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"Why Animated Videos Increase Viewer Attention" by Brian Massey at Conversion Sciences
We set out to collect some data to help answer these burning questions. After all, we’re scientists.
To give you an example of what we’re talking about, here’s a video created for us by NinjaTropic to to introducing readers to AB testing as part of our comprehensive AB testing guide.
This video summarizes AB testing in just under a minute and a half. The goal of this particular article is to establish us as the source for information on this transformational tool of websites. This should make our visitors more eager to subscribe, learn and grow.
In other words, we want to generate leads that will one day turn into sales. Just like you.
Why did we think that an animated video would outperform a simple “talking head” video? Because science told us it might.
Using Animation in Video Marketing to Generate Leads and Sales
Here’s a more traditional video that explains what we’ve learned about animated video and why you should consider it.
Eye Tracking Study
We ran an eye tracking study, which sought to answer these things, and what we found out was very interesting.
For hand-drawn video, the motion of the pen drawn on a whiteboard while somebody’s speaking, or of a cartoon moving, pulls the attention of the visitor. It has a very high level of engagement.
Something else we thought was very interesting was that when you include cartoons of people, which is pretty common in these kind of videos, they get the same kind of attention that a real human face attracts. The effects of the cartoon face is very much the same as a videotaped face, like the one of me talking above.
The human mind is drawn to faces and eyes, we like to watch them. Even if there’s something else going on, we always seem to return to the eyes.
Does Animated Video Convert Better?
When we did this study, we also coupled it with a split test. We tested this kind of video with talking head video like this, and with what we call slide video, which you might see given in a webinar, with static images.
What we found out was that if you put this video on a landing page, in which you have a call to action and a form to complete, the animated video converted better. In other words, more people were willing to go and fill out the form and take the next step than with talking head video or slide video.
So, if you’re considering video that’s going to call people to action, you really should consider animated or whiteboard video for your landing page. While hand-drawn video can be more expensive to produce, companies like NinjaTropic are driving the cost down with advanced tools and experienced animators.
The real question is whether any additional production cost is more than the increase in leads and sales you may get from it. The only way to know is to test it. READ ARTICLE
"The number one digital marketing tool you might be missing out on" by Kat Tanock, The Globe and Mail
But in the rush to stay on-trend, companies might be skipping the only digital outreach method they have complete control over: e-mail. The now somewhat old-fashioned communications tool is seeing a resurgence thanks to its inherently opt-in nature, with readers weary of information overload eager to let someone else do the curation. And a bonus for marketers: Unlike third-party platforms, which hold the keys (and charge admission) to a company’s list of hard-won followers, e-mail lists and statistics remain fully on their side of the gate.
Ready to build – or revive – your e-mail marketing? Follow these steps to success.
Build your list
E-mail campaigns don’t work if you’ve got no one to send them to. Even if your company’s still in launch mode, it doesn’t hurt to add an e-newsletter sign-up to your website placeholder. Already established? Make sure your registration form is easy to use and easy to find. Incentives such as free e-books or coupons can help encourage people to subscribe.
Keep it legal
Keep it above-board by only contacting people who have requested your e-mails, and always offering an easy way for them to opt out. Major e-newsletter tools such as MailChimp know the ins and outs of the rules and make it easy to manage your lists legally.
Think quality over quantity
Bigger sign-up numbers don’t mean bigger return on investment. Better to have a smaller list of people who really want to hear from you than a larger list of the disengaged. Similarly, a more-frequent newsletter isn’t necessarily a better one. E-mailing customers too often – especially with messaging they find annoying – is a sure way to provoke them to unsubscribe. Tie frequency to something relevant (such as product drops or event registration), and be clear to anyone signing up what they’re getting in for.
Have a plan
Before you start sending e-newsletters, know what you want to achieve with them. Is it product awareness? Branding? Sales? Attendance at events? All of the above? Set out some goals and plan how you’ll measure success.
Remember mobile
With so many consumers accessing their e-mail via smartphones, it’s essential that your messaging look good on every kind of device.
