Search Analytics, Algorithm Rumors, and More: Weekly Forum Update

Boy was it ever a busy week! Google released a big ol’ document explaining clicks, impressions, and placements in search analytics reports recently.

There are also rumors of a Google algorithm change or hiccup – perhaps more zombie traffic choking up the pipes?

Facebook released some news about their own algorithm, Alphabet posted record profits, and our users are discussing 300 series redirects, the value of Domain Authority, and more!

Here’s our action-packed roundup for this week:

Google Releases an Explanation of Impressions, Positions, and Clicks in Search Analytics Reports

In Search Console you can access Search Analytics Reports which, among other things, will tell you some basic information about your impressions, clicks, and average position within search results. Sounds simple, right?

Well, no – below the surface, Search Analytics Reports are surprisingly technical. Some confusion over the inconsistency of certain points and their meaning led Google to release a new article explaining almost everything you need to know.

You can join the discussion via SEO Chat above, or get a brief explanation on Threadwatch. On WebmasterWorld, admin engine writes that

“Most of the documents are going to be updated as it will start to reflect the increasing AMP pages.”

So we can expect this first release to be one of many!

What’s Happening in Google SERPs for August?

What's Happening in Google SERPs for August?Click To Tweet

Rumors of a “Phantom 4” have been hovering in the air since June. Now that we’re in August, users on WebmasterWorld say that they’re seeing even more strange things happening in Google SERPs. A lot of it, like the Phantom 4 rumors, seems to be happening in the ecommerce sector. Martin Ice Web reports that they’re seeing,

“Very big losses on high traffic keywords. Sales are completely off since last weekend [July30 – 31]. Biggest winner is Amazon. In our vertical it is hard to find a query… Amazon hasn’t at least 4 but 7 entries in a row.”

They go on to speculate that something is targeting

“category pages and pushed single item pages. If so, that would completely work…against Panda algo.”

Other users like ecommerceprofit report that

“We have been on fire for a while now but I know the zombies will be back soon.”

Is zombie traffic related to the recent changes, or are zombies increasing in conjunction with a “Phantom 4” update?

Google, Alphabet Post Q2 2016 Profits – Up 24% to $4.88 Billion

Alphabet posted huge gains from the second quarter of 2016. You can check out some reports about it and read the thoughts of other webmasters in this thread. MrSavage writes that the figures aren’t that surprising though:

“Mobile is growing into a majority. Google had (during FCC investigation) somewhere around 95% to 98% of the mobile search market. Anyone who ‘owns’ that much of a business is pretty much scary. They own the world’s OS in essence.”

JesterMagic writes that while Alphabet posts high earnings,

“…the affiliate business is suffering thanks to Google’s and Apple’s stranglehold on the stores which REQUIRE app publishers to use Google’s or Apple’s payment system…”

Facebook’s Algorithm, Demystified

Data collected by a third party promises to demystify Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm. Users on Cre8asiteforums are discussing a new article from INMA all about it. It’s no surprise that parts of their article aren’t optimistic about brands’ ability to organically reach consumers.

Grumpus picks out a part of the article that says user engagement is decreasing: “What exactly constitutes ‘engagement’?…When I think of engagement, I think about the number of interactions any given item receives…” but is that what Facebook considers engagement to be? Post your thoughts and read the data in this thread!

How Do You Feel About DA?

How Do You Feel About DA?Click To Tweet

Many newbies on SEO Chat talk about Domain Authority as if it is a totally infallible, Google-sanctioned metric. But in reality, it’s a third party tool and, while useful, may have its flaws. In this thread, a user posts that their “beef with DA [is that] I notice with older, authority sites, DA is more accurate as more backlinks are picked up.

However, for newer websites, MOZ doesn’t pick up hardly any backlinks.” Chedders adds that

“I have been banging the drum against DA for ages now. I often say at best it’s a guess… PR used to give us something in my eyes but that was taken away from us a while ago.”

ThomasHarvey says that ”

Honestly, I place some value on Moz DA, it’s the most accurate metric that I believe we now have access to.

What are your experiences with DA, and how much stock do you place in it?

Google Previews Expanded AMP Support in Entire SERPs

AMP Pages seemed like a mere bauble last year, but it’s clear that they’ll be very important soon. They might even shake-up how webmasters organize their desktop and mobile sites. On WebmasterWorld, user aakk9999 writes that,

“…it used to be ‘have a desktop and have a mobile site,’ then ‘we prefer one single responsive site’. I am wondering whether now we should be building a desktop site and then a separate AMP version… because having an AMP site on the desktop is quite limiting…”

Other users seem to agree. Some question whether AMP is worth it though. User aristotle writes that

“My pages are already extremely fast… what would I gain by spending all the time it would take [to implement AMP]?”

The natural response is that Google might favor you in SERPs – but is that really why a website should be higher up? This is shaping up to be a question of whether Google’s POV or the user’s POV is more valuable.

Redirects No Longer “Damp”

User iamlost has a great write-up about the changes to 300 series redirects. “The gist,” they write, “is that Google no longer applies a PageRank dampening factor to 300 level redirects.

It may well, however, treat unrelated redirects as soft 404s, to counter SEO abuse.” This is a big shake-up in how 300 series redirects have been treated in the past! Read all about it and share your thoughts here!

UI/UX and Identifying Links

Threadwatch has an excellent summary of a recent discussion about UI/UX and links. Traditionally, links on a page have been colored blue and underlined. Recent design trends, however, are changing that.

Sometimes it makes finding a link on a page very difficult. How does tradition and collective training play a part in user experience? What are the limits of the Internet’s adaptability? These questions and more are highlighted here!

What is “Good Quality Traffic” for an AdSense Publisher?

“Only a Sith deals in absolutes,” so they say. And that’s true when you’re trying to place a value on your traffic. Different webmasters place different values on different slices of traffic.

It all depends on your goals. Or, as netmeg writes,

“…note that what’s good quality traffic for YOU might not be good quality traffic for AdSense purposes.”

The users of WebmasterWorld are sharing lists of what makes traffic “quality” in this thread – give it a read!

