5 Ways Your E-Commerce Business Can Recover From A Growth Setback

Facing growth setbacks is part of the risk of doing business.

While most companies may only highlight their successes to the public, it’s important to understand that every business has its own group of challenges. The key is to recognize the issues and take the necessary actions to move forward.

“You may be facing your share of woes from financial problems to employee shortages to increased competition. Just because those setbacks are occurring and you are struggling to survive, doesn’t mean you can’t turn your circumstance around,” says Inc. contributor Carolyn Brown.

Let’s explore how your team can bounce back from a growth setback.

1. Reassess Your Business Strategy

When major issues arise, reevaluating your strategy is essential to realizing what happened. Moreover, your team can pinpoint the mistakes that stunted your ecommerce business growth.

So, where do you start? Begin with the problem.

Learn why the setback occurred, when it began, where it originated, and how it flourished into a setback. Dive deep into your analytics to assess your sales and reveal any gaps in your system.

Senior management recognizes that failure isn’t caused by a singular event. Instead, it’s usually a series of activities that slowly lead up to a business disaster. So, examine your current procedures to set up safeguards.

“The way we win business has changed radically, largely thanks to the internet and social media. Companies that are not up to speed digitally won’t exist for much longer, so make sure the business is using all the technological tools it can to build momentum,” states Andrew Morris, CEO of the Academy for Chief Executives.

Nike reworked its international expansion strategy. Rather than spending an exorbitant amount of money on sponsorships to gain a global audience, the athletic apparel company initiated the NikeID co-creation platform. Allowing customers to design their own products helped the business deliver unique products that align with different cultural preferences and styles.

Upgrade your business strategy. Keep what works well and toss the rest to the side.

2. Deliver Customer Value

Research shows that “for every customer complaint there are 26 other unhappy customers who have remained silent.” In a market full of competitors, it’s easy for consumers to try another brand.

To deliver remarkable customer value, start by analyzing your consumers’ purchasing habits. Learn what they like and how specific brand interactions make them feel.

For example, if you know consumers prefer assistance via live chat rather than by phone, your team should take steps to be available online.

Collect this data by instructing your sales representatives to jot down notes during customer conversations. Or simply ask consumers to complete a short suggestion form.

Think of customer value as a cycle. You must discover the opportunities, create the offering, deliver the value, and communicate it to your audience. Then, the process starts over again after receiving the customer feedback.

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Peepers, an innovative eyewear company, offers its shoppers more value by customizing the checkout experience. With personalized messages, customers trusted the brand and believed their credit card information were safe. As a result, Peepers received a 25-30% increase in its organic traffic conversion rate and 15%-20% increase in its average order value.

Offer unprecedented value that your consumers can’t receive anywhere else. They’ll be happy and your ecommerce company will reap the revenues.

3. Differentiate Your Product

Sometimes, your team must do things differently. And it might just include changing the product.

In today’s economy, consumers possess a wide variety of choices. They don’t have to settle for products that fail to solve their problems or fall short of satisfying their needs.

Product differentiation is a marketing technique to make your product more attractive than the alternatives in the marketplace. This difference could include customer value, design, price, or even quality.

“Don’t focus on features alone, then. Instead, emphasize the benefits of those features. Your advantage lies in how your product or service ties into the emotional needs of your target audience. People make decisions on the basis of either logical reasoning or emotional impulses,” writes Entrepreneur contributor Ray Beharry.

Conduct market research to learn if you should modify your product or change the way you sell your product. To find pertinent data, host a focus group or invest in heatmap tools to monitor website interactions.

Oscar Health Insurance offers customers transparency and only focuses on a small, niche network in four U.S. states. The brand separates itself from the competition by presenting health plans in common language without the jargon.

It may be time for a product change. Find out how to fulfill your customers’ desires through differentiation.

4. Hire Employees With Diverse Skill Sets

During tough times, employees are the best assets for your business. And as your company begins to change directions, you will need people invested in your brand values.

In a recovery transition, recruit talented workers with skills that complement your current workforce. Experts claim that future work environments will need people who know how to work with data, understand virtual reality, and can apply the Internet of Things to industries.

Beyond technical skills, interpersonal character traits matter, too. Focus on hiring individuals who know how to develop connections, work on multiple cultural teams, and make creative decisions. Personal finance writer Erika Rawes agrees:

“Your ability to engage in conversation, get to know someone personally, and develop meaningful relationships will provide a competitive edge over the future.”

In addition, retrain your current employees by informing them about new business strategies and expectations. It’s a chance re-engage employees and to develop people professionally.

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Revitalize your workforce during growth challenges. Let your business experience new talent with different possibilities.

5. Continue to Seek Growth Opportunities

Whether your company is undergoing a setback or not, your team should always continue to seek ways to expand. A proactive plan prepares your brand to handle challenges better.

Opportunity is a subjective term. What’s great for one business may be a disaster for another.

Therefore, before making any hasty decisions, work with your team to know what your business needs to recover. Do you need more qualified traffic to your website? Or more skilled sales reps to close deals?

And refrain from relying only on your own experience. Your company may benefit from building ongoing partnerships with other brands.

“Don’t limit yourself by your own knowledge base and expertise when your back is against a wall. Find partners who can help you implement the new strategy that makes the most sense, not the one that’s easiest to execute,” writes Fast Company contributor Carson Tate.

Below is a brand partnership example from Adidas and Spotify. The companies teamed up to offer their consumers a new product called Adidas Go. The app lets customers who exercise with their iPhones listen to music through Spotify that is automatically linked to the pace of the workout.

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Growth is a continuous process for companies. Uncover new opportunities to respond to infrequent difficulties.

Aim to Recover

Challenges are inevitable in business. It’s vital to understand how to handle setbacks when they occur.

