Facebook Blueprint eLearning program we wanted to let you know that you can now share your Blueprint progress with your Agency or Business. Next time you access Blueprint you will have the opportunity to opt-in to share your information.

You may elect to stop sharing this data with the Agency or Business by updating your Blueprint profile at any time.

Blueprint launched with 40 learning paths/modules, and you can use it from the desktop or mobile. It’s available to anyone with a Facebook account. You select the courses you want to take, and take them at your leisure.

We took a closer look at what all is available in Blueprint here.

Image via Facebook

September 2, 2015
Infographic Looks At Stages Of B2B Digital Marketing Journey

Find and Convert released the following infographic earlier this year, but it was just brought to our attention by a post at Social Media Today. It looks at the B2B Digital Marketing Journey, breaking it down into three main stages.

While the graphic is based on anecdotal experiences from a digital marketing agency with B2B clients rather than research findings, it’s an interesting look at the similarities and differences of marketing depending on the age of a company’s digital marketing experience.

Embed This Infographic Visit B2B Digital Marketing Journey Assessment

Find and Convert CEO shares his thoughts about the information presented in a blog post here.

Image via Find and Convert

August 28, 2015
New Study Looks At Email Open Rate Factors

Email marketing software company Constant Contact just released a new study looking at open rates, finding that subscriber email domain and industry are major factors. According to the firm, segmented, personalized subscriber lists see higher open rate success and mobile devices now make up over half of all opens.

The study pulls data from over 100 billion emails sent from Constant Contact this year and last.

According to the study, personalized campaigns can result in open rates being raised by 150%. Those sent to 35 people or less (which suggests a more personalized campaign) saw open rates of 55% compared to the average rate of 22%. Those sent to over 7,500 subscribers (lower personalization) averaged about 14%.

“This study provides conclusive proof that personalizing the emails you send, so that you’re speaking directly to specific interests and wants of a subscriber, not only strengthens the relationship with subscribers, it results in better campaign performance,” said Constant Contact chief analytics officer Jesse Harriott. “Small businesses tend to be great at developing authentic customer relationships and this data underscores the marketing value of those relationships.”

As mentioned, the study found subscriber domain to play a significant role. It found that campaigns sent to Comcast, Verizon, and Cox email addresses had the highest open rates. AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo addresses were at the opposite end of the spectrum.

It also found that nonprofits get higher click-through rates than B2C and B2B campaigns. They also get better open rates. The average is 29% compared to 23% for B2C and 20% for B2B.

Here’s a look at industry:

“Whether it’s a religious organization or school, nonprofits generally have a passionate and engaged subscriber base that enjoys seeing regular updates and communications,” said Harriott. “However, the data also shows that—with the right type of execution—it is possible for businesses to replicate that kind of engagement. For example, if a fitness center keeps tabs on which exercise classes their members have taken in the past, sending relevant upcoming class schedules to the right members will inevitably result in higher open rates and well attended classes.”

51% of all emails are opened on either a smartphone or tablet, the study found. 38.8% are opened on a smartphone and 11.9% are opened on a tablet.

“Constant Contact has found that three-quarters of subscribers say they will delete an email if they can’t read it on their mobile device,” said Harriott. “When combined with these recent mobile open findings, the conclusion is clear: Small businesses must have a mobile-first mindset when it comes to their email marketing.”

Earlier this year, we looked at what various professionals from the industry think it takes to improve email open rates. You can read that here. Also check out this infographic running down ten tips for doing so.

Image via Thinkstock

August 25, 2015
Flipboard Gets New Video Ads

Flipboard is reportedly expanding its advertising offerings with new video ads. These include short (3 to 8 second) segments aimed at getting users to watch the rest of the video. The segments are referred to as “Cinema Loops”.

The news comes from VentureBeat, which spoke with Dave Huynh, Flipboard’s head of advertising product. Ken Yeung reports:

Participating brands will submit their creative files to Flipboard and specify the intervals that they want in the preview clip. Flipboard will handle the processing and everything else. Brands won’t be limited to just one preview clip. As a matter of fact, Huynh said that more is actually better.

These video ads also include a title and a quick description of what’s going on. Unlike stories, where the description is a snippet from the article, Cinema Loops really features brief descriptions. A call-to-action can be included in the description, but not in the full-length video itself.

The ads are reportedly charged for per mer impression or per engagement.

As the company expands its advertising efforts, it’s also doing more to improve the user experience, which should in turn help advertisers.

We caught up with Flipboard earlier this month as they told us about new algorithmic changes including filtering based on other people’s reading behavior and a new voting system for content. They also have new analytics offerings. More on all of that here.

Image via Flipboard

August 25, 2015
Bing Ads Gets Marketplace Trends Visualization Tool

A few days ago, Bing launched the Bing Ads Marketplace Trends Interactive Website, which is designed to help advertisers get a better look at data in different areas including device targeting, ad scheduling, and location targeting.

These include interactive charts that let you drill down into different industries.