Put yourself in the recipients’ shoes
Rather than deciding what goes in the e-newsletter based on sales goals, think about what subscribers might like to see, click on and engage with. Write subject lines that are informative, not vague. In choosing which products or content to promote, think benefits, not features. READ ARTICLE
"Online Video Consumption Growth Forecast, 2015-2016" from MarketingCharts
Daily time spent watching online video across 40 key markets will grow by 23.3% this year and by another 19.8% next year, with mobile video consumption growing at roughly 5 times the rate of non-mobile devices, according to a ZenithOptimedia forecast. In fact, the forecast calls for mobile to account for a majority 52.7% of online video consumption next year, up from 40.1% last year.
Meanwhile, the growth in the number of regular online video viewers across those 40 markets is expected to be in the 5.1-5.8% range annually from 2015 through 2017. By contrast, the number of regular linear TV viewers is expected to peak this year and then shrink by 1.9% next year.
In line with its growth, ad dollars are flowing to online video: ZenithOptimedia expects that, globally, spending on online video will increase from 8.8% share of online ad spend in 2012 to 12.8% share in 2017. In the US, though, online video is already projected to account for 16.5% of total online advertising spending. READ ARTICLE
'Email Subject Lines - the Latest Data" by MarketingCharts Staff
"Effective Email Communication" by Ellis Partners in Management Solutions
It’s not a big secret that effective communication and good writing takes time, yet we allocate so little time to it. We tend to be very task oriented and love the feeling of relief we get when we check off our list. But stop it. Now. The way you communicate is too important for it to get lost in everything else you have to get done.
We know timeliness is everything in sales and leasing, which means you have to respond quickly. However, that doesn’t mean you have to fire off emails without much care or thought about your message. Take time to formulate your thoughts before you return a voicemail or hit send. What are you trying to say and will it be clear to your audience?
When I’m most productive, I block out set times to write emails and make phone calls. This prevents me from allowing my inbox and phone to be distractions. I block out time, so that I can communicate without interruptions and give it the attention it deserves. A good email shouldn’t take you a minute or two to write. It should take much longer, especially if it is a new prospect.
Why should it take so long? A good email and conversation has a beginning, a middle and an end. It should tell a story. It doesn’t have to be a long story, but it needs to be a complete story.
Don’t get discouraged if changing how you approach correspondence is challenging. It is something I still have to work at every day, and it gets a little easier with practice. Making it a priority is the first step to success. READ ARTICLE
"Mobile Internet Access Grows Across Age Groups" by MarketingCharts Staff
Some 21% of online US adults aged 18-34 accessed the internet using only mobile devices in December 2014, up from 18% doing so last year, according to a recently-released report [download page] from comScore. The study also demonstrates that multi-platform use is growing across age groups, with three-quarters of online Americans aged 55 and older accessing the internet either through mobiles only (6%) or through a combination of mobiles and desktops (68%).
Indeed, just 26% of online adults aged 55 and older accessed the internet solely via desktops in December of last year, down from 40% during the year-earlier period. As such, this age group counts as the fastest-growing cohort of mobile users.
Overall, 88% of online adults counted as mobile-only (12%) or multi-platform (76%) users in December. Given that a recent Pew Research Project study [pdf] found that 81% of US adults access the internet, the data – in combination – suggests that somewhere around 7 in 10 American adults are accessing the internet via mobile devices. (For context, recent comScore data showed that smartphone penetration reached three-quarters of the 13+ mobile subscriber market in Q4 2014.)
Not surprisingly, digital content consumption varies widely by category, per the report. Some categories that continue to lean strongly towards desktop consumption include business/finance (70% of time spent coming from desktops) and entertainment news (61% desktop). By contrast, social networking skews heavily towards mobile (74% share of time spent), as do the online gaming and weather (each at 87%) categories. Retail was fairly evenly split between mobile (49% of consumption) and desktop (51%) platforms in December, per the report.