Reevaluate your strategy to ensure it fits your desired outcomes. Deliver unmatched customer value that competitors can’t duplicate. And continue to seek partnership opportunities that will benefit your brand.

Push through setbacks. Grow your business.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

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Watch This Video: Are You Too Busy to Learn If You Have Prediabetes?

Is it just me, or are we in the Age of Convenience? Everything is at our fingertips: information, food, entertainment. I mean, Netflix. Do I need to say more? We don’t even need to put in the effort to search for shows we want, or even change channels anymore. Which is great, since our hands are too full with whatever deliciousness we’re binge-eating on the couch at the moment.

So commercials have to work HARD to break through my self-induced haze. Mostly, they fail. This one, though…Well, just watch it for yourself.

The video was created by the Ad Council, a non-profit organization that creates and runs campaigns for other non-profit and US government agencies. The Ad Council works with advertising and creative agencies, who craft the ads pro bono. Their goal is to inspire dialogue, engagement, and action around significant (and non-partisan) public issues, creating a “measurable difference in society”.

Why is this video awesome?

Of course video marketing does have a subjective quality to it – what speaks to me won’t necessarily speak to someone else of a different demographic, or someone who has a different sense of humor, or who isn’t interested in similar topics. But there are a few interesting aspects of this video that I think help it achieve its goals:

It doesn’t sell anything.

Say what? Why is this good for video marketing? Don’t companies want to push their products on people? Well, one of the things I love about this campaign is it doesn’t push anything that viewers need to buy. If you’re like me, you don’t love commercials interrupting your shows, shouting at you to buy this and buy that, and shoving products you don’t necessarily need down your throat. But I do love ads that pique my curiosity, teach me something, and make me want to learn more (but leaving it up to me to decide if I do want to learn more).

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This tactic makes me think viewers are similar to puppies or teenagers – if you demand they do something, they won’t, even if they were sort of interested. But if you engage them and let them decide for themselves, they’ll follow through and take action. Another great example of this tactic is the “Who Am I?” campaign for Ontario tourism. If you haven’t seen it, check it out:

Ontario itself wasn’t mentioned in the ads – it was up to the viewer to want to play along and learn more, which I think was a great and innovative way to engage and entice viewers, rather than demanding, “Hey, take a trip in Ontario, wouldya?”  

You might think this strategy wouldn’t work for your company or product because maybe you want something more direct. But just think of the possibilities – this approach could be just the first part in a series that entices people and then informs and sells them.

It’s unusually funny.

Video marketers know that if you want great engagement on your videos, you probably want your video to be either A) emotional, or B) funny. A lot of commercials directed at your health take a morose angle – think of all the commercials you see for prescription drugs. I’m likely to instantly tune out, even if I had the affliction, because the ads are too depressing (the emotional tactic gone wrong!) or too cheesy, filled with people struggling to get out of bed or watching their loved ones through a window.

Humorous videos about your health, now those get attention. Who doesn’t remember one of the first Viagra commercials with the guy who hopped and skipped and cartwheeled his way to work after a good night?

Much more engaging than a commercial showing a sad and rejected husband and wife, right? This prediabetes commercial could have been a real disengaging downer, but the actor is amusing and the script is well-written and even light-hearted for a serious topic, helping to get – and keep – the audience’s attention.

It engages a broader demographic.

When you think of prediabetes, what demographic do you think of? Older people who struggle to maintain a healthy weight? The thing about a lot of commercials directed at your health is, unless you already know you’re suffering from the problem, you may not be listening or think it applies to you.

This is why this video works so well. It doesn’t show the ‘sufferer’ so that we can envision anyone, including ourselves, in that role. It poses a question (“Do I have prediabetes?”), making us curious about the answer, rather than “You have prediabetes, here’s what you can do about it”. It engages people who may not have initially thought the message was meant for them.

Right off the bat, the ad talks right to us. It relates to us, makes us feel understood (we’re all busy, and we’re all likely sitting on a couch watching the ad) and pulls us into the conversation, so we’re more willing to see ourselves as part of the intended demographic, and engage in the message. This is a perfect example of relating to your viewers and leading them along a story instead of trying to yell for their attention.

It does the work for you.

A lot of commercials fall more into the top of the marketing funnel – you aren’t necessarily getting into the nitty gritty of your product or service, but just trying to create awareness, excitement, and interest, and trying to connect with people amongst a very broad demographic of viewers. Knowing that viewers are busy, bored, and just waiting for their show to come back, it’s just too hard to relate to them, snag their interest, and then actually educate them in a short period of time, right?  

This video proves otherwise. The great thing about it is that it calls out viewers’ own pain points – they’re busy, just watching a show, they may not feel your message will be relevant to them, and they just don’t care about ads. So this video does the work for us, educating us in the simplest and quickest of ways – it poses a few yes-or-no and easy-to-answer questions so that after a mere minute, we’re much more educated about our own likelihood that we’re at risk for prediabetes. We don’t have to lift a finger, get a pen and paper, visit a website, remember stats, or really do anything but follow along. That’s how to engage even the most disengaged and uninterested! Talk about impressive.

It doesn’t shame you…

Like I’ve been saying throughout this post, this video is great at speaking our language, saying what we’re thinking, and relating to us. We’re busy! We’re tired! We want our show back! We don’t want to do work and find out about our health!

This is a similar approach to what a lot of fitness clubs do – people don’t want to feel alone in their struggles. The other day I heard a radio ad from a gym talking about how their club is a welcoming place for people of all fitness levels to come in, work out, get the help they need, and not feel judged – because not many people would rush to the gym or feel comfortable if they’re surrounded by winners of fitness competitions.