They just officially announced the site, saying this about it:

One of the coolest things about pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is the ability to get your information in front of potential customers when they’re actively searching for the very products and services you provide. Unlike TV ads and billboards where you just pick a popular show or a high-traffic area and hope for the best, you can actually choose your keywords and your target audience to pinpoint those most likely to be interested in making a purchase decision… hopefully, from you.

What if you could take it even further than that? What if you really fine-tune your PPC campaigns by drilling down into more specific metrics, such as volume trends related to device targeting or ad scheduling? What if you could look at location targeting trends and filter cost-per-click (CPC) and click-through rate (CTR) within each state by industry and sub-industry?

The site shows consumer clicks, volume, and targeting trends in ways it hopes will enable advertisers to make better business decisions. So far, it’s earning praise from several industry blogs.

According to Bing, it could help you gain a competitive edge.

Image via Bing

August 14, 2015
Infographic Shows A Lot Of Helpful Pinterest Stats For Marketers

Last week, we looked at Ahalogy’s recently released 2015 Pinterest Media Consumption Study,which includes a ton of interesting stats about how people are using it. It literally runs through the who, what, when, where, and why. They polled over 1,000 people and determined that 82% are female and 18% are mail, but that men on Pinterest have increased 4% since 2014, for example.

The company has also released an infographic (via SocialMediaToday) showcasing a number of helpful findings that can help marketers shape their own Pinterest strategies.

You might want to take a look at the profiles of those top ten brands people want to follow and get an idea of the kinds of things that are working for them.

If you’re a B2B company, read this.

Image via Ahalogy

August 13, 2015
Infographic Explores What The Reddit AMA Can Teach Us About Marketing

The reddit AMA has proven to be a great marketing vehicle for people trying to promote projects they’re involved in, at least for those who are associated with interesting projects (past or present), but what can this Q&A format teach you about marketing in general?

A new infographic from Udemy seeks to answer just that.

“Online marketing strategies can include traditional outbound marketing tactics as well as more modern inbound approaches, but regardless of how you handle online promotion, it’s important to keep adapting and improving your approach to maintain effective communication with your audience. Sometimes the best way of broadening your marketing approach is to examine how successful marketing is accomplished in less conventional places,” the firm says. “Reddit’s popular Ask Me Anything subreddit (r/iAMA) is the perfect example of how ‘brands’ (in this case, personal brands) can productively interact with their audiences and experience promotional benefits while also providing the value readers are looking for. We analyzed some of the most popular recent AMAs to determine what makes them so engaging and what marketers overall can learn from the exchange.”

There are some pretty interesting takeaways here:

Despite some recent turmoil over on reddit, even specifically related to r/iAMA, the subreddit is still home to plenty of Q&As on a regular basis. You might want to stop in and peruse what others have done to get some ideas.

Image via Udemy

August 12, 2015
Facebook Gives Developers Marketing API Reference App

Facebook announced the launch of its first reference app for the Marketing API aimed at helping developers get their products built and shipped more quickly and efficiently.

The company says it has heard from developers over the years about challenges in getting started with the API. Some find it difficult to figure out what they’re final product is going to look like just from looking at reference docs.

“Using the reference application can save up to hundreds of hours of coding and design time in building a new application,” a spokesperson for Facebook tells WebProNews.

“Developers get started quickly with the Marketing API by building on and modifying Facebook’s supplied examples,” the spokesperson says. “Facebook is providing sample interfaces and code for common elements such as ads creation, ads management, and ads insights.”

You can grab the app from the new Facebook Marketing Developers resource center.

The company says it wants feedback, suggestions and input on the first version of the app.

Image via Facebook

August 10, 2015
Google Talks ‘The Most Important Growth Metric’ For Your App

Google released a new video in which Max Sack from Google Admob talks about the most important growth metric for your app.

The most important one to focus on first isn’t a traditional one, he says. It’s one that accurately measures user engagement for YOUR app.

“For example, a casual gaming app might care about the percentage of users who return to their app each day while a lyrics app…may care about the number of contributions to the database that a user makes every month. It really all depends. You need to think through your app and what makes most sense for you.”

“Even though there isn’t a single number for every app, picking your number is really, really important. Big and small developers alike need focus. You need a single metric that you can rally your entire team behind. Everyone working on your business should be able to evaluate their daily tasks and projects, asking, ‘How does this drive our key metric?’”

He gives two questions to help you figure out what your user engagement metric should be. These are:

– What metric proves my product works and solves the problem that it sets out to solve for user?

– How often shoudl you check for progress?

He elaborates on these in the video.

Google actually has a free ebook called The No-Nonsense Guide to Growing Your Mobile app that delves into this kind of stuff and a lot more. You can find that here.

Image via YouTube

August 6, 2015
Here’s How To Make Your Instagram Marketing As ‘Perfect’ As Possible

Instagram has already become a great addition to the digital marketing arsenal for a lot of businesses, but it’s about to become a much better one for a lot more businesses thanks to recently announced features.

Are you incorporating Instagram into your marketing efforts in any meaningful way so far? Do you plan to do more with it in the future? Let us know in the comments.