It’s worth noting that those figures are likely subject to some seasonality. In January 2014, for example, desktop played a less prominent role in both retail (47% of time) and business/finance content consumption (62%), according to previously-released comScore data. That would suggest that desktop share of consumption in these categories grew over the course of the year, which would run counter to the prevailing winds of mobile’s growth.
Nevertheless, the latest report offers an interesting – and somewhat related – nugget: time spent with mobile devices hasn’t cannibalized desktop consumption over the past few years, at least in the aggregate. Between December 2010 and December 2014, time spent online via tablets grew by 1,721%, while time spent accessing the internet via smartphones increased by 394%. But, there was also modest growth in time spent accessing via desktops, of 37%. In essence, then, all that time spent accessing the internet through mobile devices has proved to be accretive. READ ARTICLE
"Mobile Estimated to Represent More Than 4 in 10 US Organic Search Visits" by MarketingCharts Staff
More than 42% of US organic search visits to US sites in Q4 2014 came from mobile devices, up from 31% share during the year-earlier period, details RKG Digital [download page] in its latest quarterly digital marketing report, which covers a cross-section of industry clients, though leans towards retailers. The study notes that iOS devices’ share of mobile search traffic has declined, although they retain a commanding lead over Android devices. Indeed, iOS devices contributed twice as much organic search traffic share (27% share) as did Android devices (13%).
Among the top search engines, Yahoo was again the most influenced by mobile devices in Q4, as in each quarter of 2014. For the first time, half of Yahoo’s organic search traffic came from mobile devices, with mobile’s share of Google search traffic at 43%. Bing remained further behind, at 28% share.
For the quarter, organic search comprised 35% of site traffic, down a point from the same time during the year-earlier period.
The study notes that social media’s share of traffic to retailers’ sites has grown, although it remains fractional in comparison, at 2.4% in Q4. However, RKG notes that “the share of traffic being bucketed as social is depressed by ‘dark social’ visits, which are visits from social media in which the proper referrer string is not passed, leading to incorrect attribution.” Of the social visits tracked, 52% came from mobile devices, the first time mobile has broken the majority threshold in that area.
Meanwhile, mobile’s share of paid search clicks (with this data more heavily skewed towards retail clients) reached 39% in Q4 2014, with smartphones contributing a slightly higher percentage (21%) than tablets (18%). That overall figure was slightly higher on Google, which saw 40% of its paid search clicks coming from mobile devices. But mobile devices’ revenue-per-click remained significantly below desktops, particularly the case with smartphones (67% lower).
In other search-related news:
By RKG’s estimates, Yahoo’s deal in late November to be the default search engine on the latest version of the Mozilla Firefox browser will result in roughly 2% or less of total paid search traffic shifting from Google to Yahoo;
Yahoo/Bing captured 26.3% of US search spending in Q4, per IgnitionOne’s latest quarterly report, although RKG’s study puts Google’s share of US paid search spend at 83.2%;
Globally, search ad click-through rates grew by 11% year-over-year in Q4, says Kenshoo, which also tracked a 14% increase in paid search spend (RKG and IgnitionOne also noted increases in Q4 search spend); and
Google led all search engines with 65.4% share of US explicit core search queries from desktop computers in December 2014, according to comScore, with that figure down from 67% the previous month. Yahoo picked up those 1.6 points, increasing from 10.2 to 11.8% share of explicit core searches. READ ARTICLE
"Outsmart Your Competition with Automated Competitive Analysis" by Angelica Valentine
Online store Everything Truck Parts, a seller of hard-to-find parts, learned this the hard way. Not performing a regular competitive analysis was a major setback for the brand, specifically when it came to pricing. And they aren’t alone in needing to evaluate competitors based on pricing. In fact, in a Q1 2014 RIS survey, more than 73% of online stores cited competitive pressure as one of the most important factors that goes into price changes.
“73% of online stores cite competitive pressure as one of the most important factors that goes into price changes."