This prediabetes ad works the same way – if we’re inundated with facts and checklists and made to feel ashamed about how we treat our bodies, we may be more likely to bury our heads in the sand rather than face the music and change our behavior. Did you know that about 25% of people even lie to their doctors about the status of their health? People don’t want to admit when they aren’t doing what they know they should do. This video acknowledges that general feeling, and helps us feel like we aren’t alone, it’s okay, and it’s going to help us along.

…Until it does shame you.

You’re not alone, and it’s okay to sit on the couch and binge-watch shows and not pay attention to your health. Buuuut only to a point. The video hooks you on its relatability, but it still needs to close you and make you take action. There’s where the final little bit of shame comes in to help close the deal: now that you’ve gotten the quick and easy education and you know where your health stands, you can’t bury your head in the sand anymore. The “doctor” has to be blunt and tell you like it is because you’re busy, but now it’s up to you to take the next step and visit the website. The ad has done most of the work for you already, so the least you can do is “just go to the site”!

So what do you think? Did this ad make you take the quick quiz? Did it make you want to learn more, or help ease your fears about your health?

What video marketing have you seen recently that you think worked really well? Have you checked your dongle yet or enjoyed the Ford barking lot?

The post Watch This Video: Are You Too Busy to Learn If You Have Prediabetes? appeared first on Vidyard.

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How Fixing Client Analytics Can Help Agencies Sell More

A completely accurate client analytics account is few and far between.

That forces you, brave agency veteran, to roll up your sleeves and try to make sense of the chaos you’re looking at for each unique scenario.

You didn’t plan for it. You didn’t charge for it. And now, if you don’t fix it, you’ll face an uphill battle in trying to prove the resulted you delivered.

Like it or not, addressing this issue head-on and fixing client analytics can help you sell more, and sell more profitable work.

Here’s why.

The Problem with Pricing Digital Services

Most clients have no idea what we do.

They pay us – very well in some cases – despite not truly grasping how we’re going to deliver the goods for them.

Sure, they might grock the buzzwords a little bit. They understand the jargon and the high level perspective. But it’s mostly a superficial understanding.

When you get down in the weeds, and start describing how exactly to get from A -> B, you start to lose them a little as glazed over eyes stare back at you.

That’s not a knock; it’s just reality.

In the same way you probably could care less about what’s wrong with your car engine and how a mechanic is going to fix it. You just want to know if you’re going to be able to make it to Happy Hour in time this afternoon.

More often than not, clients are paying us based on trust. Or a leap of faith. Or our smiles and fashionable clothes.

And when they don’t fully grasp the full context of their problem, or the work involved in each painstaking individual step you have to take to fix it, they gravitate towards the one thing that’s easy to separate you from everyone else that says they do exactly what you do: price.

Cue competitive bids and escalating downward pricing pressure.

So what do you do the next time around?

You piece together a meager cost plus estimate that rarely includes Profit (and you’ve undoubtedly underestimated Project Management), double check the marketplace, and rush it out the door.

In contrast, the best, most profitable agencies use value-based pricing. Instead of starting with what their internal costs might be, they start with forecasting:

1. The new revenue a client can generate, or
2. The cost savings a client might see as a result of working with them.

For example, you can take a look at their historical averages of traffic and leads. If you’re able to come in and bump that conversion rate by 10%, 15%, or even 30% over the course of a few months, what does that look like in new revenue based on their average customer value?

Boom. If simple conversion tweaks and changes can lead to $40K-$160K+ in new revenue, there’s MORE than enough room to pay you 20-30% of that.

That covers your software, payroll, meetings, and then some. You can actually scale a business on that.

Even better, is if you can show how increases in results – less your agency costs – results in NET gains too.

But there’s a problem.

You can’t even begin to forecast potential revenue for clients like this when they’re missing a critical piece of the puzzle.

Why Fixing Your Client’s Analytics Should be Priority #1

Value-based pricing includes showing a client the outcome and end results of your work in clear-cut business objectives that they can understand (like leads gained or costs saved).

But…

If they don’t have a complete view of their marketing and sales funnel – which, like 97.75% of companies are guilty of – you’ve got a problem.

To make matters worse, these issues can be tough to spot ahead of time, before you dive into their account (which means you probably didn’t plan for it in your timeline and you sure as hell didn’t charge for it as a line item).

Maybe the conversion-tracking pixel is on the wrong page (or even worse, sitewide). Or perhaps they’re using legacy CRM software that doesn’t allow you to figure out what happens after someone becomes a lead (like, where’s da revenue coming from?!).

Either way, before you even touch a single line of code, fix a broken link, or put together a wireframe, you need to get an accurate benchmark of where a company is at right now.

Here are three reasons why.

Reason #1. Determine Where Results are Currently Coming From

A quick view of a company’s Acquisition Channel performance in Google Analytics can give you a snapshot of where they’re at, and how they’re doing.

Sure, the visits or sessions piece is moderately helpful, cluing you into which campaigns are delivering (or not).

But the real value comes in analyzing which channels specifically are driving leads and customers (and how much each is worth).

Now you start crossing over from raw data to insight. You’re able to draw lines between where budget is being spent and where results are coming from.

This helps you figure out what’s already working for clients so you can pour on more, and spot what’s already been tried that hasn’t worked (so you don’t make the same mistakes).

Arguably more important though, is that it will provide you with a baseline to compare against after you deliver your services.

Reason #2. Isolate Campaign/Promotion Attribution

You hear that?

The screeching tires. The scent of burning rubber. A loud crash.

That catastrophic train wreck of epic proportions you’re about to witness is your new client’s analytics.

Their complex, multi-faceted business has taken its toll, with independent systems for each department that don’t work well together (and would require a quant-jock, Business Intelligence analyst to figure out).

Instead of relying or messing with existing systems, setting up a third-party analytics solution to isolate how your campaign and promotion is performing might be an easy way to sidestep the nightmare.

