Why Your Ads Should Look 100 Years Old

Think ‘lead magnet’ ads are new-age?

Think again.

Free opt-in ad campaigns like that have been around for almost a century.

Everyone’s looking for the hot new thing. A watch that counts your steps, takes notes, answers your calls, and oh yeah, also tells time. An iPhone that has a new update every time you turn it on. A car that is so smart it can drive itself.

But there’s something to be said for sticking with what works. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Even better, if it works well, no need to reinvent the wheel.

Here’s how today’s ad pros are still using copywriting techniques from old-school campaigns that ran decades ago.

What the 1960’s Taught Motorola About Influencer Marketing

When it was time for Motorola to promote its new line of smartphones and features, it took its campaign to YouTube.

The phones were marketed for a younger audience, and with 54% of 18-34 years olds using YouTube at least once a day, Motorola knew it was the place to be.

They used 13 influencers to each create create “partnership announcements” and “hero” videos to show them using the new Moto Mods, that allowed users to customize their phones just the way they wanted. One user strapped the phone to a rocket and launched in 16,000 feet in the air.

No joke.

The result? 11.6 million video views and more than 38 million social media impressions. Even more? 80,000 clicks to motomods.com from first time users.

This shouldn’t be surprising. Buyers are 92% more likely to trust the reviews and opinions of friends and peers over standard advertisements.

A recent Tomoson study found that this kind of influencer marketing is “the fastest-growing online customer acquisition channel, beating organic search, paid search, and email marketing.”

But as hip and cool and successful as this turned out to be for Motorola, it wasn’t a new idea.

In fact, it was decades — even hundreds — of years old.

Companies have been using celebrities, real users, and even beloved, made-up characters for years to sell their products.

Remember how much Santa loved Coca Cola? This one’s from ‘64:

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And what about Babe Ruth and his love for Pinch-Hit?

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Yes, that’s Babe Ruth as spokesperson for a tobacco company. The same Babe Ruth who later died of cancer at the age of 53. Next level brand partnership, right there.

You see, this stuff is nothing new. It’s not that new and fancy and innovative and cutting edge.

It’s the same old playbook, just dusted off and revised with a new edition. One that takes into account how our constantly evolving consumer preferences keep shifting.

Here’s a few more ideas for how tried but true methods are still relevant today.

Start by Grabbing Their Attention

Remember when Old Spice used to literally mean old.

As in, the only people who wore it were your grandparents?

That all changed a few years ago with a little sex appeal and humor:

Sales jumped 107% in just one month. Old Spice became the number one body wash and deodorant brand in both sales and volume.

And they reached new demographics of people (which is important when yours historically is about to drop dead).

But even that ad campaign, now nearly seven years old, is just a first-cousin of marketing techniques from long ago.

David Ogilvy’s 1958 Rolls Royce ad uses the same shock and awe tactic by grabbing the reader’s attention with what’s essentially a one-word headline:

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$13,550 for a car in 1958 was a lot of money, and Ogilvy was hoping to hook customers with mystery, intrigue, and a little high-end appeal.

He also updated their tag line a bit, which was a simple and direct, “The Best Car in the World,” that now reads, “What makes Rolls-Royce the best card in the world?”.

By turning that statement into a question, and then answering it, he was able to produce their highest-performing marketing campaign to date.

Unsurprisingly, there’s data from today that backs this up.

For example, MarketingExperiments.com ran two basic AdWords headlines against each other. The Control was a question, while the Treatment was simple and straightforward. Can you guess which one won?

You got it. The question-based headline.

Last second copy changes in order to test headline variations ain’t new, either.

Even Ogilvy’s testing back in the ‘60s wasn’t a groundbreaking notion. Good ol Hopkins was doing that long before around 1900:

“Hopkins outlines an advertising approach based on testing and measuring. In this way losses from unsuccessful ads are kept to a safe level while gains from profitable ads are multiplied. Or, as Hopkins wrote, the advertiser is ‘playing on the safe side of a hundred to one shot’.”

Today we use content marketing to grab top of the funnel attention. Turns out that’s nothing new. Because storytelling is one of the best ways to develop the interest and intrigue required to keep people reading long enough to make a decision.

Storytelling Piques their Interest to Draw People Near

Today, marketers face unprecedented hurdles to get their name out there.

A New York Times article from a decade ago claimed the number of ads we saw each day was around 5,000. Keep in mind this was early for Facebook, YouTube, et. al. They hadn’t even hit critical mass yet.

Fast forward and nearly 200 million people worldwide are using ad-blocking software in order to take back control over their (albeit, limited) attention. A recent study found that only 14% of respondents could recall the banner ad on the page they just visited.

Couldn’t remember the company. Couldn’t remember the product.

All of this spells disaster for marketers when our prospects lack the attention span of a goldfish.

That’s where storytelling comes in.

Nike has been leading the pack for years.

Back in 1999, they put together a one minute spot for the retirement of Michael Jordan. Clips and photos of his career, telling the story of his journey and successes. They didn’t even put up the Nike logo until the very end. For a good reason.

“It understood that what would really make a lasting impression, and what would help build the brand and allow the company to sell more products in the long-term, was an authentic story,” said Sujan Patel.

Ross Jeffries told a story, albeit a slightly more seedy version, in 1998.

“The Amazing Seduction Secrets of a Skinny, Ugly, 6 Foot Geek from Culver City California That Could Get You All the Girls You Want.”

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(Yes. This actually happened.)

Nerdy guy trying to get the girl is a tale as old as time. Now every non-skinny, ugly, 6 foot geek from Culver City California is gonna be hooked to read more of this. (And trust me, there’s a lot of them.)