For Everything Truck Parts, however, performing a proper pricing analysis was nearly impossible. Sites selling truck parts maintain inventory upward of 1,000 SKUs, a task too tedious to perform manually.
Knowing the stakes at hand, the team worked to find a competitive intelligence solution to either lessen the manual work required or fully automate the process of staying up to date on competitor pricing.
“Competitors are always just a few clicks away, which is why competitive awareness and analysis are so critical."
“Automated competitive analysis] allows us to increase our customer base, product offering, sales and profits all with a very positive return on investment,” said John Moore, owner of Everything Truck Parts."
Author disclaimer: WisePricer, a Wiser product, is an automated competitive analysis offering.
The process behind an automated competitive analysis solution is relatively simple:
1.The product performs an automated pricing analysis of company outlined competitors
2.With insight into competitor pricing, the company determines unique pricing rules for product categories in line with a competitive strategy
3.The product then operates on the store’s backend to automatically update prices based on the competition and the company’s own customized rules
Automated price comparisons are a great way to benchmark against your competitors and incorporate The process behind an automated competitive analysis solution is relatively simple:
1.The product performs an automated pricing analysis of company outlined competitors
2.With insight into competitor pricing, the company determines unique pricing rules for product categories in line with a competitive strategy
3.The product then operates on the store’s backend to automatically update prices based on the competition and the company’s own customized rules
Automated price comparisons are a great way to benchmark against your competitors and incorporate business intelligence into your pricing strategy. Online retail doesn’t exist in a vacuum and treating your online space and competitors as though they aren’t there is an easy way to lose customers. Competitors are always just a few clicks away, which is why competitive awareness and analysis are so central to ecommerce success. In order to be a viable option in the eyes of consumers, online retailers must either have prices that are comparable to competitors or validate a price premium by providing additional value.
“Under-pricing your products based on your competition isn’t necessarily a best practice."
Keep in mind, though, under-pricing your products based on your competition isn’t necessarily a best practice. Pricing influences customer preference in multiple ways. Just take a look at Apple prices vs. Android. The two brands have two very different pricing strategies that work well in combination with the overall brand experience.
3 Steps to Determining Your Pricing Strategy
Once you identify your top competitors, it’s time to put that information to work. Competitive intelligence can come in handy in three ways, all of which help to inform your pricing strategy:
1.Awareness: Monitor the competition to get the full picture of what you’re up against. How are your competitors priced and what products do they carry? If your pricing is vastly different from that of your competitors’ or if you don’t have the top products shoppers are looking for, you could be at a disadvantage and may need to rethink your pricing or product offerings.
2.Automation: Based on the knowledge you gain, you can take action. Priced too low? Bump up your prices to pull in extra profit. Priced too high? Either lower your prices to fit in more with the competition or provide added value that shoppers love, for instance free shipping, periodic discounts, unique products, or anything that makes you stand out from your competitors.
3.Analysis: How have your sales and profits performed since you implemented price changes? Does your brand experience and pricing strategy compliment one another? Move forward with only the most effective strategies that maximize your ROI, and consider the rest part of the trial and error process. READ ARTICLE
Direct mail campaign success story for winter lease up communtiy.
“Traffic began slowing down this fall and I had a brand new apartment community to lease up. I was delighted with our new Spherexx.com built website; so I asked them if they did direct mail and they took care of everything!
They located the addresses I requested, designed a lovely 6” X 9” postcard, printed and had them delivered at a very reasonable cost. There seems to be no end to what they can do. We got immediate response from the direct mailer and a new lease right away.
It is really gratifying to know I have such a powerful resource. Everything they do is stunning and gets dynamic results.”
Maria A. Lamari
Community Manager
Trio Real Estate Services
"10 Tricks to Write Radically Better Emails" by Jessica Stillman on INC.
Think about how much time your customers spend in their email inboxes, and just how many personal details of their lives and relationships are contained there. Being admitted to what has become one of the modern world's most intimate spaces is a privilege for your business. How do you respect that trust and write emails that will delight rather than annoy your customers?