This Funnel Report will not only show you which promotional efforts are driving awareness, but also give you insight into the funnel performance for each channel, helping you identify patterns and discrepancies between how visitors from each channel (like cold vs. warm traffic) add items to your cart or complete a purchase.

You can dive even deeper into the individual customer profile, taking a look at the specific steps they took prior to purchase. This can help you identify which pages are assisting conversions, and also spot any bottlenecks or gaps that others keep hitting that causes them to bounce.

Reason #3. Make Better Marketing Decisions

Leading indicators are helpful. To a point.

They give you a preview or snapshot of what might potentially happen on down the line.

For example, SEO is a lagging indicator. Sure, you can measure new pages built and new links generated, but it’s still gonna take some time for Google to reindex, new rankings to fluctuate, traffic to start dribbling, new leads converted from said traffic, and only then do you get some verifiable sales opportunities to start tracking.

That means you’ve got a waiting game, and in the meantime you’re making a bunch of changes and assumptions based on incomplete information.

Things get especially challenging when some of these indicators can lead you astray, like when that high conversion rate might backfire.

Here’s how it works: you run some headline A/B tests with generate more initial leads. Numbers go up and you pat yourself on the back. Only problem? Sales – the number that actually matters – go down as a result.

Fortunately, the Kissmetrics A/B Test Report can help you run split tests that will only declare a winner when an event is met further down the funnel, which helps you avoid getting too excited over an increase in clicks (which aren’t super helpful) and waiting for the big payoff instead (conversions).

How to Sell Extra Work with Analytics Insight

Design is subjective. It shouldn’t be, but it is.

My favorite thing to witness is a fiftysomething executive who has literally zero knowledge of art and design, or the owner of an old-school insurance brokerage, make specific design critiques and changes (like, “I think that shaded border should be gold instead of gray”).

Which, if I were a designer, would surely cause me to become a statistic you hear about on the Nightly News.

So how can design, something so subjective that every client thinks they can do better than your Creative Director, deliver quantifiable results that will allow you to charge more?

Look for leverage points.

For example, why does someone need that new landing page?

“I need a landing page design for an AdWords campaign,” says the client.

Ok cool – then in reality they don’t just want or need one landing page, but they’re gonna want (and need) multiple ones. Here’s why (and how to sell it).

Landing page design will help dictate Quality Score, which has been proven multiple times to influence your Costs Per Click (and thus, Cost Per Conversions).

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“If your quality score increases by 1 point, your cost-per-conversion decreases by 13%,” according to Jacob from Disruptive Advertising.

Awesome. So in order to increase that quality score as much as possible, you’re going to need specific and relevant landing pages for each campaign you’re running. Which means you’re going to need multiple versions of the same page so that you can align message match to drop your Cost Per Conversion and increase the total conversions you’re getting.

Now, that’s going to require some extra work.

You, dear client, will also want to make sure that copy and content changes for each page and that you set-up at least basic analytics to make sure we can track all of this and make iterations on-the-fly. That’s going to require these new additional line items to our scope.

We recently went through this exact process on a new website redesign and performed a quick analysis after 30 days with the new AdWords landing pages.

The results?

We compared results to the same period, prior year to rule out seasonality. So in 2015, their Cost Per Converted Click was $482.41 and their Conversion Rate was only 4.08%.

During the new 30-day window in 2016, their Cost Per Converted Click dropped to $147.65 and their Conversion Rate jumped to 12.76%.

Total score?

• Cost/Converted Click: 69.39% cost reduction
• Conversion Rate: 212.74% conversion rate lift

Now multiply those ‘efficiency’ metrics against the results (like total leads, or the amount spent for those leads), and you can quickly highlight your financial value.

Think there was enough room in that budget for a few extra landing pages? And now some more work?

Our only job as a consultant is to improve the client’s position. (I think that comes from Alan Weiss.)

You’re the expert, not them. And as such, you need to fight for the scope (and thus the required resources and budget) it’s going to take in order to deliver the results a prospect or client is looking for (whether they understand what it’s going to take or not).

Because my hairline is becoming increasingly more like Jason Statham’s, and jawline has never resembled Brad Pitt’s, the only way I can figure out how to do this is through cold, hard, analytical data.

Conclusion

Clients commonly don’t fully understand the scope of what you’re being asked to do.

That’s OK. It’s manageable.

But only if you can translate your value into something they do understand – like marketing KPI’s or business objectives like revenue and costs.

The problem is that becomes impossible without a strong foundation for analytics.

There’s no way to benchmark past performance, to isolate your individual campaigns, or spot customer bottlenecks along the way.

Fixing or addressing a client’s analytics problems then should become priority #1.

Because it will not only help you justify the current work you’re doing for them, but also sell the results in the future to them and new ones just like them.

About the Author: Brad Smith is a founding partner at Codeless Interactive, a digital agency specializing in creating personalized customer experiences. Brad’s blog also features more marketing thoughts, opinions and the occasional insight.

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Marketing Videos Are Taking Over: Key Benchmarks from Demand Metric

It’s really difficult to plan a journey if you don’t know your destination. Getting in the car and driving until you find something cool is a great way to spend an afternoon in your late teens, but the same concept is difficult to apply to your video marketing. It’s easy to produce video — but without knowing what you want to get out of it, and most importantly, the metrics for success, you may find your efforts aren’t producing the results you want.

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The State of Video Marketing 2016

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But how do you find the right data to set goals? Video marketing stats are hard to come by, and are usually outdated. That’s why we’re excited to present the 3rd Annual State of Video Marketing Report, the latest Benchmark Report from Demand Metric, sponsored by Vidyard. From the rise of personalized video to key trends in the ROI of video marketing, this report has all the data you need to understand the state of video marketing, and see how other marketers are using video analytics, measuring ROI, and more!