Taking a familiar story or something that a consumer can relate to helps them understand just how perfect your product is for them. Why they need it. The emotional aspect that tugs at our heart strings or appeals to our vanity.

Ad copywriting formulas, like AIDA, help us touch on all of these critical pressure points. And once again, AIDA wasn’t just invented by some growth hacking millennial. It’s been around the block a few times since the nineteenth century.

Ad exec Joseph Addison Richards was talking about it way back in 1893:

“How to attract attention to what is said in your advertisement; how to hold it until the news is told; how to inspire confidence in the truth of what you are saying; how to whet the appetite for further information; how to make that information reinforce the first impression and lead to a purchase; how to do all these, – Ah, that’s telling, business news telling, and that’s my business.”

Now Get Them to Take the Next Step

Nobody knows why they need anything.

I didn’t even know I needed a special bag just for my french bread until you showed me how lacking my life was before I bought one.

But this information sharing takes a little time and finesse. You have to walk the customer through their journey. Too much, too soon, and it backfires.

That’s the chief difference between running PPC ads on Facebook vs. Google AdWords. (And why the former doesn’t work like the latter.)

There’s not much seduction required when people type something into Google. They’re already at the end of their journey. But successful advertising on basically any other medium requires you to lay the groundwork (that we’ve already discussed).

Once again, classic ad copywriting formulas help you better explain why people need what you’re selling when they don’t always yet realize they need it.

Even the U.S. Military has gotten in on the PAS (Problem, Agitate, Solution) game. Here’s an ad from 1967:

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This guy waited too long to sign up (problem). Now he can’t pick which branch he wants. That could happen to you, too (agitate). Fill out this form and we’ll get you what you want before it’s too late (solution).

Or what about this example from 1990 for a book to help readers with their grammar?

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Look around and you’ll see PAS ev-ry-where. Here’s a slightly modified version from Dollar Shave Club Australia. No commitment? Everyone’s trying it? Only a couple of dollars?

Sold.

Long, long ago (like more than a century), advertising pro Claude Hopkins encouraged advertisers to create work that essentially sold itself.

According to the most factual source on the internet*, Wikipedia, Hopkins: “Insisted copywriters research their clients’ products and produce ‘reason-why’ copy. He believed that a good product and the atmosphere around it was often its own best salesperson.”

(*Not true.)

In other words? The purchase (or more accurately, decision to purchase) should be an absolute no-brainer. The value should far exceed the mental, emotional, or physical costs.

But that action-step that happens once the solution is presented often takes place with a simple click-through or from an online ad.

How exactly? Tripwires.

Here’s info-marketing guru Ryan Deiss with a too-good-too-be-true offer for his latest book:

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The offer here is low-friction. It doesn’t require a lot of steps or a big commitment, and the customer gets a good return on their time and money. And, you get to sift out the people who really have some interest from those who are just stopping by.

But, once again, not a new concept. Here’s one from over fifty years ago in 1965.

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Conclusion

The latest shiny tactics are always fun.

But sometimes even what seems fresh and new has been around the block a time or two. Decades old marketing tricks and tactics still work today.

And more importantly, can still produce more consistent results, too.

A/B testing works some of the time. But storytelling, copywriting formulas, tripwires? They’ve been working for years and years and years and years.

The next time you’re stuck on an ad campaign or looking for inspiration, don’t just look at what’s hitting the top of Growth Hackers.

Because history tends to repeat itself. And that’s a good thing for bottom lines.

About the Author: Brad Smith is the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.

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July Algorithm Updates, New AdSense Rule, GSC Data Anomoly & RIP Flash: Weekly Forum Update

Over the last couple weeks there has been extensive discussion around potential algorithm updates in July.

Webmasters were reporting issues with Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console reported a data anomaly in search analytics data.

We also say good bye (or good riddance depending on your point of view) to Adobe Flash, and more.

July Algorithm Changes

Read full discussion here

This months Google update thread on Webmaster World reported a number of possible updates, starting late June. Webmaster reported shifts in early July.

Some webmasters reported increases around June 25th

EditorialGuy: “We gained from the update (if it was an update), with a fairly significant jump in Google traffic on June 25, followed by day-over-day improvements during the rest of the week. Some of the gains appear to be sticking. It’ll be easier to tell next week when the effects of the July 4 holiday in the U.S. are over.”

Other webmasters reported a drop around July 10th.

Ionguy reported on July 3rd
“another drop in traffic since ‘not an update’ update
about 40% down; nice; may i keep my shoes guys?”

Barry Shwartz of Search Engine Roundtable also noted unusual activity,

“There are some early signs of a Google search algorithm update over the weekend, around Saturday and Sunday. The chatter is still very quiet but it was the weekend and that might kick up over the next day or so. Plus, pretty much all the tools are on fire, showing huge volatility around June 9th.”

Shwartz added that he attempted to analyze over 70 websites that may have been potentially affected but could find any meaningful patterns.

Increased Domain Crowding

Webmasters also noted increased domain crowding, multiple listings of a single domain,  in results.

Samewest: “wow! is Pinterest the new flavor of the month? or is Google about to buy them? They now dominate every SERP in my niche. Page one is ads, ads, ads, pinterest, pinterest, pinterest, 1st organic well below the fold. With all due respect, anyone who contends there was no update recently is off their rocker.”

Google recinds confirmation of Fred Update? Hard to say.

A member shared a post that in a Webmaster Central Office Hours Hangout, John Mueller, denied that a Fred update occured after an abeit indirect conformation at a conference by Gary Illyres.

According to Mueller, “How did the Fred update impact the e-commerce websites? Why did so many e-commerce sites see a drop in ranking? What can we do to kind of recover that loss?

So from our point of view there was no Fred update.