Instagram is improving as a means for users to discover content both organically and through sponsored media. It recently launched some major improvements to search both on mobile and the desktop. Hashtag searches will point users to top posts, followed by real-time streams of the most recent posts. Location search works the same way. This means increased visibility opportunities for marketers.

As my colleague Josh Wolford recently noted, “And when users surface said content, it’s going to look much, much better than it has in the past. Instagram’s website just received a big redesign with bigger photos. As a marketer, your content will look even more appealing when a user happens upon it via hashtag, profile, or location search on the web.”

On the paid side of things, Instagram recently revealed that it will be offering its advertising platform to businesses of all sizes starting this fall. Last week, eMarketer published an interview with Jim Squires, the director of marketing operations at Instagram. He said:

We’ve spent the last 18 months establishing the platform for large brands. The next logical step is to empower businesses of all sizes. Being able to target narrower segments and achieve different types of objectives is essential. We want to offer a complete solution that allows businesses to purchase through self-serve interfaces and achieve the objectives they want to achieve.

We’re testing the action-oriented formats and buying through the API now, and we will be doing that through the summer with select partners and clients. Then we’ll be opening up globally and to all advertisers in the early fall timeframe.

In addition to the video, photo, and carousel ad formats Instagram currently has, it will let people take action directly from an ad to sign up on a website, but a product, or download an app. According to Squires, the ability to take action right from Instagram has been one of the most requested features from both users and advertisers.

The ads will come with “algorithmic approaches” to keeping ads up to quality standards, utilizing signals like negative feedback rates, engagement rates, and comments, Squires told eMarketer. Targeting options will be expanded to mirror what’s offered on Facebook, which is pretty comprehensive.

When Instagram made its announcement last month, it said it would also leverage the best of Facebook’s infrastructure for buying ,managing, and measuring ads.

Consider all of this stuff, and you’re going to want to create great Instagram content. MadeFreshly has an infographic about “the anatomy of the perfect Instagram post,” that’s worth taking a look at.

What it boils down to is that you should use a visually appealing image, a high quality photo, bright lighting for highlighting products, grab the viewers attention, be persuasive, ask a direct question for more engagement, use a call-to-action, use relevant hashtags to help it go viral, and respond to comments/answer questions.

In reality, there’s probably no such thing as a “perfect” Instagram post, but this is all pretty sound advice and should help you at least strive for perfection in your Instagram marketing efforts.

As I’ve discussed in previous articles, it’s getting harder to ignore Instagram for marketing. Make sure and follow that link for a look at what Instagram itself says about how businesses should use Instagram and for another infographic on “the science of brands on Instagram.”

What strategies do you incorporate to get the maximum effect out of your Instagram marketing efforts? Discuss.

Infographic via MadeFreshly.com (h/t: SocialMediaToday)

July 31, 2015
Instagram’s New Focus on Search Should Excite Marketers

In 2013, boasting a little under 100 million users, Instagram finally decided to pay some attention to its web presence. The social network updated its barebones website to finally offer the ability to browse your feed. Before that, Instagram on the web only allowed you to look at user profiles and like photos. Since then, it’s been adding more and more features to the web.

Still, Instagram is, was, and will always be a mobile-first network. Instagram.com lags behind the company’s mobile apps in terms of functionality. You just can’t do as much on the web as you can on iOS or Android. This isn’t an accident. Instagram doesn’t hate the web, it’s just content that it’s always been a mobile, on-the-go type service and emphasis has always been placed on chronicling life in the moment.

Having said all that, Instagram is definitely looking at the potential of its web interface. Instagram has over 300 million monthly active users, which are sharing over 70 million photos a day. Last month, Instagram’s web embeds generated over 5.3 billion impressions. Point is, there are plenty of eyes for Instagram to catch with a web version that at least doesn’t completely suck.

Are you excited by Instagram’s focus on helping users surface content? Do you see the potential in Instagram search? Let us know in the comments.

Earlier this week, Instagram finally brought search to the web interface.

Instagram’s desktop search allows users to search for hashtags, locations, and people.

A hashtag search, for example, opens up a page featuring “top posts” at the very top, followed by a real-time stream of the most-recent posts below. Same for a location search.

The implications for marketers are pretty clear – Instagram is making it easier for users to surface all types of content on the web.

And when users surface said content, it’s going to look much, much better than it has in the past. Instagram’s website just received a big redesign with bigger photos. As a marketer, your content will look even more appealing when a user happens upon it via hashtag, profile, or location search on the web.

But it’s not the current search interface that should excite advertisers – it’s what the future could hold.

As of now, Instagram’s only ad unit is in-feed ads. Advertisers can create photo, video, or even carousel ads to display in users’ feeds – but that’s it. Instagram has been extremely cautious in rolling out ad formats and volume, as past dustups with users have shown it that it’s best to take things gradually. The Facebook-owned property knows it has to maintain a delicate balance between monetization and user growth.

But the Instagram of the future could easily integrate search ads into this framework – and having that on the web would be a huge bonus for marketers.

Instagram could easily introduce promoted posts for hashtag, user, and location search results. It could also promote certain accounts and hashtags in the search field. You can expect marketers to clamor for these options as we move forward.