Digging Into the Video Marketing Data

Demand Metric looked at every facet of the video marketing spectrum to help you understand not only how marketers are using video, but where they’re finding success. Here’s a sample of what you’ll find:

• Over 90% of marketers said video marketing was becoming more important
• Video is most commonly used on websites and social media, and explainer videos are the top used asset
• Over 60% of marketers are increasing their video marketing budgets
• For marketers personalizing their content marketing, over half are personalizing video
• Marketers that measure video success regularly end up budgeting more for video 

These high-level takeaways are great, but to see the full story you need to download the full benchmark report!

The post Marketing Videos Are Taking Over: Key Benchmarks from Demand Metric appeared first on Vidyard.

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Study: Video Marketing Most Effective When Measured with Advanced Analytics

Organizations embracing video as part of account-based marketing and personalization strategies

Video expanding beyond marketing departments

KITCHENER, Ontario – November 29, 2016 – Video remains the hottest and most effective form of marketing content, but many marketers are missing out on returns because they aren’t adequately measuring video performance, according to a new survey from Demand Metric.

For the third consecutive year, Demand Metric partnered with Vidyard, the video platform for business, to produce “The State of Video Marketing Benchmark Study Report” with the goal of understanding how video performs as a content type. It also investigates new trends around video personalization and use of video with account-based marketing strategy, as well as examining video’s spread beyond marketing departments.

The return on investment of video marketing has remained consistent over the last three years that Demand Metric has asked about it. Nearly half of participants report ROI is improving but a quarter say they don’t know what the returns are. Determining the ROI of video is a direct result of tracking metrics on video performance. Respondents who use advanced analytics are twice as likely to say their ROI is better and more likely to increase their video budgets year over year. Just 14% use advanced analytics, and that percentage has been constant for each year of the study.

“The use of advanced metrics has become imperative for organizations that produce higher volumes of videos annually, as these metrics enable optimizing performance and understanding the true ROI of their investment,” the report said.

Viewing data is important for ROI because it also gives marketers insights about their audience and where they are in the buying journey. Integrating viewing data with marketing automation and CRM systems leads to deeper understanding of a viewer’s interest in making a purchase, but those integrations continue to lag. Just 13% of respondents reported they have integrated their data and are taking advantage of it.

Other key findings:

• More than 90% of the study’s participants said video marketing content is becoming more important, a consistent three-year trend.
• More than half of participants produce 11 or more videos per year. Large companies produce the most videos.
• The average number of participants saying that conversion performance for video has stayed the same or gotten better is 96%, which is consistent with previous years.
• The use of advanced analytics remains at 14 percent, unchanged from previous years.
• Using video to support account-based marketing is just emerging with fewer than 10% using it.
• Nearly half of respondents said they use internal staff and resources to produce videos, up from 38% a year ago.
• 50% said they plan to use a third-party video hosting or video marketing platform vs. YouTube or Vimeo, up from 38% last year.

“While many brands continue to chase the viral video hype, this report makes it clear that videos don’t need to go viral to be successful,” said Michael Litt, CEO and co-founder of Vidyard, which sponsored the survey. “In fact, it’s becoming clear that personalized, targeted videos used throughout the sales funnel are more engaging and more effective at turning viewers into customers.”

Video, Personalization and ABM

This year’s survey explored the relationship between video, personalization and ABM for the first time. Amplifying the effectiveness of video through personalization and ABM is a natural progression, Demand Metric found. More than half of the study’s participants indicated they use personalized video content, which is believed to have an impact on content effectiveness and ROI. In fact, 58% of those using personalized video reported improvement in ROI compared to 43% of those who don’t use personalized video.

Demand Metric found that video has a growing role in ABM, a strategy for targeting prospective customers at the account level rather than the individual lead level. Just 8% of respondents this year reported using video with their ABM strategy, but another 6% say they plan to add video to ABM. Similar to the tie between analytics and ROI, the survey also found that inclusion of video with ABM is facilitated by integration of video viewing data with marketing automation and CRM systems.

Video Going Beyond Marketing

The power of video as an influential medium has helped it move beyond the marketing department to nearly every other function in an organization. However, marketing remains the primary user at 86%, followed by internal communications (19%), sales teams (15%), executive teams (11%), support teams (11%), human resources (8%) and others (11%).

This year’s survey was administered online during the period of October 5 through October 28, 2016 and includes responses from 289 people, primarily in marketing and sales departments at B2B companies, but B2C companies were also included.

To view the full survey report, click here: http://ift.tt/2gsI7qW

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About Vidyard

Vidyard (Twitter: @Vidyard) is the video intelligence platform that helps businesses drive more revenue through the use of online video. Going beyond video hosting and management, Vidyard helps businesses drive greater engagement in their video content, track the viewing activities of each individual viewer, and turn those views into action. Global leaders such as Honeywell, McKesson, Lenovo, LinkedIn, Cision, TD Ameritrade, Citibank, MongoDB and Sharp rely on Vidyard to power their video content strategies and turn viewer into customers.

About Demand Metric

Demand Metric is a marketing research and advisory firm serving a membership community of over 40,000 marketing professionals and consultants in 75 countries.  Offering consulting methodologies, advisory services, and 500+ premium marketing tools and templates, Demand Metric resources and expertise help the marketing community plan more efficiently and effectively, answer the difficult questions about their work with authority and conviction and complete marketing projects more quickly and with greater confidence, boosting the respect of the marketing team and making it easier to justify resources the team needs to succeed.  To learn more about Demand Metric, please visit: www.demandmetric.com.

Media Contact:
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Phone: (281) 543-0669
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PPC Advertising Hack: Super-Targeted Live Chat Prompts

How do I get potential customers to engage on my site?