This is a name that was given externally to a bunch of updates that we’ve been doing over time. So it’s not the case that there’s this one thing that is changing in search. We make changes in search all the time and we’re always working on trying to find ways to bring more relevant, more high-quality content to users, and that can be affecting a variety of websites. And variety of areas where we show content and search.”

From what was shared regarding Illyres statement, there was only an implied confirmation during an Ask Me Anything session at SMX. Attendees shared on twitter:

Google talked to the leads up Fred, and we decided to not talk about this update. said methode #smx

— Ben Schmaderer (@muc_webdesigner) March 23, 2017

 

No More Pop-Up and Pop Under with Adsense – New Rule

Read full discussion here

In a recent announcement to simplify policies, Google stated that pop overs and pop unders were no longer permitted using AdSense. Ken b did note a non-trivial point by highlighting the aspect of the new policy that Google is passing the mandate for websites to also enforce this on ad networks and for affiliates.

Google Search Console Data Change

Read full discussion here

If you have seen a lower average position or increased impressions around July 13th or 14th in Google Search Console, it is possible that it may be due to a Data Anomaly reported in Google Search Console that changed values. Webmasters were pleased overall to have better data.

Bing Webmaster Tools Broken?

Read full discussion here

Shared on Threadwatch, was speculation that was shut down, since its returning a broken page. When we tested it on our end, it seemed to be working. Users also chimed in on the general usefulness of Bing Webmaster Tools, a couple years after it was made available. The over-arching sentiment seemed to be the interface is not the greatest but webmasters are grateful to have additional data.

RIP Adobe Flash

Read full discussion here

It was announced that Microsoft, Google, and Mozilla will stop supporting Flash in 2020. Member wiser3 commented that it may seem like a long time from not but it is recommended to apply necessary changes early, since browsers will stop supporting it prior to 2020.

Has Spammy Content From Others in Google Ruined a Webmaster’s Livelihood

Read full discussion here

As reported on Threadwatch, a Webmaster World member reported that they lost their livelihood after 15 years of investment  in a web property

“I sit here right now having just told my child we are going to lose our house and we need to find homes for our pets. I fought so hard to keep going, it’s a good site, the content is great, but now 120 word articles outrank mine. My husband is yelling at me, my daughter has just run into her bedroom. This is how it is. My site is 15 years old, I always put the user first, and we are now facing bankruptcy. My whole family hates me for the failure of my site.

We’ve lost it all :(”

Members offered many kind words and some wisdom. I highlight just a few here

From member jori: “whatever you do from now on, don’t unplug your site. Maybe, just maybe, in a near future, Google put things back to “normal”.
It’s all a matter of “user satisfaction” and money earned by G. If user is not satisfied, and less money are earned, Google will change things.

And for now, I don’t see how in the world users can get satisfied with current results, at least on my niche. Or how Google can earn more revenues this way. Let’s wait.”

SamWest Added, “ I feel your pain, however, my longtime saying is “enjoy it while it lasts, because it never lasts” It’s the same in the brick and mortar business and jobs world. Things change. The bottom line is that they moved your cheese. Giving in is not the solution. Waiting for the cheese to return is not the solution. Reinvention and realignment with the current trends may help.. After 17 years online, my six figure site has also died the same slow death (since 2010). I myself had to take a part time J.O.B. and I’m still barely able to keep above water.
Probably like you, my site looks fine in the SERPS, but nowhere near the user interaction as before. Is it by design or is it just that trends have changed? I suspect a little of both. I will say this, in my niche the current “flavor of the month” Pinterest crowding is really pushing a lot of valuable content down below the fold or to the page two graveyard, especially on long tail. I am wondering if this crowding is intended to push users to explore page two and beyond. If so, it’s not working.”

Google Pays Professors As Part Of Academic Influence Campaign

Read full discussion here

Found on Threadwatch was a discussion surrounding a story from the Wall Street Journal that Google is paying professors as part of an Academic Influence Campaign to get research created supporting various strategic public policy positions that favor Google.

The post July Algorithm Updates, New AdSense Rule, GSC Data Anomoly & RIP Flash: Weekly Forum Update appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

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Meet the Vidyard Team, Video Style: Miko Taruc

Meet the Team is our monthly chance to introduce you to the fabulous, quirky, talented people who work at Vidyard, using our favorite medium — video! For this episode, we caught up with Miko Taruc, Software Developer here at Vidyard. Discover Miko’s favourite video game of all time, and why he wasn’t allowed to be a Power Ranger when he grew up:

What Didn’t Make the Cut

Miko shared a lot more than just his love of Pokemon, so here are a few more of his answers:

What is your favorite video on the internet right now?

My favourite video hasn’t changed since it came out. – it’s still the Gandalf one where everyone walks up the mountain and he yells out his little scream:

Ahh, it makes me laugh just thinking about it.

What brought you to Vidyard?

I had originally come here for a co-op term! My interviewers came in late that day due to a scheduling mixup, which pushed back all my other coop interviews. So I didn’t have much of a choice but to say yes to this one! I ended up loving the job so much that I stuck around an extra two terms, and then stayed for full time!

The post Meet the Vidyard Team, Video Style: Miko Taruc appeared first on Vidyard.

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Increase Customer Satisfaction and Reduce Support Load with Video

Your customer expectations are changing. They’re demanding the highest engagement from your customer support team as possible. Hi, my name is Craig Stoss. I lead the technical support team at Vidyard and today in this Chalk Talk we’re going to discuss how you can use the power of video to engage with your customers from your support team.

Video is a very powerful tool for support. It can engage with your customers in a way that goes deeper than images or text could ever do. Within that support context, if you use video, you’re going to see an increase in your customer satisfaction, you’re going to see a decrease in your time to resolution, and you’re going to see your time to resolution go down as well.

