A few months back I wrote a post about my quasi-research study on putting video on a website. You can read that here.
To piggyback on that post, there was recent article in MediaPost that highlighted some research conducted during the holiday season. To synthesize the findings:
Online video e-commerce company Invodo said that its online retail partners saw a 9 times increase in video views on their sites at the start of the just-completed holiday shopping season.
The jump is likely due to increased sharing, as well as growing usage and interest in video to help make shopping decisions.
Facebook and email each comprised about 43% of sharing of product videos via social networks on Cyber Monday.
Retailers reported that customers who watch a product video are more than twice as likely to add that product to their cart.
Forrester has said that video on a site greatly improves the search results. “Any given video in the index stands about a 50 times better chance of appearing on the first page of results than any given text page in the index.”
comScore has reported that shoppers who watch video spend more time on a site (not surprisingly since it takes time to watch a video), but are also 64% more likely to buy compared to others. That’s a promising stat as it shows videos are converting browsers into buyers. Read more
“Wow. That’s pretty damn impressive,” I thought to myself. Product video as a marketing tool is getting a lot of love from digital marketing writers and bloggers. At lot of that love may be because online video – in the form of product review and demos – has gained traction on large e-Commerce sites; companies like Overstock, Amazon, HSN, Nike and Target have all incorporated video as a part of their e-Commerce sales strategy. If you haven’t seen anything like this yet, here’s an example from Zappos:
And another from one of our clients, Theodora & Callum:
One reason that product videos are being adopted so quickly among marketers has to do with the technology – many consumers have the fast connections and computers required to display videos without stalling, or buffering, and also that video production has become quicker and easier. But the most compelling reason for high adoption rates, for me at least, is the proof from research reports like the one from MediaPost’s article indicating that videos increase conversion over the same product pages that have only static images.
Where does your e-Commerce website stand on the video as a product demo? Are you finding success with it? Let me know in the box below.
As we near the close of 2011 (really?!… already?!) we, the digital marketing set, start to look forward to 2012 and make plans for improving what we set out doing this year. Reviewing year end campaign performances, battling for increases in budgets and strategizing new plans are just a few of the things that take up a good portion of our days. Part of those strategy conversations revolve around social media, as they most inevitably would.
But I’m not writing here to talk about how or why a business should engage with social media – there are many articles that speak to those points, from use in a marketing plan for fashion designers (read here – hi Macala, great post), to how social media affects SEO (read here) and even how to lay out a strategy for it (read here). What I’m writing about here comes in to play when we start to talk about success metrics for social media.
Generally speaking, there are certain key performance indices (“KPIs”) that social media folks like to measure, number of likes or followers and number of re-tweets or shares with friends. These metrics, to me, are fairly superficial and surface-level. They mean virtually nothing as a metric on their own.
Here’s why.
I don’t think these current engagement KPIs go deep enough to properly measure what they set out to do. (great article on measuring social media ROI) Think for a minute about how engaged you have to be to like a picture. Not really all that engaged; you look at it, say to yourself i like that, and then click a button. Then you move on. To click a picture and like it shows engagement, but it’s on the lower end of the engagement spectrum. Low effort, low quality. What does the opposite end of that same spectrum look like? High effort, high quality?
Which brings me to my point – doesn’t it mean more to a brand when someone contributes (such as a wall post or a sincere blog post comment) on their own accord and actually have to think, write, re-think and well, generally be present and engaged with what they are doing? So why then, do we measure these trivial engagement facors? Wouldn’t User Voice be the single greatest KPI a brand could ask for?
Measuring quality can be difficult. To properly measure engagement is to measure a level of feeling, of emotion. But, how does a brand do that? The more someone relates to a brand (their feelings about that brand), the more one could/would do to be part of that brand – the more effort a customer or user would put into their engagement. So wouldn’t it suffice that to better measure the amount of feeling or emotion one has for a brand be to analyze the level of effort for the engagement? In other words, how much effort did the engagement take?