If you’re trying to run a business online, this is a critically important question to answer—especially if you’re running any sort of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

Clicks and site traffic simply aren’t enough. If you want your business to succeed, you need conversions and sales.

Now, hopefully, since you’re here on the Kissmetrics blog, you already know that. You’re constantly improving your PPC traffic and optimizing your landing pages for maximum conversion rate.

But still, you want more out of your site. Wouldn’t it be great if there was an easy way to get even more people to engage on your site and convert?

Well, fortunately, at Disruptive, we’ve come up with a PPC advertising hack that uses live chat prompts to quadruple chats and increase conversion rates by up to 20%.

Here’s how it works:

People Love to Talk

Whenever someone visits your site, it’s because they need something. Maybe they have a problem they need fixed. Maybe they have a question they need answered. Maybe they simply want to feel understood.

No matter what the reason, people come to your site because they need something. If you can get them to talk about what they need, they are much more likely to feel connected to and engage with your business.

In fact, if you can get people talking, you’re much more likely to win their business—half of leads choose the first company they speak with.

The good news is, people love to talk and they especially like to talk about their problems, concerns and frustrations—the exact things that brought them to your site! All you have to do is find a good way to start the conversation.

Vanilla Chat Prompts

To better understand this, pretend you’re a guy who’s going to propose to his girlfriend soon. You enter a local jewelry store and start looking at the diamond engagement rings. A salesperson walks up and greets you with a cheerful, “It’s a pleasure to see you today! What can I help you with?”

How would you respond? Odds are, if you didn’t already have a specific question in mind, you’d probably just shrug and say “Oh nothing, I’m just looking.”

That’s not very helpful to either of you, is it?

Well, guess what? Most chat prompts start with generic questions like, “Can I help?” For example, check out the chat prompt below:

This doesn’t really do much for them or you, unless you show up on their site with a burning question you’re dying to ask.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this sort of chat prompt is great if you’re in the customer service department, but we’re marketers. We’re trying to start a conversation, not fill a troubleshooting queue.

Useful Chat Prompts

So, what sort of chat prompt start a conversation? Let’s go back to our engagement ring example.

After a somewhat underwhelming experience at the first jewelry store, you check out a second place and a new salesperson appears. This guy, however, asks you a specific question that relates to what you’re looking at, like “Is there specific cut you’re looking for?”

This is a much better conversation starter now isn’t it? It’s an open-ended, specific question that shows the salesperson’s interest in helping you.

Let’s apply this to chat prompts.

Instead of leading with “Can I help you with anything?” consider leading with something more directly relevant to your business. For our answering service, that might look like this:

A chat prompt like this uses something the answering service knows about their visitors (they are probably there because they need a high-quality answering service) to try and start a conversation.

After all, if you want to prove that you’re a high-quality answering service, what better way than to let people try before they buy?

It’s a great idea, but the problem with this prompt is that it still doesn’t really draw people into a conversation. If someone is seriously considering this service, they’re probably going to chat in, but a lot of those people probably would have converted anyways.

Engaging Chat Prompts

Truly engaging chat prompts aren’t just focused on meeting customer needs—they actually get people to talk about those needs, wants and desires.

Back to our engagement ring salesperson example. You still weren’t sold in store #2, so you head to jeweler #3. Here, the salesperson came up to you and said, “I noticed you’re checking out our engagement rings. When are you popping the question?”

The answer to that question will give the salesperson everything he needs to get a conversation started, steer you to your ideal ring and close the sale.

For example, if you answer, “I want to ask her in a couple of weeks, but I wanted to see what my ring options are,” he might respond with:

“Great! Congratulations! I asked my wife to marry me in December, too. Do you have any idea what sort of cut she likes?”

Look at that! You’re only a few sentences into the conversation, but the salesperson has already identified your needs, made a connection with you and shown that he’s on your team.

Assuming each salesperson has a ring and a price that fits your needs, which store are you more likely to buy from? If you’re like most people, the answer is jeweler #3!

Crafting a Conversation Starter

Now, all of this is great advice for jewelry salespeople, but how do you start a conversation like this online?

Well, the secret to salesperson #3’s success was the fact that he used what he knew about you and why you were there to draw you into a conversation. Your PPC ads tell you the exact same information—all you have to do is use it!

For example, let’s take a look at how I ended up on that call answering service page. I found their page by searching for “virtual answering service” on Google.

The search term I used and the ad I clicked tells them a couple of important things about me:

1. I’m looking for a virtual answering service. The fact that I typed in “virtual answering service” means I know what a virtual answering service is, what it does and I think I might need one.
2. Their ad resonated with me in some way. Quite a few selling points appear in this ad (call recording, price, family owned, etc), but the main message seems to be “24/7- Never Miss Another Call!” Clicking on their ad tells them that this idea probably resonated with me.

Taken together, these two points tell a story about me that the answering service can use to create a great conversation starter—possible something like this?

Odds are, if I’m looking for a virtual answering service and clicking on an ad that tells me “never miss another call,” missing calls is a real problem for my business. I’m probably frustrated, angry and would love to vent to someone about it.

What better way to get me talking than to ask me about the very thing that brought me to their site in the first place?

Not only will this start a conversation, it will also tell the chat operator a lot about what I am looking for in an answering service, which will allow the operator to emphasize the selling points I really care about.

For example, if I talk about a valuable prospective customer that I lost because no one was there to answer the phone at 3 in the morning, then the operator can emphasize that their service can respond to calls at all hours of the day.

See how powerful starting a conversation can be?

How To Customize Chat Prompts

Now, at this point, you may be thinking something like, “Well, that’s all great, Jake, but how would I ever even start customizing my chats like this?”

It’s actually pretty simple. All you have to do is use your UTM parameters.

Setting Up UTM Parameters

Hopefully, you’re already using UTM parameters to track marketing performance in Google Analytics.