– – – – – – – – – – –

Instagram has expanded its search options even more on mobile, and it’s a preview of what could eventually hit the web as well.

The company recently unveiled some big content discovery improvements – a new Explore page on mobile that not only added the more powerful search that you now see on the web, but also sections for “trending” hashtags and places.

“Through trending Tags and trending Places, you can experience moments like #bonnaroo or #fathersday from every perspective,” Instagram said in a blog post. “Rich visual content captures everyone’s unique take — not just what the community is talking about, but also what they’re doing and seeing.”

It’s not hard to imagine how these curated sections could be gold for advertisers. Instagram hasn’t yet opened up on any plans to monetize this Explore tab, however.

– – – – – – – – – – –

Even without the ability to buy ads based on these new search options, businesses really benefit from users having more ways to discover content.

This is especially true of the places search. Searching for a place on Instagram on the web now displays a map and the same top posts / recent posts stream.

– – – – – – – – – – –

Up to now, Instagram has been slow to open its ad product to smaller businesses. This fall, that’s going to change.

Here’s what Jim Squires, the director of marketing operations at the company, had to say in a recent interview:

We’ve spent the last 18 months establishing the platform for large brands. The next logical step is to empower businesses of all sizes. Being able to target narrower segments and achieve different types of objectives is essential. We want to offer a complete solution that allows businesses to purchase through self-serve interfaces and achieve the objectives they want to achieve.

We’re testing the action-oriented formats and buying through the API now, and we will be doing that through the summer with select partners and clients. Then we’ll be opening up globally and to all advertisers in the early fall timeframe.

So, within months, Instagram is going to open the floodgates (the ads will come with “algorithmic approaches” to keep them up to quality standards, utilizing signals like negative feedback rates, engagement rates, and comments – so it won’t be a free-for-all).

Will Instagram begin to put ads inside search? It’s hard to imagine it won’t, at some point. The company is sure laying the groundwork.

Does Instagram’s new search focus make it more attractive, from a marketing standpoint? Let us know in the comments.

July 24, 2015
Twitter Lets Advertisers Target Around Big Events

For years, Twitter has shined during big events – whether they be scheduled events like The Oscars, Super Bowl, or Grammys, or breaking news. Twitter’s fine for the mundane day-to-day, but when something big is happening, more people flock to Twitter to see what everyone (friends and the famous) are saying.

It makes sense then, that Twitter would allow marketers to target ads based on events. Well, it does. Now.

In how-was-that-not-already-a-thing news, Twitter has just unveiled event targeting.

“Millions of people rely on Twitter to discover and engage with a variety of live events. Whether it’s a presidential election, Coachella, Mother’s Day or the Super Bowl, if it’s happening in the world, it’s happening on Twitter. Starting today, advertisers will be able to reach audiences interested in these events with a new feature called event targeting,” says Twitter’s Dinkar Jain. “With event targeting, you can activate around live moments, quickly and easily. We’ll help you discover and plan for these moments, learn more about the participating audiences through valuable insights, and with one click, create a campaign that delivers the right message to just the right users as the event unfolds.”

Marketers now have something called the “event calendar” (seen above) that shows upcoming events across the world on any given day. Twitter says the event calendar will show events related to sports, festivals, holidays, TV, music, and politics on five countries – the US, UK, France, Japan, and Brazil.

Once marketers have determined on which event they want to target users, they can see a detailed breakdown of past tweet activity for said events so they can better choose secondary targeting like gender or device.

This new ad targeting based on events seems to be timed well, as Twitter is gearing up to unveil a new feature that highlights events and puts them front and center on Twitter.com and its apps – for both logged-in and logged-out users.

July 23, 2015
Doing This Will Make Your Facebook Marketing More Cost Effective

When you promote a Facebook post, do you do so to people who have already liked your Page or to people who have yet to do so? Some mix of the two? You might be interested to know that unless your ultimate goal is just to get more Facebook fans, you’re probably better off promoting to people who have already liked your Page.

When you promote posts on Facebook, are you largely promoting to fans non-fans, or a combination? Let us know in the comments.

According to new research from Socialbakers, marketers on Facebook are getting a lot more bang for their buck when they promote posts to fans instead of non-fans.

This isn’t exactly surprising, but it’s worth looking at just how much of a difference it makes.

“At each turn, ads targeted to Fans outperformed those targeted only to non-Fans,” says Socialbakers social media analyst Phillip Ross. “They cost roughly the same per impression, but engagement metrics like cost-per-click and click-through rate make it clear just how much more valuable Fan targeting really is.”

“While targeting some ads to non-Fans will always be necessary for expanding your audience, promoting engaging content to Fans remains the most valuable action for Facebook marketers,” he adds.

Earlier this month, Facebook redefined how it calculates cost-per-click. From now on, CPC will only account for what Facebook calls “link clicks,” which are clicks related to certain ad objectives like: visiting another site, installing an app, or viewing a video on another site. This also includes call-to-action clicks and clicks to Facebook Canvas apps. It will no longer account for what Facebook refers to as “engagement clicks,” which include likes, shares, and comments.