That's the topic of a hugely in-depth guide written by Jimmy Daly and recently published on the blog of email marketing startup Vero. The lengthy resource offers a whopping 20 tips to help you improve your emails and is full of examples from successful marketers to illustrate each point. Intrigued about what it contains? Here is a taste of 10 of the tips to get you started.
1. Create an exclusive club
Everyone likes to feel special. Use that to your advantage by highlighting that the recipient is getting a sneak preview or other perk not available to everyone. "Groove's Alex Turnbull takes a more direct approach. He emails new posts out to blog subscribers before they are available to people who read via RSS feeds or social media," notes Daly. Groove's emails explain that, "as a subscriber, you're getting this link about an hour before the post goes live on our blog's homepage."
2. Keep readers on their toes
Regularity is important in email marketing--if readers expect an email every Wednesday, that's exactly what you should give them--but that doesn't mean you should be satisfied if you don't surprise your customers at least a little bit. For example, "Quora's emails are like a box of chocolates--you never what you're gonna get next," says Daly, who also offers several other examples.
3. Tap into current events
"Urgency can seem desperate but timeliness is always powerful," says Daly. "Tapping into current events or seasonal trends is a good way to encourage readers to open and click emails since their value is passing."
4. Make people happy
If it works in real life, why wouldn't it work over email? "It's not that hard to make people happy. How many assets do you have that you could use to make an email recipient's day a little brighter? If you aren't ready to give something away, simply say something nice, tell an uplifting story, or just ask how they are," Daly reminds marketers.
5. Use the same subject line every time
This one is a little controversial given the importance many place on clickable subject lines, but Daly insists that "if your users trust you and your brand, it's a good idea to do this with transactional emails, like receipts, to make it very easy for users to find and reference them. But the tactic can be useful for newsletters and marketing emails too if you send them on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis." Plus, reusing the same subject line will certainly save you a lot of work coming up with catchy new ones each time.
6. Get personal
"The inbox is a intimate place, mostly used for personal conversation. Your presence there is a privilege, so do your best to write like a human. It's OK to talk about challenges, obstacles, and even failures. Readers can relate since they are likely facing similar situations with their own lives and businesses," writes Daly, who then offers several examples of emails that do this well.
7. Use buttons
Want people to click? Swap in-text links for buttons. Studies verify they're more effective, Daly points out. "Campaign Monitor, for example, got a 28 percent increase on click-thrus when they A/B tested emails with and without buttons," he reports.
8. Gamify a process
"Games, and their rewards, reinforce behavior that users want to repeat. Players earn achievements and unlock new levels, only to be sent out on new quests to earn and unlock more," says Daly. Marketers can use the same principles "to attempt to turn behavior into habit." Starbucks does this by awarding redeemable "stars" to loyal customers. TripAdvisor gives you a badge after a certain number of reviews.
9. Use referral codes
Confident in your brand? Then referral codes are a win for "the referrer, the referree, and the business," writes Daly. "According to ReferralCandy, 83 percent of satisfied customers are willing to refer a product or service but just 29 percent actually do. If you can motivate them to refer friends and family, it's makes conversion a breeze: 92 percent of consumers trust referral over ads."
10. Leverage your partner's brand power
"If your product or service integrates with other products or services, you are sitting on top of a gold mine of brand power," Daly reminds marketers. "Leveraging the power of other brands is a great way to accelerate the authority of your own," he says, offering this example: "Buffer has been creating case studies of some of their biggest customers and using the results as a tool to appeal to enterprise customers." One example is a helpful explanation of how Business Insider increased its Facebook presence using Buffer that reads like a combo testimonial/how-to guide. READ ARTICLE
"7 things you should do NOW to keep cyber-criminals from hacking your life" by Caroline McMillan Portillo
"Survey Says: Automated Emails Outperform Manual Counterparts" by Ellen Valentine at ClickZ
As the digital marketing landscape evolves, so does email's role in the marketing department. Marketing channels are no longer siloed - they must all work together to bring customers and prospects the most relevant information, when and where they are most likely to take the next step in the buying cycle. Marketing automation technology is the key to success in this area, and marketers are definitely starting to take note.