The post Search Analytics, Algorithm Rumors, and More: Weekly Forum Update appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

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What’s Old Is New Again: Outbound Marketing 2.0

It’s hard for digital marketers to ignore headlines claiming, for example, “How Kraft Gets Four Times Better ROI From Content Than Ads.” That’s certainly an impressive figure—four times better ROI!—but those who take it at face value risk missing the bigger picture.

More critical readers of that headline might ask: What mix of inbound and outbound marketing helped the Kraft brand, over its 100-year history, arrive where it is today? Would Kraft’s ROI on content be as strong as it is, if not for their decades of advertising? Or, does this comparison even make sense in the first place?

The comparison does “make sense”, unfortunately. It’s unfortunate that inbound and outbound marketing are so often framed as competitors racing for the higher ROI, but that comparison persists. And in one sense, given how their tactics differ, it’s logical and convenient to view inbound and outbound tactics as two separate ballgames.

Examples of different outbound and inbound tactics. Here they’re listed separately, but they’re most effective when used together.

Marketing Isn’t a Zero-Sum Game

Inbound and outbound have been discussed as inbound versus outbound ever since digital inbound marketing surged in popularity in the early 2000s. While it’s true that many traditional outbound marketing tactics (e.g., cold calls, email blasts) have fallen from favor, these techniques can still be effective.

Today’s savvy consumers still respond to outbound marketing efforts when they’re used intelligently, aligned with inbound content and supported by quality data analysis.

The ideal marketing strategy recognizes the strengths and weaknesses inherent in both marketing “directions” and thoughtfully combines both into a cohesive message with a comprehensive reach. Inbound and outbound should be considered teammates—not competitors.

The difference between Outbound and Inbound marketing funnels (Image Source)

Highly segmented markets and fringe cases aside, most businesses get the best return when they present a singular, coherent marketing message. Mixed messages —even just messages that aren’t obviously connected— can confuse consumers, leading them to seek competitors with more clearly positioned alternatives. Plus, for maximum efficacy, marketing initiatives should gain momentum over time, e’g’, new marketing campaigns should build upon old marketing campaigns. The alternative is to continually start over from square one.

Outbound Marketing 2.0

Some marketers make the mistake of associating the outbound marketing tactics used today with those of a few years ago. This is unfair. Email marketing, as just one example, has advanced a great deal in recent years. We spoke with Steven Coufal, Senior Media Relations Specialist at Gartner, to learn more about the advancements in email marketing:

“It used to consist primarily of large scale, one-off email blasts, but now the technology has moved to the point where marketers can hyper-target small subsets and even individuals with very focused content tailored to their specific interests,” Coufal says.

Another professional marketer, Tim M. describes his old method in a review of his new marketing platform, “The other missing link was the ability to do email campaigns specifically designed for segmented target audiences.” With the newer email marketing platform, he continues “we no longer have a one size fits all message that doesn’t really work.”

Coufal gave us a rundown of how intelligent email marketing can be woven into the bigger marketing picture. “Say a prospect signs up for your email list and you begin to track them,” he explains. “Your marketing software scans their social media accounts to learn they are a female, in the 24-39 age range, a working-professional, living in London. It recognizes that she’s in the target demographic for your company’s new line of trench coats. She then gets opted into a specific email stream that promotes the styles and options known to be popular with her demographic.”

Not only can the message be tailored to the individual, it can be adapted to the individual’s actions. Continuing with the above example, “Through your website tracking, you see your prospect visits a page, but winds up not buying a trench coat. Instead of simply reminding her about the coat in another email, a modern email marketing platform would let the follow-up email offer a 20% coupon, increasing the chances of a sale,” Coufal says. “It’s this kind of microtargeting that can make outbound marketing so effective.”

Choose Your Platform Carefully

And these tools have never been more available, affordable or plentiful. Even single-purpose platforms such as RedCappi, Emma and other email marketing software tools are helping users implement precise segmentation and tracking of individual outbound efforts. Many reviewers praise more advanced platforms, such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud, because they centralize these (and many other advanced features) into a single, integrated inbound and outbound marketing platform.

While availability and affordability are both great, the very plentiful selection of options creates challenges. Ken M offers this wise advice, “Take the time to look at all the options. I almost made a decision early in the process because I just wanted to get the task done and move onto my normal duties. I am glad I took the time to be thorough.”

With the time you take, make sure to spend some looking at the range of options. Don’t overlook analytics tools such as Kissmetrics. These can be integrated into a company’s existing marketing platform, modernizing the strategy and execution of outbound efforts while providing the data needed to continually refine them.

The Sum is Greater Than Any Individual Approach

Calculating the ROI of inbound and outbound separately makes for compelling headlines, but it also suggests the two methods are in competition. But marketing isn’t a zero-sum game where the winner takes all. Instead, marketing efforts should be made to cooperate. And with today’s wide selection of advanced and affordable inbound/outbound marketing platforms, there’s no reason both can’t cross the finish line together.

About the Author: Craig Borowski is a Market Researcher at Software Advice, a Gartner company, providing analysis and recommendations for software buyers. A former Sr. Editor of TIME magazine, he now covers technology and changing trends in the CRM market, with a focus on customer service, marketing automation and the impact of technology on CRM strategy.

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How the 80/20 Rule Affects Your Distribution Channels And Why It Matters to You

Have you ever seen one of your favorite products shut down? I have personally seen products that are beautiful and useful yet they have a hard time finding customers. What is happening here?

Developers and non-marketers like to believe that the best products will always win and that if “you build it, they will come” but life isn’t like the Field of Dreams movie.

Peter Thiel, investor and co-founder of PayPal, even said this in Zero to One:

“The conventional thinking is that great products sell themselves; if you have a great product, it will inevitably reach consumers. But nothing is further from the truth.”

Once you build a great product, you need the right distribution for it. I’m using the word distribution as a “catchall term for everything it takes to sell a product”.

Lucky for you, there’s hundreds of potential distribution channels that you could try. Blogging, Adwords, and Facebook Ads are just a few examples but what some people don’t realize, is that there’s 1 or 2 channels that will outperform all the other ones combined. This is an example of the classic 80/20 rule.