Explaining the Complex, Simply

Now, how are we going to do this? Think of something like tying a bow tie. If you were to describe that in text or images, you would have many, many steps. Your images would have to have arrows and diagrams and be very complex. But with video, you can describe exactly where to hold that tie, where to loop that through and make sure that your customer has a perfect bow tie every time.

Video can help describe these complex things very easily, and if you have a product or service that has many of steps, you can create 30- to 60-second videos and aggregate them into a video knowledge center that is branded and contains all of your content. This knowledge center is searchable, it has SEO components to be found by search engines, and it gives your customers a way to engage with you and your content in a direct way. And it’s not just one or the other. If you have a current knowledge center that’s text-based, you can embed these videos directly into your text-based knowledge center and engage with your customers at both levels.

By providing that level of self-service you’re going to see an increase in case deflection because you providing clear, less confusing examples using video. But, if a client or prospect does contact your support team, they can still send video to try and answer the question. And at the end of the video, with a tool like Vidyard, you’re going to see a call-to-action to say “Did this video solve your support case?” And when the customer clicks yes or no, it will immediately notify your CRM and your tech support reps so they can either close the case or contact the customer directly. And it’s not just for self-service. You can create just-in-time solutions that help explain those complicated ideas by providing a more engaging experience.

Personalizing the Support Experience

For example, I could say “Hi, my name is Craig Stoss. Jessie, you just contact us about tying your bow tie and I’m going to provide you with a video with all the instructions. Right after this video you’re going to see a 30-second clip with all those details on how to tie your bow tie and you can contact me if you have any trouble.” Then I can include that video on how to tie a bow tie in my reply email and Jessie will be immediately able to say yes or no, this helped me.

I’ve provided him with my name, my face and talked to him as a person and that allows me to engage with him in more deeper way. It also shows there’s no automation or bots in the background. And within Vidyard we actually think that this is quicker than writing an email because these videos are very short and very engaging. It also eliminates a lot of assumptions. Video allows you to add captions or descriptive video so that you can reach a broader spectrum of your customers with the same content.

So, today we learned how you can use video for technical support to increase your customer satisfaction, reduce your time to resolution, and reduce the cost per call. My name is Craig Stoss and I hope you learned something today.

 

The post Increase Customer Satisfaction and Reduce Support Load with Video appeared first on Vidyard.

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How to Drive New Feature Adoption with Kissmetrics

When you launch a new feature, you can put adoption (or lack thereof) in four categories:

• Users that haven’t heard of the new feature
• Users that have heard of the new feature but haven’t used it
• Users that have heard of the new feature, used it once or a few times and stopped
• Users that have heard of the new feature, used it once and are continually using it

Each group of users need to be treated differently. And each group can be learned from to drive more product adoption and help direct future product releases.

Here’s how to do it in Kissmetrics.

Users That Haven’t Heard of The New Feature

You can find who fits into this group by using a simple yes/no survey from a tool like Qualaroo. You can place it on every page of your app and have it appear until the user provides a response:

For the people that select Yes, you can have a simple messaging saying Thank You. But for those that select No, you can prompt them to check out your new feature.

That’s one way to make sure newcomers are at least aware of your new feature and what it does.

But as the saying goes, you can bring a horse to water but you can’t make him drink it.

In this case, your user is the horse and the water is….ok, bad analogy. But you get the point. Awareness isn’t activation. Activation isn’t engagement.

So, that’s method #1. The other method involves using a little analytics from Kissmetrics. Just pull up a People Search and find the people that are current users, have received the email announcing the feature, but have not used it. While some of these people may have read the subject line, they aren’t too familiar with your new feature because they didn’t open the email and haven’t used the feature in the app.

Run that search, and you’ll get a list that looks something like this (just with different email addresses):

So it looks like there’s a few people that aren’t too familiar with this feature. For them, we’ll create an email message that we’ll send to them. We won’t have to leave Kissmetrics or export anything to do this. It’s all in the same solution.

We’ll send them an email about this new feature, and will create follow up emails for people that still haven’t used the feature. The goal here is to get users who haven’t heard of the feature to start using it and getting value out of it.

Users That Have Heard of Feature But Haven’t Used It

Now we have the group of users that are at least aware of the feature, but haven’t tried it yet. These users may have opened the email announcing the new feature, visited the feature page, asked a member of your support team a question about it, or click an in-app notification.

You can find any of these people with a simple People Search. Just plugin your conditions and date range, and run a search.

We’ll create a Campaign message for them. Since they’re already aware of the feature, this won’t need be a replica of the email announcement. Instead, we’ll try to entice them to try the feature using the power of social proof. We’ll use customer testimonials that we’ve collected.

This email will be sent to users who are aware of the feature, but have not used it yet. If they receive this email, open it, and still don’t use the feature, we can create another email with a different twist – maybe embed our product video into the email.

And we’ll do all the tracking in Kissmetrics. We’ll keep a watchful eye of the product engagement with Populations:

Now let’s go on to the next group of users.

Users That Have Heard of Feature, Used it Once or Twice, and Stopped

This group of users has heard of the feature, is aware of what it does, and has even tried it a few times before eventually not returning to it.

This group of users needs to be treated a bit differently than the previous two. We aren’t as interested as getting them to try the product as we are gathering feedback to see why they dropped off. The reasons will vary:

• I didn’t get value out of it
• I’ve been too busy to get to using it
• I’m about to cancel

To find this group of people, we’ll run a People Search for users that have used the feature no more than 3 times, have not used in the past 2 weeks, but have logged in in the past 2 weeks. This is to make sure we’re finding the active users that are logging in but are not using our new feature.