Facebook is also ramping up its video efforts, which stand to give advertisers as well as those looking to boost organic Facebook marketing new opportunities and a better alternative to YouTube.

Facebook announced a couple of updates aimed at giving Pages more control over how their videos are organized and shared. These include improved upload tools and a new Video Library feature.

“Page owners now have access to enhanced control and customization features when uploading videos, like the ability to set an expiration date or to add a custom thumbnail for a video,” a spokesperson for the company tells WebProNews in an email. “We’re also introducing a suite of new distribution options, like secret videos and the ability to prohibit embeds on third-party sites.”

Secret videos enable Page owners to upload videos that are only accessible via a direct URL, keeping them from being searchable or otherwise found on Facebook. This brings Facebook’s video product more in line with YouTube’s offering.

Page owners can also restrict the audience of a video by age and gender. They could already do so by location and language. They can set an expiration data for a video and retain its insights even after it has been removed. They can also publish videos directly to the Videos tab on their Page without distributing it to the News Feed or Timeline.

There are some new customization options as well, including the ability to add custom thumbnails by using your own image or a suggested thumbnail and the ability to label videos based on interest categories.

“The new Video Library enables Page owners to easily organize and update their videos. Changes can be made on a per-video basis, or in bulk,” the spokesperson says.

The Library feature lets you edit a video’s metadata (including subtitles and thumbnails) after upload, manage distribution options, search and filter videos by title, description, etc., and view and manage secret videos.

All of this will become available to all Pages over the coming weeks.

Facebook also announced a new Video Ad Creative spotlight aimed at helping you learn how to create better Facebook video ads.

The company is also offering new interesting 360 video options, which YouTube also just announced this week. It’s clear that Facebook and YouTube are in hot competition for your ad dollars as well as your organic efforts.

Facebook flat out tells people who post YouTube videos that they’ll have a better chance of increased reach in the News Feed if they use native Facebook videos.

Is Facebook becoming a better video advertising option than YouTube in your opinion? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Image via Socialbakers

July 22, 2015
Instagram Finally Brings Search To Web Interface

Instagram announced on Monday that people can now search for people, places, and hashtags on the web. Finally.

Instagram has always been a mobile-first service, and until now, the web experience has had little to offer beyond the user’s feed of content from accounts they follow, their own profiles, and the ability to interact with posts and grab their embed code.

That changes today.

Starting today, you can search people, places and hashtags on web. pic.twitter.com/kadwSZd8xt

— Instagram (@instagram) July 20, 2015

Instagram launched a major overhaul of its search offerings on mobile last month. There’s a new Explore page with trending tags and places and a more powerful search experience making it easier for users to find people, places, and tags.

Discovery has never been Instagram’s strong suit, but these changes went a long way toward fixing that. Search on the web interface should only help more.

This is one of those features that comes along and makes you wonder what took so long. This seems like something that should have been built into the experience from the beginning, even if on a basic level. Either way, it’s here now, and Instagram will be all the more useful for it.

It’s probably no coincidence that this new search functionality launches as Instagram prepares to ramp up its advertising offerings. This fall, businesss of all sizes will be able to get in on that.

I’m not seeing the search functionality yet, so I assume it’s still in the process of rolling out.

Related Reading: Here’s Why It’s Getting Harder To Ignore Instagram For Marketing

Images via Instagram

July 20, 2015
Bing Launches Native Ads On MSN For Search Marketers

Microsoft announced the beta launch of Bing Native Ads, which let advertisers target intent outside of search. According to the company, the strongest intent signals on the web are users’ interests expressed by prior search queries, signals from the content of the experience in which they’re at at any given point, and user actions like looking for products or taking actions on advertiser sites.

Bing’s new native ads make use of all of these and combine them with “naive experiences,” which the company says are relevant and natural. Here are some examples on MSN:

The ads also offers the same targeting or bid boosting functionality that’s already available from Bing Ads. This includes location, device type, time of day, day of week, and site remarketing.

“Bing Native Ads is a native offering optimized for search advertisers,” says Bing’s Raj Kapoor. “Therefore ease of use for search advertisers is a key aspect of the product design. Search advertisers focus their efforts on optimizing the relevance and ROI of their campaigns using search ad platform workflows, interfaces, and reporting. The management and controls for Bing Native Ads are fully integrated with standard Bing Ads workflows, and all the advertiser interfaces, reporting and conversion tracking available from Bing Ads platform are available for Bing Native Ads. This makes it very easy and effortless for search advertisers to take advantage of this native offering and expand their reach targeting user intent.”

“Bing Native Ads are designed to deliver good ROI for advertisers leveraging intent signals & algorithms, and also come with bid modifiers for advertisers to manage their participation in and ROI from native ads,” Kapoor adds.

The ads will display on MSn in the U.S. at first. Presumably they’ll be expanded to other markets later in the year.

Images via Bing

July 20, 2015
Selling To Customers Through ‘Shoppable Videos’

Everyone knows online video can be a great way to market businesses and products, but some businesses are finding that it can be quite beneficial for actually selling products. “Shoppable video” is a trend that has been slowly rising for several years, but new capabilities from a variety of platforms indicate that it could be poised to become much bigger.