How Does the 80/20 Rule Affect Distribution Channels and Why Should I Care?

The 80/20 rule “states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.” In the distribution world, it means that 20% of all distribution channels will drive 80% of the results e.g. traffic, leads, new customers, etc.

This means that finding the “20%” of distribution channels for your business isn’t just profitable but required for success. After all, we are all in a race against the clock which is usually when we run out of money or time.

To better understand the impact that one great channel can have, we need to look at the music industry. The most important question for music labels is this:

What distribution channels will ensure that songs become a hit? The answer to this question is radio.

Radio stations are crucial in creating awareness for upcoming hits and have been for years. Music hits depend on familiarity and radio provides this at scale. John Seabrook, who wrote The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory said this about the power of radio:

“Big Radio is still the best way – some would argue, the only way – to create hits. If the song seems to be playing everywhere at the same time, all at once, it is perceived to be a hit and becomes one.”

The effectiveness of radio stations has even led to criminal investigations against music labels who tried to purchase more playing time for their songs. The role of radio has changed over the last few years especially with new channels like Spotify, Pandora and YouTube, but this is an example where one channel outperformed all the other ones.

How PayPal Found Their Early Adopters By Experimenting with Different Customer Segments

Distribution channels are also affected by customer segments. A channel like Adwords might work on one segment but fail miserably on a different segment. A great example of this is the early history of PayPal, back in 1998. PayPal experiment with a few different customer segments including Palm Pilot users.

Yep, these were the early users of PayPal

These users were savvy and loved technology. Seems like a great fit for a startup that wants to send money through the internet right? As it turns out, these users were spread out all over the country making them hard to reach.

PayPal then decided to go after the Power Sellers in eBay. This segment had a high need for PayPal especially since the alternative at the time was to use checks. They happily embraced PayPal and were crucial in helping them “nearly double their user base every 10 days”.

Sometimes it can be hard to grasp how consistent exponential growth looks like so here is a chart that shows what your customer base would look like if you were able to achieve a 7% weekly growth.

You start with 100 customers and end up with just under 3500 in 12 months.

This type of growth is possible if you are able to find the most effective distribution channel and the best customer segment for your business.

The Mathematics Behind the Best Distribution Channels

Since you don’t have the time and resources to try every possible distribution channel, we need a way to filter through the available options and narrow down to the ones that could be profitable.

You can view the entire list of distribution channels here.

While every channel is slightly different, we can use two metrics to find the best channels for us. These two metrics are:

1. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
2. Cost of Acquisition (CAC)

You can click through on each link to understand and calculate each of those metrics. Once you do that, come back to this article.

Imagine that your CLV is $400. This means you could spend up to $399 in CAC (this is a simplified example) and still make a profit. Your CLV provides an estimate of how much you could spend while also limiting which distribution channels you can use. Some channels have a low CAC e.g. digital advertising while other channels have a higher CAC e.g. inside sales team.

The graph below, from Zero to One, provides guidelines on typical CLV and corresponding distribution channels.

This graph gives you an idea of what typical CACs look like for common distribution channels.

Of course, it is possible that AdWords won’t work for you (cost per click in your industry may be too high) and perhaps you can make a sales team work with a low CLV. The point of this exercise to is to filter down from 100 options into a handful of channels that are likely to work.

Systematically Testing Your Way to the Best Distribution Channels

With a handful of distribution channels, you can now run experiments and test different campaigns. There’s a great article on what it takes to create a growth machine but the main point is that you need an established process that will make it easy to test different ideas.

Make sure to also explore different customer segments and see how each one affects your distributions channels. Testing customers segments is driven primarily by one question:

Who wants to buy my product and how can I best reach them?

Don’t overestimate the impact that one channel can have on your business and how it can help you grow faster. Finding the best distribution channels might just be the thing that saves your company.

About the Author: Ruben Ugarte helps venture backed startups use analytics to make better decisions through his blog at Practico Analytics. You can also reach out to him on Twitter @ugarteruben.

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No One Wants Buzzwords: Wise Words from Tara Robertson

Nobody said marketing was easy. Depending on your audience, you have to learn the nuances of a niche community, understand what kind of messaging appeals to your prospects, and work hard to beat back against the rising tides of other marketing messages that are bombarding them from every angle. It’s no piece of cake — and it gets even harder when you’re marketing to … well … marketers.

That’s the challenge that confronts Tara Robertson every day. As the Inbound Marketing Manager at Uberflip, she works hard to create compelling email campaigns and demand generation programs that appeal to anyone using content in their marketing mix. And she’s got some pretty fantastic experience to back it up.

“I started out in the PR and events side,” said Robertson, “working at a few different startups in Toronto. I decided that wasn’t for me, and moved into a digital marketing role, working on demand generation.” Robertson worked with innovative brands like Polar Mobile and ScribbleLive before making her way to Uberflip, just in time to help launch their first user conference, The Uberflip Experience. As an added bonus, you can save $250 on your ticket to this awesome event with the promo code TARA250!

Uberflip’s branded content hubs are used by companies like GE, Gartner, and Microsoft to create content experiences that appeal to different stages of the funnel, and different buyer personas. Robertson’s PR background and digital experience makes her a perfect fit to create standout marketing for this audience, but that doesn’t mean it’s a cakewalk. To find out how, exactly, one markets to marketers, we asked her a few questions — starting with the biggest one:

What are the challenges of marketing to marketers?

Marketing to marketers is obviously a challenge, but it can be really fun, too. I notice that marketers really appreciate the small things. For example, we had really fun swag at Marketo’s event last year, like flip-flops and sweatbands, and everyone thought that was a really fun and different.

One thing we’ve really noticed is when we use too many buzzwords or acronyms, marketers are not so much a fan of that. They’re really savvy and they’ve heard all these things before, so they don’t want to hear buzzwords on buzzwords, they want real takeaways. As long as you’re delivering real takeaways people can use in their jobs to make themselves look better to their boss and deliver great results, then you can get on a marketer’s side.

How does video fit into your customers’ campaigns?