If there is a group of people in this search, we’ll create a Campaign and write our message. There are a couple ways we can go – we can either ask them for feedback on the feature or try to get them to use it again. Let’s first start with a feedback email.

We’ll send this email to our users that fit the criteria mentioned above. The main objective of this interaction should be to gather feedback to see which problems they run into (if any) and discover why they aren’t using the feature anymore, despite still signing in and using the product.

Users That Are Using the Feature Often (5+ times a week)

These can be known as our power users. They’ve not only heard of the feature, they’re actively using it. These users can be a source of feedback, and a few of them may even be willing to provide a testimonial that you can use in public. Some of them may even go a step further and write a positive review on a site like G2 Crowd or Capterra.

The search for these users is pretty straightforward. You’ll find users that have used the feature at least x amount of times in the last week. A good measure for most features is at least 5 – this way you’ll find people that have used the feature 5 or more times during the last 7 days.

We can also attempt to learn more from these power users and funnel those insights into future product development and marketing materials. For instance, if we find that the users that get the most use out of our tool are growth teams, but we’ve been targeting marketing teams, we’ll know we should consider modifying our marketing messaging to target growth hackers.

Unique Emails to Each User Group

Throughout this post, we’ve gone through four user groups and emails you can send to each group.

It’s important to keep in mind that these are separate emails going to different groups of users. We aren’t sending all these emails to the same customer group. For example, we won’t be sending the same email to power users as we do to users who have never heard of the feature. Each group gets its own email as they are treated differently and what we are looking to get out of them differs.

Conclusion

Building something people want is hard. At least, building something a lot of people want is hard.

Then, getting them to keep using it day after day, year after year is almost impossible without near-perfect, flawless product iteration.

Customer development can help. So can co-creation.

And good ol’ customer feedback through conversations and emails can also do the trick. Especially when it’s targeted towards a specific user group with differing product-adoption levels. Kissmetrics can help you identify these user groups, and you’ll even be able to send these behaviorally-targeted emails within Kissmetrics. Click the play button to learn more.

Questions? Ask them in the comments.

About the Author: Zach Bulygo (Twitter) is the Blog Manager for Kissmetrics.

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3 Sales Leaders Share Their Video Selling Secrets

Everything is changing about the technology buying process. And I’m not exaggerating – prospects are interacting less and less with salespeople, and turning more and more to self-serve content. Inboxes are more filled with more emails than ever, and chances to stick out amongst the crowd have diminished.

Because buyers are evolving, salespeople have to evolve as well. And fast. So that’s why we were so excited to hear from Tonni Bennett at Terminus and Kyle Norton at League last week for this panel webinar we hosted with Sales Hacker called 3 Ways Top Sales Teams are Killing it with Personal Video. Tonni, Kyle and our own Tyler Lessard dropped 30 minutes of non-stop sales smarts, but here’s a few highlights that really stuck out:

How is your team driving attention with cold prospects?

“We’re starting with a video…” is always a good way to start any discussion in my humble opinion, but it’s extra relevant after Tyler asked our panel how they’re helping to re-ignite dead leads, and bring opportunities back from the grave.

“We’re trying to personalize our messaging so that instead of saying ‘we do this, we do this, we do this,’ we’re opening with something like ‘hey, I saw you do X, Y, Z’ I thought this might be relevant.” Tonni continues, highlighting that this kind of conversation can be lengthy in the course of an email, but video makes this kind of discussion a snap.

Video has now become the first touch point for every sales interaction at Terminus, and Tonni’s team isn’t just throwing that effort into the wind. This new cadence approach has a 40% open rate, 37% higher CTR and a 5.5% higher reply rate over their text-based approaches.

Is personalized video changing the face of email?

We think so, and Tyler was quick to point out why. “It showcases that you really are delivering that one-to-one message. When people are inundated with these automated emails… that when you see a video that lands in your inbox with a personalized message on a whiteboard, you know that it was recorded just for you.”

Tyler goes on to say that while text emails haven’t fully gone away yet, sales people are getting a bit dependent on templates that are growing tiresome. As a CMO, he’s not stuck under a rock, or wasn’t eaten by a T-Rex. And sadly, Tyler goes on to say he does not have 15 minutes next week to talk about something he’s never heard of from a company he’s never interacted with before. Are your prospects feeling the same?

Is video messaging for everyone?

Many businesses worry that video is going to be too much work for their team to get started. Or worse, they feel like they have time to put off jumping on the video wagon until later. Kyle has some news for you – that window of opportunity is closing fast.

Who is video messaging for? “I would say it’s for anyone who wants to get more opps, and close more deals!” Kyle laughs, adding “If you’re camera shy, you have to get over it otherwise you miss out on using a pretty powerful tool.”

Creating sales videos has never been easier, and Kyle and his team have been seeing huge successes with adding video to their sales cadence.

3 Ways Top Sales Teams are Killing it with Personal Video

Want to hear the full 30-minute discussion, and all the awesome insights shared in between these clips? This panel is now available on-demand so sign up here to watch the recording at your leisure!

The post 3 Sales Leaders Share Their Video Selling Secrets appeared first on Vidyard.

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Beyond Sales: The Different Types of Conversions, Why They Matter, and How to Get More Of Them

When you think of “a conversion”, what goal comes to mind? For most of us, a sale is the ultimate goal, so it’s no surprise that sales and conversions are inextricably linked to each other. But even though a sale might be the end goal, it’s almost never the first thing a new potential customer does when they visit your site.

Yet they’re still converting, even when a sale doesn’t take place. Paying more attention to these types of conversions can not only help you win over more customers in the long run, but also deliver valuable insights that you can glean from your existing data — insights you may never have considered when focusing solely on sales. Let’s take a closer look.