Take for instance the team over at UserVoice. They have created a platform that is social and easily integrated into a website (full disclosure: SD is redesigning the website for OceanElders that incorporates the technology) and probably requires one of the highest levels of engagement from a user from all the social mediums I’ve come across to date. In the case of the SD website redesign, visitors to the site engage in ocean awareness and protection conversations, pitching their thoughts and concerns to a community of like-minded individuals whom they’ve never met. They aren’t clicking a button after looking at a picture of a fish, they aren’t just sharing what someone else posted to their friends – they are involved in the conversation. They are the conversation. They are engaged.
Think about how impactful, how benefical, this would be to your brand – to have someone talking on your behalf at that level. I for one will be considering this when I strategize my client’s 2012 plans and success metrics. Perhaps you might too?
Am I wrong on this? Let me know your thoughts below.
Well it’s official. Last week began the 2011 retail holiday season and David Baker over at MediaPost has some trends that he is keeping an eye out for. This is his article that was published on November 7, 2011:
An optimist would say the retail holiday season’s proverbial glass is half full, with an expected 2.8% growth over 2010. A pessimist would say the glass is half empty, suggesting consumer confidence is pretty low and access to credit diminishing consumer optimism. An optimist looks at the good, the pessimist looks at the bad — and a marketer might say, rather, “Your glass needs resizing.”
This season will definitely be an interesting time for marketers. Shop.org’s eHoliday Survey indicated nearly seven out of 10 retailers expected their sales to be up 15%. The National Retail Federation (NRF) followed this with a projection that 36% of holiday shopping will be done online (leveraging the Web for researching, comparison shopping before making a purchase) . This is a pretty dramatic channel shift from 2010. It will put a lot of pressure on retailers to be highly relevant and timely when consumers are in-market.
What you’ll realize in 2011 is that not every consumer is created equal. Over one-third of your customers may require a Web experience (first- and third-party site-driven) to make a purchase decision about your product. The vast majority will be doing so on their mobile device/app. Consider you have smarter shoppers, who are conditioned to look for the lowest prices and now they have an economic reason to motivate shopping comparisons. Expect them to be less free-flowing with credit. Charitable behaviors will be more pervasive, but with altruistic behaviors, come the self-indulgent (consumers will spend more on themselves this holiday season than past). What a crazy economical and behavioral cycle we go through!
Economic conditions have always had an impact on impulse purchases, habitual purchases, switch considerations (consider all the Credit Union switch behavior happening now). Consumers will rely more on “real-time” relevant communications, real-time reinforcement of purchase decisions, smarter search and comparison services, more flexible payment options – and, most importantly, an uncanny ability to synchronize the experience from store to web. The reality is, when the economy is slow, people don’t shop in fewer places, they shop in more, increasing traffic dramatically in virtually every category of retail with their quest for the “best deal.”
Several things that will be fun to watch this season:
1. Watch the apps! With over half of smartphone users using their devices for shopping this holiday season, it should be an interesting focus group to watch the shoppers in malls run into each other with half of the foot traffic playing on their smartphone. If this wasn’t a priority for marketers, it will be the most prolific year for the app in our history.
2. The store experience is great, but FREE shipping is better. Will the free shipping bug be pervasive this year? Will it be an unlimited promotional strategy? Or will it be used as promotion with conditions (spend thresholds or items or time conditions)? How heavily this tactic will be used as the front-end to offers, given that everyone expects it, will be an interesting trend to watch. The FREE Shipping subject line just doesn’t draw like it used to.
3. Play on charity: Are we going to see more altruistic marketing messaging this season? With virtually all major brands spending on extending their voice through social networks, will the connection to charitable activities and brand promotional strategies align? Expect more messaging to tie the two together.
Shop hard, optimize everything and make this holiday season a year of the connected experience. The consumers will pay it off.
Happy Halloween everyone! In honor of all things spooky today, we’ve curated 4 articles that reveal some of the scariest things about the internet – all happening right now.
“People who read text studded with links, the studies show, comprehend less than those who read traditional linear text. People who watch busy multimedia presentations remember less than those who take in information in a more sedate and focused manner. People who are continually distracted by emails, alerts and other messages understand less than those who are able to concentrate. And people who juggle many tasks are less creative and less productive than those who do one thing at a time.”