It’s really interesting in the B2B space, as you wouldn’t think that video comes into play as much as it does. A lot of our customers use video for testimonials, which is a lot of fun. Instead of just a dry case study, you can see a video of someone explaining how they use a product. Especially in software, video is really key to explaining your value proposition, and product videos are really huge too. We see this especially on a hub where you may have blog posts here and there, and then a product video interspersed so people get a solid view of what you do.

What tactics do you find work well that others may not be using?

One tactic that we use regularly here is just plain-text emails. I don’t see too many marketers doing this, although I’ve seen it more this year. One example of this was for an event, we sent an email from our COO, and obviously it’s an automated email — you can tell, as it’s got the unsubscribe — but we were kind of cheeky about it.

In the “P.S.” we said “P.S., this isn’t from me, our marketing automation manager sent this, but if you reply I’ll get back to you and book some time with you at the conference.” So people really liked that. It was very up front, and I find with marketers when you’re doing something sneaky, like a plain-text email from a VP or a CEO, you have to be upfront about it and not B.S. them. We get really great results with stuff like that. Here’s what that email looked like:

How does Uberflip use webinars for lead generation?

Obviously we get the majority of our leads from the live webinar, because there’s a clear call to a action and urgency there to sign up for a webinar that’s coming up. But, recorded webinars are huge for us, too, and we have them automatically pulled into our hub.We gate them as well so we’re getting leads from every single recording.

When we see a webinar that’s doing really well in terms of conversions, we’ll also put some paid advertising behind it. One channel that we use is BrightTALK, which is basically a slideshare for webinars. You can go in and browse tons of different webinars on different topics like marketing, business, HR, etc. We find that’s a really good channel for bringing in people that are not only qualified, but looking to learn more about marketing. And most of them are really intermediate marketers.

How do events fit into your marketing strategy?

Events are really huge for us, especially in the past year. Our demand generation team has grown, and we’re now four people, so we have a lot more resources to put towards things like getting ROI instead of just going to an event and hoping that our sponsorship works out. We’re really planning months ahead of time. In the spring events season, we actually worked closer with our sales team and helping them with post-event messaging. We also integrated that with our marketing follow-up to ensure there wasn’t too much cross-over, but that everything was still on theme with the event. That’s really helped with ROI, and we’re already seeing great return from events that were only two months ago.

Have you ever had a campaign not perform quite as well as expected? How did you learn from this experience?

One thing that we tried out, kind of as a test last year, was doing a webinar every single week. It didn’t go quite as we planned, and the lead volume started to go way down. We weren’t getting as many people watching our webinars, so we decided to cut our losses, and do one every two weeks instead. It’s been working out so far, but it was something we had to test to know whether it would work. We took a chance on it, but once a week ended up being too much for our audience.

Another funny one happened during my first month at Uberflip. I sent an email on behalf of our sales team, so the signature was supposed to be something like “John at Uberflip,” but I made the mistake of not checking the list first. Normally when I send an email I do a quick export of the list and double-check that all the fields are filled in. But I was kind of new and in a rush, so I went ahead and sent it without doing that. Some of them had, instead of the sales rep’s name, from “Salesforce Assign” (the name of the filler field) if they weren’t assigned a sales rep yet. So obviously that backfired, but I got to write a really fun “Sorry we screwed up!” kind of email, and just took the heat for it because I was new. It was a great way of meeting everyone on the sales team and getting them to know me!

What was your favorite marketing campaign you’ve run so far?

One of my favorite campaigns we did was our holiday hub. It was right around Christmas, obviously, right in time for the holidays. We had people subscribe, and every day we would email them a little present. So they would click on a little tile in their email and get taken to a free eBook, a video, sometimes they got swag like T-Shirts and headbands and other stuff from our partners. It was fun because nothing was gated once you subscribed. Just free stuff, which everyone likes.

As an added bonus it helped us get into the holiday spirit. We had a really great brainstorming session of what we could give away. For something like this it’s harder to track the ROI, but sometimes it’s worth doing a fun campaign just to be memorable and acknowledge and thank your subscribers for being part of your list.

What resources (blogs, videos, podcasts, etc.) do you turn to to become a better marketer?

Since I email thousands of people per day in my role here at Uberflip, I’m always looking for resources that can help our emails stand out. Some of my favourites are Litmus, Emma, Mailchimp. Those are my top 3 on the email side.

We also recently switched to Marketo, so I’m spending tons and tons of time on Marketo blogs, and market’s partner blog, so those are my big ones right now.

I’m pretty new to Podcasts, but I really like Buffer’s CultureLab podcast, which is a really great one about diversity and inclusion. We also host our own podcast here at Uberflip called Flip the Switch which has had some really fun guests so I’m looking forward to spending more time on that.

The post No One Wants Buzzwords: Wise Words from Tara Robertson appeared first on Vidyard Video Intelligence Platform.

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Why Facebook Bots Have Amazing Potential (And Why You Should Still Ignore Them)

Chatbots are the latest in a long line of tech trends to sweep through the marketing world.

One use and it’s delightfully obvious why.

Ranging from fun and whimsical to straight-up commercial, chatbots present interesting new potential for companies to reach and engage customers.

Facebook messenger bots specifically present one of the brightest areas for marketers, tapping into their huge network and built-in advertising features.

However despite the promising outlook, you might be better served by ignoring this trend (for now).

Here’s why.

The Promising Future of Facebook Bots

Chatbots magically combine pattern matching (low-level artificial intelligence) to present options to users instantly based on a number of predefined rules.

Based on your real-time responses, a chatbot will work to get you closer to finding exactly what you’re looking for. That intent-driven nature makes it especially promising for marketers, showing a glimmer of hope similar other intent-based (not to mention, high converting) platforms like search engines.

Chatbots on Facebook messenger have been begun popping up everywhere the past few months, with help from platforms like Motion.ai and Smooch.io that help bridge the technological gap for the masses.

Expanding into Facebook’s existing advertising infrastructure is mouth-watering. For example, you’re able to integrate existing SMS messaging campaigns to Facebook Messenger accounts with phone number tracking.