Introducing the Prospect to Your Solution

The first step in any good funnel is to introduce prospects to your solution. Oftentimes brand awareness campaigns like these are done via pay-per-click solutions like Google Adwords or Facebook Ads. In the case of Adwords, you have tight integration with Google Analytics, so you can easily see which ads worked, which ads didn’t, and what kind of actions the user took on your page.

But these platforms really only scratch the surface of the conversion potential that’s happening behind the scenes. To really dig deep and get the gold nuggets of impactful data that makes a real difference in your campaigns, you need a robust analytics solution. Kissmetrics is one such tool that allows you to not only see things that you can also find in Google Analytics (like “How many people clicked this ad” and “how long did they stay on site afterwards?”) but also answer more meaningful, conversion-propelling questions, like “How many new users did we gain as a result of this campaign?” “When did users go from our onboarding email funnel to becoming full-fledged customers?” “Which email encouraged them to do so?”

If you’re truly data driven, you can even have the system crunch the numbers and figure out the average cost to acquire people who downloaded your white paper, for example. Either those leads will pay off, or you’ll find that you need to revisit your free offer to create something of greater value.

These are the kinds of insights you simply don’t get by looking at pure sales-focused conversion data.

Moving the Conversation from Web to Email

Getting the prospect’s email takes the conversation from web to email, and even though it’s a small win, it’s still a type of conversion nonetheless. The visitor is saying, in essence, “I’m interested in what you have to offer, and would like to know more.”

All too often, marketers seize upon this opportunity to blast users with all kinds of information — which can be overwhelming and disconcerting, and lead to them regretting their choice and unsubscribing. This is the time where it pays to look closer at the data in your email automation program. Most platforms will give you simple data such as clickthroughs and open rates – but again, we want to go deeper.

Did you know? Kissmetrics Campaigns is a behavior-based email marketing tool. Using our analytics, customers identify segments of their user base that need a little nudge – to push them to conversion, using a feature, or to proceeding to checkout. They use Campaigns to compose and send these targeted emails, and track the results in Kissmetrics. Learn more about Kissmetrics Campaigns.

For example, are you tagging users so that you can follow where they go (and how long they stay) after they click an email link? What criteria do you have in place to identify and separate the eager, ready-to-act prospects from the freebie “tire kickers”? And what are you doing to warm up the tire-kickers into becoming ready-to-act prospects?

Fortunately, you can use a tool like Kissmetrics Campaigns to not only automate your email, but provide behavior-based segmentation so that you can know, with far greater precision, who’s taking the actions you want them to take, and who needs a bit more hand-holding?

Behavior-based marketing is more than just a buzzword, and it goes well beyond the traditional $Firstname “personalization” that many email marketing platforms offer. Want to segment emails based on whether or not a user opened or clicked through a previous email campaign? With Campaigns, you can, leading to a whole new level of one-on-one engagement with your prospects.

Getting Your CRM Software to Do the Heavy Lifting

When customer data goes into the CRM (customer relationship management) program, oftentimes the ball gets dropped. No matter which platform you use, your CRM system and marketing automation system need to work together harmoniously in order to output actionable data that delivers a return on investment — and the real sales numbers you crave.

While Kissmetrics isn’t a CRM platform specifically, it does mesh nicely with existing services that specialize in lead generation and customer tracking, including:

• Salesforce
• Marketo
• CallRail
• Call Tracking Metrics
• Tapstream
• And many more (see the full list here)

Details on how to integrate Kissmetrics with your existing shopping cart, SaaS or CRM can be found at the list link above, and once you follow this simple process a wealth of data will open up to you, effortlessly blending marketing and sales information so that you get detailed snapshots of user behavior from the start of the funnel to the end.

Here, you’ll be able to see which customers took which actions, and who needs a bit more nurturing to take that all-important next step.

Seeing the Big Picture (And the Little Details) – What Makes a Conversion a Conversion?

Focusing solely on sales as conversions can be disheartening at best, since very few people will ultimately make it through your funnel even on the best of days. It can be discouraging to focus on such a small percentage when instead, you should be looking for lots of little wins.

Bounce rate on your lead magnet page is lower as a result of more targeted ads? That’s a win.

FAQ pages have an unusually high time on page? People are getting their questions answered. That’s a win.

Downloads of a new white paper resulting in more high end, enterprise-level customers? That’s a win.

To be sure, right now a lot of the information out there can seem scattered and uncoordinated. Marketers still have a great deal of data sifting and filtering to do. But new advances in both tools and technology are helping not only comb through the data, but deliver meaningful, relevant information which in turn helps entire companies work together as a cohesive unit – and focus on conversions beyond the sale.

Are you focusing solely on sales when tracking conversions? Or are you looking at other types of “little wins” as well? How is this approach working for you? Share your success stories and triumphs with us in the comments below!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!

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4 Tips for Creating a Top-Notch Sales Enablement Strategy

Ensuring reps have the tools and collateral they need to be successful is hard — especially for leaders in high-growth companies, where scaling creates a constantly evolving environment. Creating a strategic sales enablement plan will make your team more productive and help you reach your goals each quarter.

Sales teams can close more deals and create lifelong customer relationships with time-saving hacks that put training and evaluation first, and content delivery that is easy to consume, memorable and effective. Here are four of the best ways to build out your sales enablement strategy.

