Jon DiPietro is Domesticating IT

Bettina Hein, Founder & CEO of Pixability, Inc.

One of my (many) marketing resolutions is to start making use of video. As such, I’ve had an eye out for all things video here at the Inbound Marketing Summit 2011. Bettina Hein from Pixability did a presentation titled, “The Power of Reel: 5 Successful Recipes How Marketers Use Video for Results.” She presented some great tips and several examples.

But first, some obligatory “convincer” statistics:

• One minute of video is worth 1.8 million words, according to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester research.
• According to Comscore Video Matrix, the average U.S. Internet user watches 186 videos per month.
• E-commerce sites that incorporate product videos sell up to 45% more. Zappos reports that it sells 30% more of products with demonstration videos than those with just pictures.

Recipe 1: Short and Simple

Given the Forester statistic cited above, it’s easy to see how powerful video can be at delivering messages. Hein talked about Site Slinger, who was having a hard time convincing prospects that it could deliver on its value proposition: Design to code in 24 hours or less. They made this video for a total cost of $1,300:

Recipe 2: Video as a Strategy

Many companies who do use video are not incorporating them into overall marketing strategy. Bettina highlighted EasyCare Inc.‘s highly successful video marketing campaign, which was tightly integrated with their website and Facebook fan page. The success of these videos increased revenue and dramatically cut marketing expense.

Recipe 3: Build Context

The third recipe is to build context by incorporating text, video, pictures and other media into your website. The example cited for this approach was the San Diego Zoo. Check out the link and notice the use of video, images, calls to action, and even a game!

Recipe 4: Use Video to Drive Action

Online retailer Zappos uses product demonstration videos and found that products with videos generate more sales and fewer returns.

Recipe 5: Find Your Audience Where They Are

In 2011, more people access the Internet from mobile devices than from desktops. You need to make sure your videos work on mobile devices. Many time, this means not using Flash but HTML5.

Top 3 Things Successful Video Marketers Do Differently

Bettina finished up by observing that successful video marketers:

1. Produce way, way more videos
2. Invest in metadata the drive SEO (more tags, longer descriptions more playlists)
3. Use video assets on all channels

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Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Everyone who is tired of anecdotal “social media success stories” please raise your hand. OK, you can put it down now (but keep reading anyway). This article is not a lecture about why you should be using social media for customer support. This article is a tear-down of how to do it correctly.

I had a very short Twitter exchange with UPS this morning. It was quick, enlightening and illustrative. It begins with my frustration over waiting for my second Motorola Droid 2 replacement phone in a week. Naturally, both failures occurred on a Friday evening and so I had to wait until Monday for delivery. The interesting thing is that the ability for me to track shipments – a very good feature – actually becomes a frustration for me. I happen to live about ten minutes from the UPS warehouse at Manchester airport in NH. When I look up the tracking data for my phone, I can see that it was loaded on to a truck for delivery at about 6am this morning, but I also know that I am dead last on the route and won’t receive my phone until after 4pm.

Which lead to the following Twitter exchange:

Social Media Customer Support “Done Right:”

1. The elapsed time between my Tweet to @UPS and their response was 4 minutes! Even for a big company, that is impressive.
2. The response was from a person (@evanatups), and not a faceless, generic corporate account.
3. They gave me information that was valuable, timely and will improve my customer experience while also reducing their costs.
4. While it’s not on the screen shot above, he also joked around a bit, responding to my claim for credit with “The check is in the mail (DISCLAIMER: A check is not actually in the mail)”

So what exactly did they accomplish?

For starters, they made a customer happy and demonstrated that they are listening. This improves my perception of their business and makes me much more likely to use their service. From an ROI perspective, they just spent about two minutes of employee time and substantially reduced their bottom line costs. How? I’m going to use this option many times in the future to go to their location and pick up my packages, cutting the cost of the truck and driver coming to my house.

Maybe I would have found out about this option some other way at some point in the future. But how? I never watch TV commercials anymore because of my DVR. I listen to satellite radio in my car. I haven’t read a (print) newspaper in about 4 years and have an ad-blocker installed on my browsers. Whatever means they would used to reach me, I can assure you it would cost them more than these couple of Tweets.

And let’s not forget the added value of my re-Tweets and this blog article. They were able to satisfy a customer, gain additional visibility through my promotional activities, and build important social capital with this blog article.

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A few weeks ago, I saw a fairly steep drop in my Klout score and wondered about it for a few minutes. I chalked it up to an algorithm change – something they are not shy about doing.

However, I’ve been live-Tweeting the 2011 Inbound Marketing Summit for the past few days and was curious to see how it affected my score.

Obviously, the score was going to go up due to the unusually high number of updates and re-Tweets. But then, looking at the time graph it occurred to me to ask, “When exactly was WordCamp Boston?” That happened to be the last live-Tweeting event I attended.

As it turns out, the steep drop in my Klout score occurred exactly 30 days after WordCamp Boston:

It’s not terribly meaningful, but it does provide some insight into the Klout algorithm. Apparently, there the Network Influence and Amplification Probability calculations are performed over a 30 day moving window. It further seems to be a fairly simple calculation that is not using any sort of moving average, but just a basic summation.