There’s also the potential for these chatbots to replace 800-numbers and other awful customer service experiences in favor of a real-time, at-your-fingertips, information retrieval system.

That’s not even taking into account the massive potential that is WhatsApp (and its 1 billion monthly users), which Facebook owns, but doesn’t currently allow this technology.

Image Source

Some companies are already tapping into these benefits, as Andrew Tate highlights excellently on AdEspresso.

HealthTap allows you to speak directly to a doctor. Well, not exactly. It will start by showing you recommended answers from doctors to similar questions made in the past. Depending on your results, you can then send the question out to a real, live doctor to get an answer.

Spring gives you personalized shopping recommendations. List of questions for styles, price range, type of clothing and more to eventually whittle down its answers. This wonderful little chatbot does all the hard work for you, removing the need to browse for hours on end.

And one of the most cited examples 1-800 Flowers, where you can make a new order with a simple message. Enter the location for drop-off, and you can browse their options to make a purchase immediately. (although it’s worth noting that you currently can’t process credit card payments within Messenger).

Awesome stuff. No doubt.

But here’s the problem.

Despite their awesome potential, chances are, you should NOT worry about chatbots right now.

Where do Buyers Come From?

In what seems like decades ago (ok, it was only about five years), Forrester Research analyzed over 77,000 consumer orders and released The Purchase Path of Online Buyers.

The goal was to determine which channels were responsible for the most buyers (not subscribers) to help marketers decide where to invest their precious resources.

The results were surprising exactly how you’d expect if you’ve been doing this for awhile.

Social accounted for less than a percent of sales (although in fairness, there’s undoubtedly a host of attribution problems).

Otherwise, Search (both Paid and Organic) was the top driver of new sales. Email was at the top for repeat customers.

Fast forward a few years and McKinsey found that things had… well, not changed at all.

Image Source

The way people purchase today has become increasingly more complex, with multiple touch points and many different channels used along the way. Many marketers struggle with getting a handle on understanding their own customer journeys.

The point though, is that there are a few fundamental things that should be working flawlessly before spending time, money and attention chasing the latest trend (despite how promising this particular one is).

Here are a few examples.

Here’s Why You Should Ignore Facebook Bots (For Now)

Why do people leave your site?

Somewhat surprisingly, it could be how sloooooooooow pages take to load. If an eCommerce site fails to load within three seconds than half of its traffic will bounce.

Then there’s also poor design and navigation issues, too many competing or cluttered offers, and a mismatch between what got people there, and what’s on the page. Along with a ton of other reasons.

What’s the reason you should forget about Facebook messenger bots for the next few months?

Opportunity cost.

Exhibit A.

McKinsey also found that despite the majority of visitors opening your email on mobile devices, many of the landing pages people are being sent to still aren’t responsive.

(Not to mention, just because a website is ‘supposedly’ or technically responsive, doesn’t mean that the mobile experience doesn’t suck.)

To make matters, 61% of those people with bad experiences won’t return. While 40% will go straight to your competition.

That means not only are your landing pages costing you lost sales. But they’re also serving as your competitor’s best advertisements.

Fixing those landing pages should be important. Priority #1 in fact when you go in on Monday morning. It should at least place well ahead of dabbling in new social features which may, or may not, pan out.

Based on data and experience, you know – beyond a shadow of a doubt – that improving landing pages will result in greater conversion rates (and thus, more revenue).

You just haven’t done it yet.

Because, to-do lists. Emails. Meetings. Etc.

Exhibit B.

Every good little marketer uses email. It’s like PB&J at this point. But, it too is under some strain.

Competition is at an all-time high (and only getting worse), so getting your messages to stick out from the other junk in people’s inboxes is a tall order.

Then there’s deliverability issues, which email service providers getting ever-more sophisticated to noticing (and filtering out) your promotional emails.

A handy and helpful solution is marketing automation, that relies on timing, relevancy and personalization to cut through the crap.

On the plus side? It works. Delivering twice as many leads compared with your typical spray-and-pray approach.

The downside? Only 13% of marketers are using it. 13%!

Despite the fact that marketing automation can send you 451% more leads. Or increase average sales 34%.

Case-in-point: a whopping 85% of B2B marketers are not satisfied with their marketing automation efforts. Even despite marketers ranking it at the top of a latest survey from Smart Insights of digital activities with the greatest impact.

Wait. Why? Too busy Snapchatting or Instagramming to worry about increasing revenue?

But it gets better.

Exhibit C.

Let’s see what happens if we combine the activities found in Exhibit A & Exhibit B.

Williams-Sonoma saw a 10x lift in response rates when they sent triggered emails based on specific things people were just looking at on the website.

(Pro tip: Williams-Sonoma is also a great place to score free coffee at the mall using their Nespresso display.)

Personalized campaigns “consistently and overwhelmingly beat” static ones after analyzing 650 multi-channel marketing campaigns.

HubSpot analyzed 93,000 calls-to-action (with “hundreds of millions of views over 12 months”) and found that ones targeting specific user actions resulted in a 42% improvement over standard ones showed to everyone.

This is the same approach remarketing takes, personalizing ad creative while capitalizing on impeccable timing to show people exactly what they were just looking at. At a 46% reduction in cost compared to normal ads to boot.

Want a trend to follow? There’s your trend!!

Conclusion

Chatbots are undoubtedly one of the sexiest trends to watch develop.

Facebook messenger bots up the ante, initially promising a huge opportunity with their massive audience and built-in advertising features.

However…

What keeps getting pushed down your to-do list already? How many activities have you neglected (or ignored) that could (and more predictably) increase revenue over the next 30 days?

Poor mobile landing pages? Tired, boring email campaigns? Static website calls to action?

If you’re working with Coca-Cola, go get you some Facebook bots!

If you’re like the rest of the 99% of us and you’re (a) already overwhelmed, (b) spread too thin, (c) understaffed, (d) on too tight of deadlines, with (e) not enough money to spend, maybe it’s time to double down on the fundamentals.

Fix the underperforming stuff you’re (most likely already) aware of. Increase sales.

Then go play with some Facebook bots.