“Speaking at the Techonomy conference in the US, Schmidt said that, in the interests of stopping criminal or anti-social behaviour, governments will demand a more active role: “If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use artificial intelligence we can predict where you are going to go,” said Schmidt. “Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don’t have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You’ve got Facebook photos!
“Anonymous is a group spread through the Internet, initiating active civil disobedience, while attempting to maintain anonymity. The term refers to the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, chaotic, global brain. It is also generally considered to be a blanket term for members of certain Internet subcultures, a way to refer to the actions of people in an environment where their actual identities are not known. In consideration of its capabilities, Anonymous has been posited by CNN to be one of the three major successors to WikiLeaks.”
“Scientists at Intel’s research lab in Pittsburgh are working to find ways to read and harness human brain waves so they can be used to operate computers, television sets and cell phones. The brain waves would be harnessed with Intel-developed sensors implanted in people’s brains.”
My how the year has flown by; it’s nearly Halloween and while my toddler gawks over the spooky neighborhood decorations of ghosts, goblins and jack-o-lanterns, I can’t help but think about how some of my clients are well positioned to outperform this Holiday season with their PPC campaigns.
We’ve been working rather diligently over the past several weeks in preparation and it’s only a matter of a few short weeks when we will start to see how successful we were. In case you haven’t thought about your own Holiday PPC campaign, here are the Top 10 things we’ve done in ours:
1. New ads with a holiday theme
Online shoppers are in a different frame of mind in the holiday sales rush. Whether they’re happy to be embrace the craziness or in a mad panic to find last minute gifts, ads carefully crafted to capture their attention will be sure to improve your results. Tie your ad copy and tone into the season. Try to incorporate holiday season trigger words such as “sale”, “gifts”, “discounts”, “free shipping”, “fast delivery” etc to stand out from the pack.
2. Add holiday keywords – capture the holiday long tail
Search behavior will change during the holiday season, so refine your keywords to capture the search term variations. As above, consider the keywords that people are likely to use when searching for your products e.g. “gifts for men – free delivery” or “cheap presents for children” etc.
3. Re-work your existing ad copy
Use the holiday season to see if your existing ads are following the best practices of ad design. Remember that Google AdWords ads are just like any other form of marketing in that they need to capture attention, engage the viewer and elicit a response through effective calls to action.
4. Double check your landing pages
With the new copy and keywords, make sure your landing pages support them with URL structures, Imagery and Copy. Then direct the click to this page, otherwise you’ve lost the visit and more importantly the sale.
5. Quality score refinement
What have you done to improve your quality score? A poor quality score will mean you’ll have to work harder to keep up with your competitors. By improving your quality score, you can reduce click costs and improve exposure – ultimately assisting you improve your campaign ROI. Quality score is driven by relevance between ads, keywords and destination pages – so check make sure that yours are all aligned and thematic.
6. Refine targeting and parting
The great part about Google AdWords is the level of targeting available. It goes far beyond just geographic targeting. You can target based on platforms, demographics, publishers, time of day and much more. Is it time to refine your targeting?
7. Clean out the poor traffic
Often we get caught up with trying to maximize traffic that we forget that “not all traffic is created equal”. You could be wasting valuable budget on keywords and searches that generate clicks but will never convert. Use Google’s search report to find the search expressions that are driving your traffic and then use keyword match types and negative keywords to clean out the poor traffic.
8. Turn on and test the content network
Are you using the content network? If done correctly, the content network can provide a great source of cost effective traffic and also provide some valuable branding on important publisher websites, especially during the holiday season. It’s always best to keep your content network and search campaigns separate so you can tweak each independently.
9. Link with your local
Google’s made significant strides over the last year to link and boost their local marketing solutions and AdWords. If you have a local focus, then I highly recommend connecting your Google Places and Google AdWords efforts.
10. Test display advertising
Google have made it really easy to leverage their display advertising network. Given many businesses haven’t taken the plunge, there could be some great opportunities for your business by carefully selecting your publisher sites and creative. And what better way to communicate that holiday season than through image driven advertising.
With Google AdWords campaigns, the key is to Test, Test, Test! As it’s such dynamic advertising channel, you can’t afford to set it and forget it – especially during the holiday season.