Build a sales enablement strategy early in the life of your business to establish a strong foundation that you can continuously build on as you grow

As soon as possible, pinpoint the bright spots in your team’s process, as well as the areas that need improvement. Assess which reps are most productive and successful, and answer questions like:

• What tools are they using that help them work most efficiently?
• What are they saying on calls that’s effectively resonating with prospects?
• Have they found a way to structure demos in a benefits-driven approach that the rest of the team could learn from?
• How are they positioning your product against competitors?
• Is there a particular customer segment they’re seeing the greatest success with?
• What content are they following up with that helps prospects move forward in the sales cycle?

And finally, what of all this can be standardized across the rest of the team? Compile these answers in a central location and develop a playbook and technology roadmap using what you learn directly from your reps.

Look for sales tools and content that can become part of your reps’ workflows to save time and improve efficiency

Focus on tools that reduce rather than add steps in the workflow. The key here is finding tools that are simple, seamless and integrated.  For example, browser extensions that can pull information while reps prospect on LinkedIn. Or a link they can pop directly into an email to minimize the back and forth of scheduling, like Calendly.

Tools that live in workflows reduce the amount of the non-selling work reps must focus on, while also increasing their chances of actually adopting the tools and seeing success.

When it comes to content, video is an innovative sales enablement piece that, when used in tandem with other digital and traditional marketing content, can reach prospects most effectively.

Sales and marketing should work closely together to develop and leverage video content to craft demos that focus on the benefits of their product, making it more clear and easy to digest for the prospect in a few quick bites. If reps are using video in their prospecting emails, they can use a CTA button with a Calendly link embedded at the end of the video to capture new leads and quickly convert them.

Video can also be used as an educational piece to nurture prospects that are in earlier stages of the marketing funnel. Transition your written blog content to videos featuring top thought leaders in your company and leverage across email campaigns and on social.

Quantitatively measure sales enablement success and make improvements along the way to maximize ROI

To improve sales within your organization, identify areas in the sales cycle where reps are struggling, and find a way to establish a quantitative baseline. For example, if video content is a focal point in your strategy, you can pull analytics from your video-hosting platform. Vidyard accomplishes this by offering a view of who’s watching the videos your individual reps are sending out, how long they’re watching before they drop-off, and whether they are re-watching portions of the videos. Use these metrics to determine what’s driving the most engagement—and what’s not—and make tweaks to constantly evolve and optimize your strategy.

You can also use gamification to measure sales reps’ competency and develop skills further. Use an app integrator like Zapier to setup automated rewards based on your workflow. When a sales rep contacts X number of leads or reaches X number of sales, they can earn a token. Those tokens can be cashed in for a reward that makes sense in your team and company culture and all these metrics can be automatically tracked through your CRM. Maybe the top three sales reps in a quarter get to have an in office video game tournament and winner gets a sweet gift card to Dave and Buster’s.

Gradually and smoothly transition to a better sales enablement process as needed to align with business priorities

Use metrics and feedback to determine when to implement a new step. Look at results; analyze, then make adjustments accordingly.

Keep sales reps engaged with quick email videos highlighting new training tools or giving shout-outs to top performers.

The key to improvement is to start small: pilot a new solution with your most senior reps, get them accustomed to using that new solution in a particular workflow, and gradually expand to the rest of the team.

Conclusion

Sales enablement isn’t easy, and it’s never finished. The most successful sales teams  collaborate with their marketing team on an ongoing basis to provide the insights they need to develop meaningful, innovative content to engage, and ultimately convert, the right leads.

By choosing tools that complement your reps’ workflows, tying in your marketing team to build a strategy, rolling out changes slowly and finding a way to quantify each aspect, you’ll close more deals than competitors who still rely on email threads and clunky spreadsheets.

The post 4 Tips for Creating a Top-Notch Sales Enablement Strategy appeared first on Vidyard.

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How to Track Conversions in Google Analytics

Visits and pageviews are nice.

But conversions are all that matter at the end of the day.

The trouble, of course, is that these don’t come ‘preloaded’ with each new analytics account. And you can’t get access to historical, legacy data, either.

That means when you let days (or weeks) go by without setting up conversion goals properly, you’re going to lose all of that information forever. Key data points that could have helped you to quickly spot new revenue-boosting opportunities or money-saving costs to cut.

Fortunately, setting up goal tracking only takes a few minutes if you know what you’re doing.

Here’s a complete guide to start tracking conversions inside Google Analytics.

How Google Analytics Conversion Tracking Works

After logging into your Google Analytics account, look at the bottom of the left-hand sidebar menu for “Admin.”

Clicking that will bring you to a three-column page where different options are sorted by “Account”, “Property”, and “View.” Look on the far right (under “View”) for the Goals option.

Here’s where you’ll select a new Goal to create.

You can get started with one of their pre-configured ‘templates’ that are split up into four different categories: Three ‘hard’ ones (Revenue, Acquisition, Inquiry) and a single ‘soft’ one (Engagement).

Let’s say you run an ecommerce site selling meal delivery services. Amanda visits your website, watches a video, and then signs up for a free trial. In that order.

We tend to fixate on ‘macro’, hard conversions like that new free trial goal completion. However, in this scenario, an assist should go on the scoreboard for that ‘micro’ conversion, or soft video view, too.

So let’s create different goals for each.

First up, let’s track that video view by selecting the Engagement Goal. Here’s what step two will look like:

Engagement-based goals like video views will be tracked as a new Event. Click “Continue” and your new Event options will pop up:

Here, you’ll need to add labels to describe what this Event is tracking. There are three categories that start big and get smaller as you go.

Or, if you’re a grammar nerd, these can broken down into noun, verb, adjective:

• Category is the most general term for what you’re tracking. The noun: Outbound link. Video. File.
• Action is the verb. What are visitors doing? Download. Click. Submit. Play. Share.
• Label is the adjective – the small details of what you want to capture. Perhaps it’s specific poll answers. Or if it’s video playbacks you’re tracking, this is where you note the video title.