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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How 100+ Brands Use Video with Oracle Eloqua to Connect with More Buyers

For a growing number of modern marketers, the road to revenue is paved with video marketing. In fact, more than 100 brands are now using Vidyard’s integration with Oracle Eloqua to connect with more buyers and turn viewers into customers. Companies like Lenovo, MongoDB, LinkedIn, GroupOn, Adaptive Insights and Cengage Learning are using video content to build more meaningful customer relationships, and video analytics to better understand their audiences. And they’re doing it in a way that’s tightly integrated with the marketing automation platform that powers their programs and insights.

To celebrate this milestone, we took a step back to look at how these brands are using video to grow their business, and we’ve distilled all that awesomeness down into three key takeaways that we uncovered:

1. From Inspiration to Education: Choose Your Content Wisely

I couldn’t agree more with Michael Ballard, senior manager of digital marketing at Lenovo, when he shared the following comment in the video above:

“We can use video to make people laugh, to make them cry, right down to the product specs and the speeds and feeds. It’s an extremely flexible platform.”

Did you expect to hear a B2B marketing leader at Lenovo, the world’s largest PC maker, talk about making people laugh and cry? The best marketers appreciate the need to appeal to buyers on a more human level throughout their entire path to purchase. From making the right first impression, to establishing an emotional connection to your brand, to educating and convincing your buyers, video offers a powerful way to connect and convert – but it takes much more than just an explainer video and a few top-of-funnel campaigns to make it work. These marketers are all building strategic video content libraries that help them connect with audiences in a variety of ways (with a variety of emotions!) throughout the buying journey.

MongoDB is another great example of a modern B2B marketing team using video throughout the funnel to generate serious demand. With more than 1,000 assets that generate over 2 million viewing minutes per year, video has become one of their highest opportunity influencers. But it isn’t by luck – they’ve taken a strategic approach to mapping out their video content strategy and aligning it to the buying journey of each key target persona.

2. Use Creative and Personalized Video to Boost Conversions

Oracle Eloqua provides some amazing tools to help marketers personalize the content journey for each prospect. But that doesn’t let you off the hook of having to create amazing content in the first place that people actually want to consume. Video has emerged as premium currency in the attention economy, and it’s helping these brands boost conversion rates on everything from social media and email marketing to content campaigns and account-based marketing. While speaking with Brian Maschler, Chief Creative Officer at Bulldog Solutions, a leading full-service marketing agency for B2B brands, he noted:

“Video is the best way to connect with B2B buyers on a more emotional level and to re-engage dormant audiences. While email click-through rates are on the decline, we continue to track higher engagement on video campaigns and are seeing a multiplier effect with personalized video.”

While video can help you cut through the noise and get more attention, companies like Bulldog Solutions and Lenovo have found that personalized video can take it one step further. Both have used Vidyard and Oracle Eloqua to deliver personalized video campaigns that bring each viewer’s own name and other unique details right into the story. These campaigns have helped increase click-through and conversion rates by more than 300% resulting in significant impact to their demand generation efforts. There is so much potential here, I can hardly contain myself!!

3. There’s no Crystal Ball…But There IS Video Engagement Data

Making the shift from the art to the science, these brands are now using video analytics in some pretty amazing ways to help them optimize their content, better understand their audiences and convert leads faster. Using video content analytics, they’re going beyond the view count to understand which videos are resonating with their audiences and which ones are falling flat. These types of insights help their creative and demand teams optimize their investments for engagement and conversion, rather than clicks and shares.

But even more impactful is how these brands are using viewer engagement data within Oracle Eloqua to identify their most engaged prospects, optimize their nurture streams and increase funnel velocity. As Michael Ballard of Lenovo noted:

“Video is the only asset where I have full visibility into how my audience consumes it. I can look at not only who it was, but how much did they watch and where did they drop-off, and I can tie that into my lead scoring… I can’t do that with any other content type.”

We’re thrilled to see so many marketers unlocking the potential of modern video marketing, and we know this is only the beginning. If you’d like to learn more about using video content and analytics with Oracle Eloqua, check out the Modern Marketer’s Guide to Getting the Most Out of Video. Lights, camera, action!

The post How 100+ Brands Use Video with Oracle Eloqua to Connect with More Buyers appeared first on Vidyard Video Intelligence Platform.

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Video Marketing Becomes Key Differentiator for Oracle Marketing Cloud Customers

Lenovo, MongoDB, Bulldog Solutions and more than 100 Oracle Eloqua customers now use video content and analytics to fuel marketing success

KITCHENER, Ontario – August 2, 2016 – Video has become the darling of the social media world, but modern businesses are proving that that there are real results to gain from online video content. Innovative companies in both B2C and B2B markets are realizing the power of video to boost engagement with online audiences, and they are increasingly converting those viewers into customers by integrating video viewing data with Oracle Eloqua.

Lenovo, MongoDB, Bulldog Solutions and more than 100 other industry leaders now rely on Vidyard’s integration with Oracle Eloqua to connect with more buyers and generate new insights on their true levels of engagement. Combining Vidyard with Oracle Eloqua, modern marketers use video viewing data to quickly identify their most engaged leads and better personalize their content experience. Other companies combining the power of video with the Oracle Marketing Cloud include LinkedIn, Groupon, CEB, Adaptive Insights, Ellie Mae, Manhattan Associates, Western Digital and Cengage Learning.

“Vidyard has revolutionized the way marketers use video to not only reach audiences but keep their attention and turn them into customers,” said Ryan Buma, Global Vice President of AppCloud at Oracle Marketing Cloud. “We’re thrilled to see so many Oracle Eloqua customers reaping the benefits of their solutions.”

Lenovo

The world’s largest PC maker, Lenovo, started using video for basic product overviews but expanded to on-demand webinars and personalized video campaigns to drive greater audience engagement. Lenovo adopted Vidyard because of its ability to identify and track individual viewers, see how much of each video they watched and push that data into Oracle Eloqua for better lead qualification and customer insight.