If you’re not, don’t worry, it’s easy. Google has an online URL builder that’s quite easy to use. All you need to do is enter your landing page’s URL, put in the info that you need tracked and then Google will generate the UTM parameters for you:

In addition to helping you track your PPC results, UTM parameters also create a unique URL you can use to customize your chat prompts.

Using Your UTM Parameters

Personally, I find that the easiest way to set up custom, highly targeted chat prompts is using Olark (note, I don’t have any financial relationship with Olark, they just have a great tool). So, for the purposes of this article, I’ll show you how to set things up in Olark.

To set up customized chat prompts, all you have to do is log into your Olark account and choose Settings, then Targeted Chat, then +New Rule.

Once you’ve done that, add a UTM parameter that’s specific to your ad to the “Current URL contains” section and change “Expand the Olark chat box” to “Send this message to your visitor” as follows:

Last of all, add your conversation starter and hit “Save Rule.” You’re good to go!

Once you’ve got this in place, when someone clicks on your PPC ad and arrives on a page with your UTM parameters, your custom, targeted conversation starter will pop up and get them talking!

Conclusion

Remember, as you’re getting used to this, you may not get a ton of chats right off the bat. As with site optimization, you’ll probably need to test a bunch of different prompts until you find one that really catches your traffic’s attention.

Still, in our experience, creating targeted, conversation-starting chats can be a tremendous way to boost the conversion rate of your page.

So, take a bit of time, come up with some chat prompts that address the real reasons why people are on your site and start testing!

What do you think of this strategy? Does it make sense to you?

Once you’ve tried this tactic, let me know what your results were in the comments!

About the Author: Jacob Baadsgaard is the CEO and fearless leader of Disruptive Advertising, an online marketing agency dedicated to using PPC advertising and website optimization to drive sales. His face is as big as his heart and he loves to help businesses achieve their online potential. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.

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Big Bang, Small Budget: How Scrappy Startup Videos Changed the Game for #FlipMyFunnel

Picture this: you have an incredibly important goal, something that will change the course of your business. A big part of your strategy rides on it, and it’s up to you to make it happen. Oh, and as an added bonus, you have very little budget to make it happen. Sound familiar? Chances are if you’re on a startup team – whether it’s a tech company or a restaurant – this will be familiar territory.

Sangram Vajre, CMO and Co-Founder of Atlanta account-based marketing startup Terminus, faced this problem when his team decided to turn marketing on its head, literally. They created #FlipMyFunnel, a community and event series based around ABM strategies, and had the daunting task of promoting it to the world. Lacking in the resources to make a big impact in a crowded space, Vajre and his team got scrappy – and started with everyone’s favorite medium: video.

I had the opportunity to hear all about Terminus’ video strategy during Vajre’s talk at Viewtopia 2016, The Video Marketing Summit, and here are the four big lessons I walked away with.

1. Startup Videos Don’t Have to be Perfect

The first video Vajre and his team put together was to promote the idea behind #FlipMyFunnel. Vajre admits the video was never intended for public consumption, and that he may or may not have been a bit drunk at the time. “Videos are really cool because it puts that human element out there,” Vajre said at the start of his talk. “We made this video to explain #FlipMyFunnel to our designer, and it wasn’t supposed to go out to people.”

But the video proved to be such a powerful and succinct message that they decided to send it out to customers and see what they thought. The response was unpredictable, and overwhelming. “We thought ‘Let’s just get an idea out there!’ and now we use this video to send out to prospects to help them figure out what account-based marketing and the concept of flipping your funnel really is. They watch, learn, laugh, and it puts a smile on their face. ”

Creating a new market isn’t easy, even for big brands. So Terminus’ success at creating such a great community around their funnel-flipping concept really stands out. “It’s a scrappy video, taken on an iPhone that started a movement for us that is now 3000+ people that come to the conferences in cities all over North America,” said Vajre. And it kicked-off a series of video-led campaigns that would end up putting Terminus on the map very quickly.

For me, the biggest take-away from the first portion of Vajre’s talk is simple – as a startup, you don’t always have a big budget to make things happen. But video lets you show off new concepts or ideas to your prospects, and drive emotion in a way that you simply can’t do with text. Sometimes low-budget marketing falls flat, but if you use your assets wisely, and put your passion into words, sometimes you’ll find yourself with a runaway hit like Terminus.

2. Personalization Isn’t Just for Prospects

We’re big believers in personalized video at Vidyard, and we have many customers (including Terminus) that use our Personalized Video platform to add really immersive and engaging details to their prospect campaigns. But Terminus was confronted with a different problem when planning their first #FlipMyFunnel conference – how does a relatively unknown company assemble a high-profile team of speakers to talk account-based marketing at an event they have never heard of in Atlanta?

Vajre looked again to video, but this time, he made it personal:

His team didn’t use any fancy personalization tools – they simply created a video for each person on their A-list and fired away. And because of this technique, they didn’t have to dip into their B-list even once. “There are people that you normally wouldn’t be able to ever reach – and not only do they open this kind of video, but they share it with their entire organization, and tell their team that this is how they should be talking to their customers. And they spoke at our conference.”

Vajre and his team realized that they needed to go way outside the box if they were going to land big-name speakers for #FlipMyFunnel. So rather than pushing resources towards polished marketing assets or trying to secure third-party introductions, Vajre turned back to the same video technique that made #FlipMyFunnel successful in the first place. Scrappy video – albeit with a tripod this time – and hard work. Putting together a video for every speaker they wanted to target wasn’t an instant, easy to do process, but the results speak for themselves.

How can your team apply this kind of thinking to your KPIs? Every person on your sales team probably has a camera on their smartphone sitting in their pocket or purse. Most laptops have cameras now as well. Get them using it, and sending out personal messages to key prospects. You may not get everyone to watch, but you’ll have way more luck than trying to cold email everyone.