Is video already a part of your marketing strategy? Is it part of your selling strategy? Tell us about your efforts in the comments.

“Retail video brings merchants’ products to life in a way that only e-commerce video can, often resulting in higher customer satisfaction and higher retail sales conversion,” says video marketing news blog ReelSEO.

YouTube for Shopping

Greg Jarboe writes on the site that YouTube Shopping is the new window shopping and that “unlike the mall, YouTube never, ever sleeps.” He cites data directly from Google claiming that one third of all shopping searches happen between the hours of 10PM and 4AM.

A couple months ago, Google announced that it is extending its product listing ads (PLAs) to YouTube with TrueView for Shopping, its new format that lets businesses run product ads with related videos.

“Whether it’s watching a product review or learning how to bake a soufflé, we look to video in countless moments throughout to the day to help us get things done,” Google said in a blog post. “We call these micro-moments – when we reflexively turn to our devices to learn more, make a decision, or purchase a product.”

It said it launched TrueView for shopping to “connect the dots between the moment a person watches a video and the moment they decide to make a purchase,” while also making it easy for viewers to get more info on the business’ products with the option to click to buy.

With these ads, businesses can showcase product details and images, and users can click and purchase from a brand or retail site from within the video ad. The option is available for TrueView in-stream video ads, and works across mobile, desktop, and tablet. 50% of views on YouTube come from mobile.

The ads are integrated with Google Merchant Center, so you can connect campaigns with a Merchant Center feed to dynamically add products and customize ads through contextual and audience signals such as geography and demographic information.

“Brands that have participated in our early tests of TrueView for shopping have seen strong results for driving interest and sales,” Google noted in the announcement. “Online home goods retailer Wayfair, for instance, saw a 3X revenue increase per impression served when compared to previous campaigns. And beauty retailer Sephora took advantage of this new ad format to drive +80% lift in consideration and +54% lift in ad recall, and an average view time of nearly two minutes.”

If You Teach Them, They Just Might Buy

In an article last week, the National Retail Federation looked at how Williams-Sonoma, in partnership with Visa Checkout, became one of the first brands to utilize the new TrueView shoppable video ads:

Shoppers viewing a series of videos created by Tastemade, a global food lifestyle network for digital platforms, can buy the featured items — including glasses, cocktail plates and platters — directly from the video. The campaign “clicks” on multiple fronts — engaging and informative videos showcasing products that can be purchased in just a few clicks point to how marketers are increasingly focusing on visual elements to provide inspiration on mobile.

“The videos don’t feel promotional. They teach viewers how to prepare a summer meal using Williams-Sonoma products, which can be purchased easily using Visa Checkout,” says Chris Curtin, chief brand and innovation marketing officer at Visa. “Visa Checkout is a simpler payment system. It takes 44 fields of information and compresses it into just a few clicks. The combination of shoppable video and a faster transaction give new meaning to the idea of instant gratification.”

Google recently gave marketers some best practices for capitalizing on major growth in how-to searches on YouTube. Believe it or not, these types of searches have seen 70% growth year-over-year. A whopping one hundred million hours of such content has already been watched in North America in 2015, it says. According to Google, people look for how-to videos increasingly on mobile with 91% of smartphone users turning to their devices for ideas while completing a task. These searches are on the rise across all age groups, but millennials are especially likely to search YouTube for how-to videos. 67% of them agree that they can find a YouTube video on anything they want to learn.

“When people ask how to do something, that’s a need,” wrote David Mogensen, Head of B2B Product Marketing for YouTube and Google Display. “That’s someone asking, ‘can you help me out?’ Digital media let brands respond to those questions and be there at the very moment someone needs them most. Brands that successfully do this can win loyalty and drive sales to boot. In fact, nearly one in three millennials say they’ve purchased a product as a result of watching a how-to video.”

He talked about how Home Depot has a bunch of how tos for home improvement and how Valspar has content about various paint-related subjects. Home improvement, beauty, and cooking are among the most popular categories for how-to searches.

As far as best practices, Google said to identify the “I-want-to-do moments” in which people have a need that your brand can help with. It says to find these moments across the whole consumer journey and put them at the center of your strategy. You should also figure out what questions and concerns people have related to the types of projects you sell or the projects they’re used for, and then create the content to serve as resources for those, it says.

Google also suggested looking at when how-to searches occur, and making your videos easier to find by adding descriptive titles, details, and relevant tags to each video. Promoting the videos is another option.

One thing that Mogensen didn’t really get into that is certainly worth considering is how frequently videos appear in Google search results. You have to imagine that there are plenty of these how-to searches happening right on Google.

We recently looked at a study on Google Universal Search trends, and video is the most frequent type of universal result Google shows. They appeared in 55% of search results pages analyzed. While the percentage of search results pages showing video results actually fell over the course of 2014, videos appear more often than anything else by far. 80% of videos displayed in Universal Search results came from YouTube.

Growing Opportunity in Social

Look for Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to play bigger roles for shoppable videos as time goes on.