“Video is one of the top-performing assets for us,” said Michael Ballard, senior manager of digital marketing at Lenovo. “Just knowing whether someone clicked play on a video is not a true measure of engagement. Vidyard allows us to score and qualify our audience based on what percentage of each video they’ve watched. We follow up differently with someone who watched a video all the way through – or re-watched it – than someone who turned it off after 10 seconds.”

Lenovo has also used Personalized Video to get more attention amongst B2B buyers. By customizing the video experience for each individual viewer, Lenovo was able to increase click-through and conversion rates by more than 500 percent. Ballard and his team won the 2016 Markie Award at Oracle Modern Marketing Experience for Best Digital Marketing Experience, in part because of the company’s strategic use of video.

MongoDB

MongoDB, the company behind the most popular non-relational database by the same name, maintains a huge library of video content aimed at early and late stage buyers. Video is used throughout their multichannel marketing strategy, making it extremely important to manage, update and track videos centrally using Vidyard.

MongoDB relies on Vidyard to host and manage its video content and enables viewer engagement data to feed directly into Oracle Marketing Cloud to help identify and track the impact of each video asset.

Since MongoDB started using Vidyard, video has become its second-highest opportunity influencer. More than 150,000 minutes of MongoDB video are consumed each month by more than 16,000 viewers.

Bulldog Solutions

Bulldog Solutions, a leading full-service marketing agency, has been delivering video marketing campaigns for more than three years to help their B2B clients stand out from the crowd. Using Vidyard’s integration with Oracle Eloqua, they’ve delivered video marketing programs that personalize the content journey and increase conversion rates by more than 300 percent.

“Video is the best way to connect with B2B buyers on a more emotional level and to re-engage dormant audiences,” said Brian Maschler, Chief Creative Officer at Bulldog Solutions. “While email click-through rates are on the decline, we continue to track higher engagement on video campaigns and are seeing a multiplier effect with personalized video. And with Vidyard and Oracle, we’re not only connecting with more prospects, we’re generating insights on both our content and our viewers that help our clients make smarter decisions.”

“Today’s buyers expect video to be part of the learning process,” said Vidyard co-founder and CEO Michael Litt. “Video gets to the point while also engaging audiences in a way that other media simply can’t. By using video in a strategic way, these businesses are learning more about their buyers than they could from any other content, and they’re getting more deals done as a result.”

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.

Media Contact:
Brad Hem
Phone: (281) 543-0669
press@vidyard.com

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Why You Should Dump Your “Analytics Person” (And Do THIS Instead…)

Whether you’re a bootstrapped startup or a well-known company, you likely have one (or more) people on your team in charge of analytics.  These are the people who wrangle all that big data into meaningful insights that help propel the company forward.  They’re the ones who make sense of all the input arriving from all the disparate tools and filter it into discussions, split testing ideas, sales hooks and other angles that help improve conversion rates.

So if they’re so crucial, why am I suggesting you dump them?

Because if they are the all-encompassing heart of data at your business, they’re doing more harm than good in the long run.

Now before you grab your digital torches and pitchforks, hear me out. I want to preface this article by saying that yes, analytics people are valuable – critical, even – to your business’ success.  But no matter how varied their experiences or how unique their perspective, all of the insights you’re moving on and data you’re collecting are still being filtered by one or even a handful of people.

On the surface, there’s no harm in that.

It’s when that person leaves, or changes departments, or gets promoted that you start to run into problems.  Suddenly, this person who was the linchpin of the entire analytics action team has left everyone else scrambling to pull and/or make sense of the numbers and charts.

On the opposite spectrum, there’s the “analytics fortress”. It’s virtually impregnable and understandable only for a select few. There are whispers and rumors about the treasure trove of data it contains, but few have ever seen it first-hand. And while that may seem like rock-solid job security on the surface, it’s a giant red flag for the organization doing the hiring. Remember, they want the system to be set up so that it’s easy to understand, pull from and analyze. They won’t hesitate to hire someone who can help them re-configure it to be more open, accessible and cross-functional.

Getting a better handle on your analytics starts with putting the information out there and letting your various teams, departments and decision makers brainstorm the possibilities while gradually guiding them on integrating more of the data into their everyday tasks.  One step at a time, and gradually, everyone becomes proficient.

But We’re So Far Behind!

Did you know that analytics, as a field of study, is less than five years old? That means it’s still at the proverbial not-eating-paste stage of its life.  Because there are so many advancements being made in the field and new tools being developed, it’s easy to think that you’re falling further and further behind. But the fact is, with the right dashboard and the right information at your fingertips, you can make course corrections in real-time for the betterment of the campaign or project as a whole.

What this kind of new-found power will do, however, is put a big dollop of transparency on everyone. Mistakes (and successes) will be visible. Scrutiny and the sizing up of campaign results will happen. But nobody’s perfect and everyone’s learning.  You can’t afford to let your mistakes hold you back, but by the same token, you can’t afford to rest on your laurels either. Always moving forward.  That’s what it means to be data driven.

The New Data Wrangler

Every business wants someone with a brilliant analytical mind to swoop in, corral the data and turn it into a nice, neat and meaningful slideshow where everyone gets to bask in hefty sales figures and pretty charts. In a perfect world the numbers speak for themselves and the subsequent actions obvious.

Sadly, it doesn’t work that way. And companies who forge ahead with this mindset are terribly misguided. But because transforming into a data-driven company is such a new process, it can be overwhelming to know where to start or even how to go about it.  You may already even have people in place, such as those who oversee proper compliance, those who fix broken or duplicate data, or even those who build monetization models. But data-driven isn’t a person so much as a way of doing business.

That means you want your company to have a strategic, forward-thinking mindset. It’s very much a cultural shift. People should easily be able to reference and use the information collected to make improvements and add value to the customer experience.  That means being able to make decisions that are practical for today as well as far-reaching for tomorrow.

Make It a Group Effort

The fact is, your campaigns will always improve over time whether you’ve got one person running it or 100. Why pin all your insights on a single person when you can make analytics a group effort instead?  Have a process in place that turns your company from reactive to proactive when it comes to data-driven insights. Oftentimes, there’s a pervasive thought throughout companies that analytics “is not my job” or that the only time it’s useful is determining the success or failure of a campaign after the fact.