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Brian Halligan presenting at Inbound Marketing Summit 2011

One of the first presentations came from Brian Halligan, co-founder and CEO of Hubspot. As one of the people who literally wrote the book on inbound marketing, it makes sense that he would give us his vision of the future of inbound marketing. He didn’t disappoint!

Shifting the Funnel

Brian began with a review of inbound marketing and its effects on marketing. In the beginning, he said, sales reps had all the power. They controlled the information flow with catalogs and collateral. If the buyer wanted information, they had make the sales rep part an integral part of the buying cycle.

Not anymore. The sales process (more often than not) now begins with an Internet search. The buyer has all of the information and, therefore, the power. This has shifted the sales funnel and requires a new approach, since the buyer now keeps the seller at arms reach.

Top of the Funnel

Inbound marketing 1.0 was about expanding the top of the sales funnel. By creating remarkable content, optimizing it for search, promoting it via social media and building effective landing pages, businesses can expand the top of the funnel. It’s not just about generating more visits – it’s about generating more qualified visits. Good inbound marketing achieves exactly that.

Middle of the Funnel

Where inbound marketing 1.0 is about expanding the top of the funnel, version 2.0 is about improving the conversion rates throughout the funnel. Halligan spoke about the gaps in the funnel and losses from them:

The aim of inbound marketing 2.0 is to reduce those losses as much as possible and to improve the conversion rates throughout. So how do we do that? Like so many other answers to business questions, it’s “Do what successful companies are doing.” Halligan points to companies like Amazon, Google and Netflix as examples. What’s one secret to their success? Personalization. The more you use their services, the better the user experience becomes and the more value users gain from it.

LinkedIn profile percent complete - irresistible

The inbound marketing takeaway is to keep track of every activity your lead takes on your site and personalize that marketing experience. The more I use your website, the more personalized it gets. The more personalized it gets, the more valuable it is. The more valuable it is, the more likely I am to convert to a customer. One example he offers is the “percent complete” profile builder on LinkedIn. “It’s irresistible!” Halligan insists.

And he suggests you incorporate similar marketing profiles into your websites. The entire goal is to segment the crap out of your leads toward the ultimate goal, which I think is absolutely brilliant:

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Dead End courtesy of monstersweare on Flickr

I’ve performed a bunch of free inbound marketing evaluations for businesses large and small. There are two mistakes I see companies making far more than any other. I covered the first mistake by describing why companies fail at social media. But there is another mistake that is even more common.

It seems that a majority of companies have conversion aversion.

This mistake is even more pervasive and costly. If you’re creating well-optimized, remarkable content and doing a bang-up job promoting that content via social media, what’s the point if you’re just sending them down a dead-end road? Converting those hard-earned visitors into leads is the final step in inbound marketing. And, frankly, it’s the only one that truly matters at the end of the day.

con-ver-sion a-ver-sion [kuhn-vur-zhuhn uh-vur-zhuhn]

noun
1. opposition to and/or apathy toward providing website visitors with strong calls to action
2. failure to describe the problem being solved or solution being offered
3. implementation of high-friction process for obtaining goods/content

Landing Pages to the Rescue

The first step in curing conversion aversion is the creation of landing pages. These pages are  highly specialized and single-minded in their mission to achieve their goal. Each page’s goal must be clear and action-oriented (e.g. buy, download, join, etc…). What exactly is a landing page?

Ideally, a landing page contains a strong call to action, clear value proposition, and a low-friction conversion form. You’ll notice from the screen shot above that these are the only things on this page. The widgets have been removed in order to remove distractions. You don’t want to give visitors any extra shiny objects to take their attention away from the task at hand.

Crafting the Message

Create pages with compelling headlines.

It all starts with the headline. Along with the sub-heading, this is the main message that must communicate exactly what is being offered (Free Inbound Marketing Evaluation) and the problem that is solves (How well does your site compare? How can you improve it?). Focus on creating a vision for the audience that allows them to see how much better off they will be after taking the action you want them to take. Be sure to include one of the seven fascination triggers in your headline (lust, vice, alarm, power, prestige, mystique or trust).

Connect with the audience.

Build off of your headline by showing the audience that you can identify and empathize with their plight. People want to buy from people who are more like themselves.

Clearly define your offer.

Tell the customer exactly what they will get in exchange for their lead information (preferably no more than an email). Don’t get cute here – be extremely concise with your language and don’t hide anything.

Provide testimonials.

If people have made it this far, a powerful testimonial can seal the deal. Social proof is a vital aspect of the buying process.

Dispel their fears.

Try to anticipate the buyers’ reservations and address them head on. For example, tell them it won’t take as much time as they may think or won’t be as risky as they may fear. Making the offer completely risk-free (e.g. money back guarantee) is another way to accomplish this.

Low Friction

Every field of data the visitor must provide lessens the chances of conversion. Don’t ask for data just because you’d like to have it; only ask for the minimum amount of data required in order to fulfill the request. In many cases, the only field really and truly required is an email address. In the example shown above, some additional data is required because the offer is a free evaluation. As a general rule, the more valuable the offer is, the more friction users will tolerate.

Optimize

Which title should you use? What color is best for the submit button? Should you include a picture of the product or a human face?

Landing pages are incredibly fickle and tricky to optimize. Fortunately, there are some free tools available to help us to exactly that. Google Website Optimizer will allow you to create multiple versions of landing pages, then rotate them randomly and measure their respective conversion rates.

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