3. Don’t Tell Your Own Story

While Vajre shared a ton of great video tips during his talk, this one stood to me the most. It’s easy for marketers to fall into the trap of always creating content that is self-promotional, but when they do this, they miss out on the best promotion tool they have: customers.

“No matter how many product demos, white papers, or all the other marketing stuff that we could create, nobody tells our story better than our customers,” said Vajre. “Nowhere on our website do we have product videos. We only have customer videos. When they tell it, they’re going to tell it as practitioners, and the people who faced the problem that we solve. It’s not going to be about Terminus. And that’s really what our goal is.”

Vajre shared a video he produced with Joe Chernov, which was so successful at telling the Terminus story that people started reaching out to Chernov directly for more information. “The video doesn’t talk about Terminus directly – there’s no technology or features. Only pain points we’re solving. And we actually tried creating a bit of product-focused content to test against this video. Chernov’s video generated the most engagement, the most conversation, and even got us a few tweets to Joe about it.”

For Terminus, customer content created conversations (and conversions) in a way that no product-focused video ever could. And to me this really speaks to the power of video – giving your prospects the opportunity to put themselves in your customers’ shoes is key, and when you can show your customers expressing how big of an impact your business has on theirs, you’re doing the hard work for them. The best part? Any department in your funnel – marketing or sales – can use these assets effectively. And it’s cross promo for your amazing customers too.

4. Scrappy Startup Videos Succeed

Terminus has grown from 3 people to 70 in just a few short years, and has customers like NetSuite, PGi and Tata. Vajre and his team have built a massive following for #FlipMyFunnel and the events continue to draw in huge crowds in every city they are held. Ask Vajre what the key to success has been, and he will sum it all up in one word: video.

“Videos have been, by far, the most interesting and important asset that we have used at all of these events to promote our conferences, get people to the event, and actually really tell the story of what #FlipmyFunnel is and what Terminus is.” Vajre said this near the start of his talk, and every example he shared built upon the power of video to drive interest in events, explain complex topics, and showcase how Terminus helps their customers succeed.

But the biggest takeaway from this talk wasn’t that video is powerful. Viewtopia wouldn’t exist if people weren’t seeing benefits from their video campaigns. Video works – but sometimes scrappy, fast videos are just as effective as polished content. And between the first, slightly-tipsy explanation of #FlipMyFunnel to the polished, customer-focused videos Terminus features everywhere on their site, Vajre and his team have been reaping the benefits of video from day one. That effort paid off at this year’s Video Marketing Awards, where the Terminus team walked away with a VMA for Small Business, Big Bang.

So, you have a smartphone in your hand and a product to sell. What’s next for your business?

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8 Crazy Useful Instagram Hacks To Try Right Now

Instagram has become one of the hottest social networks around. But did you know you can do more than just post photos?

Here are ten insanely, awesomely helpful hacks to try right now.

Change The Format Of Your Picture

Once upon a time you could only use squares for your Instagram photos. Which was a real pain if you wanted something that didn’t fit well within those confines.

Now you can choose between either portrait or landscape, using the little format selection button on each upload. This gives you more control over what shows, and the final image that is published.

Get Notified Every Time Someone You Follow Posts

Stay on top of new posts by your favorite IG personalities. All you have to do is go to the user’s profile and select one of their posts. On their photos there will be a little line of three dots. Select it and hit Turn On Notifications.

This will give you notifications in the app. If you want them on your phone itself, go to the Settings and to Apps, then select Instagram and allow push notifications.

Center Your Bio Text To Make It More Readable

Alright, this one is a little weird to explain. When you want your text to be centered in the middle of your bio, you have to use spaces to do it. You can’t use HTML or any kind of coding, so you have to go super old school.

Copy these spaces (⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀), then paste them in front of every line of text you want. You can do this either through the mobile or web app. Then save. Make sure you don’t add in the parenthesis, otherwise it will show in the profile. This will center your text on each line.

See Your Liked Post History

I know I am a habitual “liker”. I use it to save posts for later, without having to link to them through bookmarks or Pinterest. To find the posts you have liked, just select Options from the menu bar.

Then go to Posts I Have Liked. It will have each one right there for you to view. To get them out of your history, just go to the photo and unlike it by clicking the heart a second time.

Show Off Instagram Feeds From Multiple Accounts On WordPress

Do you have a WordPress blog? Want to show off multiple galleries from yours or other people’s Instagram accounts?

There are a lot of plugins that help you do this, but my personal favorite is Instagram Feed. You can make gallery slideshows for each account, and embed them on your chosen pages.

Track Hashtags In Real Time

Tracking hashtags is pretty great. The way I tend to do it is by using Keyhole. It is my favorite tool thanks to its integration with multiple sites, allowing you to track hashtags on several networks instead of just one.

I use it for both Instagram and Twitter, so I can keep an eye on what is trending on both (and what I just like to watch, like popular social welfare campaigns or joke hashtags).

Remove Past Searches

Want to get rid of those embarrassing searches? Go to your profile, hit the menu button, scroll to the bottom, and hit Clear Search. It will ask if you are sure. Once you confirm, they all disappear, never to be seen again.

Remove Tags From Photos

You have a bit too much to drink at a friend’s holiday party, and you know that photos were taken. Your friend uploads and tags them before you are able to tell her not to, and your family, boss, and coworkers all know your Instagram screen name.

Don’t worry, that pic of you doing something you regret won’t show up. Just go in and click Photo Options, Hide From My Profile, and Remove Me From Photo. This will both take the pic from your feed, and remove the tag.

Have some hot Instagram tips to add to the list? Let us know in the comments!

The post 8 Crazy Useful Instagram Hacks To Try Right Now appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

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