If data isn’t the foundation of every marketing decision made by each and every person, then you’re not truly a data-driven company. Teach others how to use the data not just when it suits them, but as part of the overall company culture – in planning, prioritizing, during the progress of a campaign, and throughout optimization up to launch and beyond.  Above all, analytics should never be used to tout one person’s idea as better than another’s. Through all this data, everyone is learning whether something works, whether it doesn’t, or whether it merits more study.

Every single piece of information is a potential lesson.

Action Steps for Becoming a More Data-Driven Company

So now that we know what’s needed, how do we turn this information into action?  Here are a few steps to integrating a more data-driven flow into your workplace:

• Set your data free – Let everyone from key decision makers to operational leads, partners, suppliers and vendors have access to relevant information
• Make analytics for everyone – Connect all your sources so that every department sees the big picture and can drill down for more details
• Let people create their own insights – You’d be amazed at the ideas and perspectives that percolate to the top when people have the freedom to make their own analyses and insights based on the situation presented
• De-centralize decision making – Let things be done openly. Test, track, monitor and report. Don’t require lots of needless hoop-jumping just to try out some ideas.
• Rely on systems that everyone can use, not a black box configuration that is recreated each year by a new analytics lead

Remember, analytics is going to be new to many, many people. So it’s understandable that there would be some uncertainty or outright trepidation in getting accustomed to it. Furthermore, company culture shifts don’t happen overnight, so gradually easing into this new form of doing business helps ensure that everyone is on the same page and understands what’s expected of them as it relates to their role in moving the company forward using data insights.

With that being said, however, it’s always a good idea to learn from those who have successfully migrated over to a more data-driven mindset. Has your company embraced its data-driven roots? How did the process go? What parts were easiest to get people acclimated to and where did you struggle? Share your insights 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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9 Useful Facebook Messenger Chatbots: Marketing Examples to Learn From

Facebook has taken the next step in their attempt to become more business integrated and savvy. Their Messenger system is allowing companies to create bots letting users purchase products, request services, get information, and more. All from a personal message window on their Facebook dashboard.

• Here’s how to add a chatbot
• Here’s how to create one
  

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These are the nine Facebook messenger bots you should check out especially if you are looking for ideas on how to make your own brand more social media friendly.

Spring

Shop socially! You put in details like size, color, product description, and price range. The bot will create a list of fitting products for you to peruse and, if you choose, purchase right from your Messenger window.

It is a great way to see what they have to offer, without having to go through their site and manually search their products. I find the bot to be a lot more useful and easy to navigate than their in-catalog browsing features.

(More about this chatbot)

Uber

Citizen run taxi service Uber has been facing a lot of criticism lately. Their prices, what they now pay their drivers, dangers posed to passengers due to lax background checks, and now competition Lyft gaining serious traction in the wake of various scandals.

They are now trying to add some extra perks to their service to get beyond these damaging setbacks, like their new messenger bot. You can now connect your account through messenger, and request a ride within Facebook, no matter where you are. Don’t feel like taking up the extra space on your phone with their app? This is a good alternative.

(More about this chatbot)

Fify

Want your very own fashion consultant? This piece of AI learns your preferences and remembers them, helping to pick out items that you are more likely to want. The more you use it, the more attuned to your tastes it becomes. More than that, the AI acts as a person would.

They will contact you about trends you may be interested in, pick up details from your Facebook that might be relevant to your shopping needs, and gossip with you about current pop culture and entertainment/fashion news. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but interesting if you are into that kind of interaction.

(More about this chatbot)

Yahoo Finance

Want easily digestible finance tools that will give you information you can actually understand? If you aren’t a professional, this is an awesome tool to have. It will give you the latest stock information, charts, break down market trends, and let you easily search by stock or company name.

It is a small bot, but a solid one that I have so far really personally enjoyed. As someone without any financial knowledge, it makes a very complicated subject seems a whole lot simpler… which is a major plus.

NewsBytes

If you are sick of filtering through biased news networks for information that you can rely on, you may like this particular bot. It gives you quick, tiny bites of current events and news stories, without any political angle. They try and use the most well rounded, nonpartisan sources for the information.

CNN has their own bot, but it is nice to see third party alternatives providing measured and simple news bites without the agenda. Plus, they are super quick. Keeping up on the news is difficult at best, especially with how open our world has become. This is a great bot for picking and choosing, and getting a summary of what is happening in the world.

HealthTap

Get access to doctors from all over the world, ready to answer your health related questions. Not sure of the dosage of Tylenol to give your 12-year-old when they have a fever?

Worried about a spreading rash? Unsure on whether or not the flu has been going on long enough to warrant an appointment? If you have ever used the HealthTap website you know it can be a helpful service. This expands it beyond its original parameters, giving wider access and a faster way to get answers.

Burger King

Have you ever thought to yourself, “Gee, fast food would be a lot faster if I could just avoid the line altogether!” Probably not, but nevertheless, Burger King is trying to make that a possibility. You can order your food in from the messenger app, and they will prepare it for you.

You just head over and pick it up, without having to wait. It is a pretty good feature for being trying to avoid the lunch rush. Tim Hortons is also reportedly going to be offering this service, so Canadian coffee lovers will be able to grab a hot one any time. Having tried to grab a quick coffee from a Timmies in downtown Toronto first thing in the morning before a flight home, I know that a pickup service would be appreciated by many.

(More about this chatbot)

Pizza Hut

Pizza Hut is the first company to offer pizza delivery through a chat bot and that is a surprise. With how many are now jumping on the app and even gaming console order train, you’d have thought competition would be fierce to be the first to take advantage of this new way of selling.

There are sure to be a lot of late night weekend orders from people who are drunk ranting about their exes on their Timeline, that is for sure.

(More about this chatbot)

SalesForce

You can integrate their service with Facebook. Tie live chat in with their unique CRM, so you can better connect with your customer base. There aren’t a lot of details on this one, yet, but it is exciting. Could this be the latest in customer service relations?

(More about this chatbot)

If you have a chat bot for messenger you think should be on this list, let us know in the comments.

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