Before finishing, you’ll also typically want to select “Yes” so that Event Values are passed onto Goal values, too. That way you can track this information back later to see where these video views originated (i.e. the channel, source/medium, marketing campaign, etc.).

(Note: Keep in mind that adding Event tracking will require a new line of code on your site. If you use WordPress, there are a couple plugins that make this really easy. Or you can use Google Tag Manager.)

Now that we’ve got the video view setup, we can move on to creating a Goal for our ‘macro’ conversion. Head back to the beginning and this time, select “Acquisition.”

Your Goal type for this one will be a Destination goal, where you’ll simply drop in the URL for the Thank You or confirmation page someone lands on after submitting their information.

Here’s how to customize that option in the last step.

First, drop in the URL path for the Thank You page (minus your root domain). So: “http://ift.tt/2uQf8re” should be simply: “/thanks”:

Then you have two optional values underneath:

• Value: A simple dollar amount based on the value of this new sign up. If it’s technically free still, you can at also use a placeholder like a dollar per subscriber or cost per lead (if appropriate).
• Funnel: If you want to specify that a conversion Goal is ONLY tracked when someone hits every single page you specify in sequence.

Last but not least, click that little Verify link on the bottom prior to saving in order to test and see if you’ve set up the Goal correctly. (For example, if this conversion has already existed, you should see some kind of percentage conversion rate value.)

Once you’ve got these two different Goal types setup, you can go back to the main Reporting area of Google Analytics to view your results.

(Note: Unfortunately, Google Analytics won’t provide you with historical data that may have already happened in the past. You’ll only be able to view these new conversions going forward.)

In the left-hand sidebar menu, click on Conversions > Goals > Overview to start.

BAM! In a few days, you should, you’ll hopefully see a nice little graph that looks something like this:

(There are other places in Google Analytics to view goal conversions, but this is the most straightforward.)

And that’s pretty much it! Easy, right?!

Except for one thing:

Your work is just beginning. Because the only reason to track anything in the first place is so that you can DO something with the information.

Here are a few examples you can start pulling from now that you have conversion tracking setup.

How to #MakeMarketingGreatAgain with Google Analytics Conversion Tracking

Looking at total conversions is fine. Tracking those over time is a tiny bit better. The conversion rate itself is somewhat helpful.

But these are all just barely scratching the surface.

✅ Pinpoint ‘Low Hanging Fruit’ Opportunities.

The ‘mobile friendly’ moniker is somewhat misleading.

True, you could have a website that’s mobile friendly (technically speaking). It passes the smell test (or at least some online test).

But is it really, truly mobile friendly?

Because jamming an already-clunky user experience onto a smaller screen with limited processing power can be a recipe for disaster.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than by comparing your conversion rate across devices. Head on over to “Audience”, then “Mobile”, then “Overview”, and look for a huge drop off like the following:

There it is. The smoking gun. The golden, lost opportunity cost staring you in the face.

The good news is that you can at least see it now. And do something about it, like redesign these pages (or experiences) for mobile specifically, and then A/B test the result.

✅ Reverse-Engineer Conversion Paths.

Users flow through your site in different patterns.

For example, organic search traffic coming into a blog post will often view other blog posts. While PPC traffic will typically head straight to a landing page.

Image Source

At the end of the day, they all might convert. But the ‘path’ they take will usually follow a few well-worn patterns.

The first step is to simply identify these ‘conversion paths’ taking place on your site. Because then the second step is to optimize them by removing friction along each step, increasing the value prop on the landing page, etc.

Head over to the Conversions section, and look for “Reverse Goal Path.”

The first page on the far left will be your “Completion Location” page (which is typically just the Thank You page for a Destination goal we set up earlier). The next step to the right is the landing page that these people converted on. And the one before that (“Step – 2” on the far right) could be the initial entrance page that someone first visited your site (from a paid ad, etc.).

This report will highlight all of these pre-existing patterns. So you can see which ‘paths’ are already the most popular (and therefore, which ones you should focus on improving first).

✅ Analyze Converters vs. Non-Converters.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of website visitors will NOT convert.

That’s just the cold, hard reality we face.

The other ~97-99% of visitors are just browsing, looking, viewing, learning, and consuming.

BUT, comparing their actions against those who DID convert can be illuminating. For example, it can show you which specific ‘micro’ conversions (remember those?) contribute most to eventually persuading someone to give you a shot.

Let’s return to our original example. Amanda converted for a free trial. Bob did not.

Of course there could be many, many reasons. But by comparing the differences between converters vs. non-converters can help us see how Events eventually lead to new conversions.

Simply go to “Segments” in your Audience Overview, select “Converters” and “Non-Converters.”

Amanda may have watched a video. She may have downloaded an eBook. While Bob did none of the above. Even though they both came from the same source originally (organic search).

Now you can drill down in almost every category to see how the site experience of Converters on your site differs from Non-Converters. You can hypothesize why those experiences might be different (based on different paths, micro conversions, etc.). And you can come up with new things to test to improve.

Conclusion

Google Analytics allows you to track conversions based on both ‘hard’ Goals and ‘soft’ engagement conversions.

At the end of the day, you need both. One eventually leads to the other. They’re like a literal Catch-22.

The trouble is that you have no idea how to improve either one until you start tracking them properly. That means manually going into Google Analytics to setup Destination Goals (like a new free trial) and Engagements Events (like video views).

It takes a few extra lines of code. A few minutes worth of work.

But the insights you’re able to glean after analyzing the data can help you transform a failing campaign into a successful one. And a Loss into a Profit on your P&L.

About the Author: Brad Smith is the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.

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