Facebook is doing everything in its power to compete with YouTube in video advertising, and it’s even currently testing a feature, which could greatly increase the amount of video people actually consume on Facebook. They’re letting users continue to watch videos via a pop-out box as they continue to browse their News Feeds.

Once this goes live on a wider scale, people will no longer have to stop what they’re doing on Facebook to consume a video. They can hit the button and play it while they go about their browsing business. It’s not inconceivable for Facebook to show related ads in the News Feed as they continue, though we’ve seen no indication so far that this is the plan.

In addition to stepping up its video game, however, Facebook is also making moves to become a better place for businesses to sell things. In fact, there are even new reports that it’s working on some kind of virtual assistant to help people buy things.

There are companies focusing on bringing shoppable videos to Facebook as we speak.

Much like Facebook, Twitter is also rampantly trying to become a better place for businesses to sell items. It recently showed off some new product pages that show a great deal of potential. It’s also trying to get businesses to use video more.

Pinterest is now offering “buyable pins,” and let’s not forget that Pinterest isn’t just about static images. It’s also full of video.

Shoppable video on YouTube is one thing, but we can expect social to become a much bigger part of the picture once these endeavors get into full swing.

“For shoppable video to be a more effective tool, marketers need to incorporate it into their broader content marketing strategy and use it as an assistant help the customer in their buying journey,” says Vebeka Guess at Econsultancy.

She suggests using video as an overview guide to products or services, as a catalog, or as a how-to. She goes on to note that marketers can have trouble quantifying their ROI on shoppable video mainly due to a lack of standardization, which makes it difficult to capture data. She says to find a tech partner that will help you own creation, management, and delivery of shoppable video content and allow for “seamless capture and reporting on meaningful metrics”.

According to her, this is the key to shoppable video becoming more widely adopted.

Do you see this becoming part of your strategy in the future? Have you already experimented with it? To what end? Discuss in the comments.

Images via Thinkstock, Google, Facebook, Twitter

July 14, 2015
Google AdWords Gets New Automated Bidding Tools

Google announced the launch of new automated bidding tools for setting performance targets in AdWords. These are target opt-in recommendations and the Target CPA Simulator.

As the company notes, automated bidding is key to “setting smart bids at scale and maximizing conversions or revenue from your spend.” Google explains the new tools in a Google+ post:

New target opt-in recommendations help you select the right performance target when first setting up an automated bid strategy for target CPA or target ROAS . After you’ve chosen which campaigns to apply a bid strategy to, we’ll recommend a performance target based on your actual CPA or ROAS performance from the past few weeks. This helps you maintain CPA or ROAS performance while the automated bid strategy optimizes to increase conversions or revenue at that similar target.

We’re also introducing the Target CPA Simulator to help you estimate the conversion impact of adjusting your target CPA. We first announced this feature during the AdWords livestream 2015 and it’s now fully available to all advertisers. Using this, you can see how many conversions you might lose by decreasing your target CPA or conversely, how increasing your target could unlock additional conversion opportunity.

Say, for example, you have a current target CPA of $9 and drove about 740 conversions in the past week. Using the Target CPA Simulator, you can see that with a target CPA of $11.30, you might have generated about 280 incremental conversions.

Last week, Google launched new engagement columns in reporting for Lightbox ads in AdWords and announced the launch of a new email newsletter to give advertisers updates on paid search best practices.

Via Search Engine Land

Image via Google

July 13, 2015
Infographic Looks At The State Of B2B Product Marketing in 2015

Kapost, the company behind the marketing content engine of the same name, recently released an ebook called The Blueprint of Modern Product Launch Marketing looking at how to “make a splash” when launching a product.

In marketing that, the company shared an infographic (via MarketingProfs) looking at The State of B2B Product Marketing in 2015. It makes use of research collected by Regalix, which spoke to senior marketers about trends and practices. At nearly 70%, understanding the buyer was the most cited go-to-market strategy, and creating marketing collateral is a top priority.

Most B2B companies do invest in product marketing as only 16% do not, according to the findings. Websites and email are the dominant digital channels. take a look at the graphic for a summary of the findings.

Images via Thinkstock, Kapost

July 13, 2015
Lemony Snicket Trailer Is Awesome, but It Didn’t Come from Netflix (or Did It?)

We’ve known for a while now that Netflix has a show in the works based on Lemony Snicket’s (author Daniel Handler) A Series of Unfortunate Events.

We don’t know when Netflix is planning to debut the series, and we’ve yet to see any sort of teaser trailer for it. Well, late Sunday, that appeared to have changed when a video titled “An Unfortunate Teaser”popped up on YouTube.

It’s now approaching a million views. Check it out:

Awesome, right? Right. There’s only one problem, however – that didn’t come from Netflix.

“This was not released from Netflix and not anything official,” the company said in a statement.

So, is it a problem for Netflix? Not really. Judging by the responses to the fan-made trailer, excitment for the show is high. Now everyone’s talking about it.

“On the search for fantastic material that appeals to both parents and kids, the first stop for generations of readers is A Series of Unfortunate Events. We are proud to start work on a series for a global audience that already loves the books. The world created by Lemony Snicket is unique, darkly funny, and relatable. We can’t wait to bring it to life for Netflix members,” said Netflix VP of Original Content Cindy Holland back in November.

And much of that world is on full display in this teaser trailer.

Is Netflix involved in a little bit of trickery? Is this trailer, uploaded by user ‘Eleanora Poe’, a clever attempt at viral marketing? That user, by the way, has no other videos. They joined YouTube on June 2, 2015.

If Netflix isn’t behind this, I bet it wishes it was. The bar’s ben set pretty high now.

July 6, 2015
Facebook Points To Neuromarketing Research To Illustrate That Mobile Is More Effective Than TV For Ads

Facebook recently released a study it commissioned from neuromarketing agency SalesBrain looking at how people’s brains respond to ads on smartphones versus televisions. It’s certainly worth noting that much of Facebook’s business depends on people buying mobile ads, but the findings indicate that smartphone-based content tends to resonate more.

Specifically, the study looked at how the brain responds via engagement, attention, emotion, and retention. They divided participants into two groups. The first group was shown ads ranging from movie trailers to brand ads at 30 to 120 seconds in length, first on televisions then on smartphones. The second group viewed the ads in the opposite order.

According to Facebook, people were more attentive and felt more positively toward what they saw on smartphones compared to TV. They found that people were more distracted and had to work harder to process what they were consuming on TV.

“We found that overall mobile was on par with TV with regards to emotional intensity and engagement,” said Helen Crossley, Head of Audience Insighs at Facebook IQ. “Having said that, emotions and engagement were significantly higher for a couple of the ads. People were equally likely to be as engaged on mobile as they were on TV. As an added layer on top of the neuro research, we also saw an uplift in message recall when participants viewed the stimuli on TV followed by viewing it on a smartphone.”

“We did not expect that the mobile viewing experience would produce more positive emotions. This was surprising,” said Dr. Christophe Morin, Founder and CEO of SalesBrain. “You would assume that because the TV screen is larger than a smartphone screen that the bigger screen would yield a more positive emotional response. It seems that when viewing a stimulus our neurological systems don’t really require a grandiose experience to feel a response. Overall, the more data that we seem to be exposed to, the more effort is placed on our brain. And, in some way, due to its size, the smartphone may provide a more efficient, less energy-demanding experience.”

“It is our conclusion that the smartphone experience is more immersive than the experience of TV viewing overall,” he added. “When the same ad stimulus played on a smartphone, the reaction was greater than TV on both attention and positive emotion, and, to some degree, on engagement, which was quite remarkable.”

While the conclusions drawn by the study definitely suit Facebook’s best interests as a business, they also make sense when you think about how likely you are to look at your phone while you’re watching TV. How often has your phone distracted you from your TV viewing? How often has your TV distracted you from your phone? I bet the former has happened a lot more.

The people behind the study discuss it more on the Facebook IQ site.

Images via Facebook

July 6, 2015
Facebook Has a New Video Ad Option That Only Charges Advertisers After 10 Seconds of Viewing

What amounts to a video “view” on Facebook? For regular videos, Facebook will give it an official view if it’s watched for three seconds. For video ads, a “view” is really an impressions for advertisers.

Facebook’s video ads structure charges advertisers for each impression their ad receives. And since Facebook autoplays videos in the news feed, all someone has to do is scroll past an ad and the advertisers is charged.

As a marketer, it’s easy to see why this isn’t exactly an ideal situation. There’s really no way to know if that “impression” really amounts to any viewing time – or simply a blip as someone hastily scrolls past.

That all changes today, as Facebook has made a bold play to grab the attention of potential video advertisers.

The Wall Street Journal reports that advertisers will now be able to choose another payment structure – one that allows them to pay only when their ads are viewed for at least 10 seconds.

Ten seconds is a lifetime when it comes to social media posts.

But Facebook, in confirming the report, says that the new 10-second option isn’t the best option, in its opinion.

“We strongly believe in giving marketers flexibility over how they buy video ads, and we listened to feedback which is why we’re offering the new cost-per-view option. We don’t believe it’s the best option in terms of capturing the best value and brand objectives marketers care about, but we want to give them control and choice over how they buy,” said a Facebook spokesperson.

Of course, the 10-second ad option could end up costing advertisers more during the auction phase. And that’s probably what Facebook’s getting at here.

But when you think about it, advertisers could end up reaping five to nine second views on their video ads and not being charged. And if someone watches your video ad for 10 or more seconds, at least you know you might’ve made a real impression.

It’s a big play against YouTube, but YouTube still offers more options. YouTube’s TrueView option, for instance, let’s marketers only pay if a viewer sticks around for 30 seconds. Plus, advertising on YouTube means you can place your ad inside videos that people are there to watch anyway. On Facebook, it’s much easier to avoid video ads – for now. Facebook is investing in much more content that would better house video advertising.

Twitter has also recently defined their video ad structure. The company just introduced autoplay, and will only charge advertisers when a promoted video is completely in view (not cut off at the top of bottom by a user’s scrolling) and when it is played for at least three seconds.

June 30, 2015