According to data from Silverpop's annual email marketing metrics benchmark study - which examines messages sent by more than 3,000 brands across industries and geographies in 2013 - automated messages achieved an open rate nearly 15 percent higher and click-through rate nearly 79 percent higher than their manual counterparts, indicating today's buyers are most likely to engage with individualized messages delivered when it's most relevant to them. These results highlight that it's time for all kinds of marketing teams to employ a more automated approach!
In years past, marketing was much more straightforward - a company's website was the central point of demand generation and marketers cast a wide net of emails to the database to increase engagement and revenue. Fortunately, the advent of sophisticated marketing automation technologies has made the transition to truly one-to-one customer and prospect interactions easier for marketing departments of all sizes. Whether you're just getting started with marketing automation, or fully up and running, here are a few tips to help you get the most out of the technology:
Vision
Marketing automation can result in confusion, and a wasted investment, if you don't have a strategic vision and a set of goals around how the technology will work with and affect your overall marketing strategy. When discussing your approach, make sure you have executive buy-in. To do this, start at the top - include your chief marketing officer (CMO) (or the highest ranking marketing leader) - and brief them so they understand that using marketing automation and data to change Web and email content is not only possible, but will greatly improve the customer and prospect experience. Remember, in conversations with the C-suite, numbers speak volumes, so be sure to information on how these changes will positively affect your company's bottom line.
You'll also want to evaluate the way you currently manage leads, including scoring and nurturing approaches. Remember to put the customer first, thinking how you can tailor your messages to deliver what benefits them the most. Don't forget to determine how you'll measure your success. Establish key metrics and benchmarks you want to achieve, and make sure your marketing objectives are in line with the overall company goals.
Skills
More savvy buyers and advances in marketing technology have both changed how marketing departments are configured and how the group interacts with other departments within the company. In this new marketing department, you'll want a team of creative thinkers and systems-thinking experts who together can leverage technology to drive marketing efficiency and return on investment (ROI). Consider having teams with the following responsibilities: demand generation, product marketing, marketing communications, and marketing operations. Also consider how more sophisticated marketing technology will affect other departments, including sales, product development, and IT. Don't forget to keep an open and honest dialogue with these other teams - alignment requires buy-in from everyone in the company.
Data
Marketing automation helps you drive incredibly relevant and targeted content, but only if the data you have on your contacts is strong. If you don't have great data on your customers and prospects, you become much more limited in how you'll be able to deploy automation technology. Consider every way your customers interact with you - whether it's on the Web, on a social channel, on a mobile app, or within an email - and how you can capture and integrate these behaviors into your marketing efforts. In some cases, a third party might be able to help you augment your databases and fast path your way to more comprehensive information on your targets. READ ARTICLE
"Apple iOS 8's 12 Best Business Features" by Al Sacco
Apple spent only a minute or so of its two-hour WWDC keynote discussing the enterprise features in its upcoming iOS 8 mobile OS, which is set for release this fall. The response from the crowd after the business announcements was notably tame compared to the roars that followed many of the other announcements. The fact is, iOS 8 actually packs a set of valuable new features that demonstrate Apples strengthening relationship with the enterprise and with business users.
Though Apple dedicated a short amount of time to the enterprise, some of the most exciting "consumer features will also be valuable to business users. Here's a look at 12 of the most notable new iOS 8 features for enterprises and corporate users.
"How Mobile Readers Interact With Marketing Emails" by Ayaz Nanji
The analysis of 6 million email marketing campaigns sent by Campaign Monitor found that 41% occurred on a mobile device in 2013, compared with 28% on a desktop and 22% via webmail.
"Smartphone Penetration Tops 65% of the US Mobile Market in Q4 2013" from Marketing Charts
65% of all email gets opened first on a mobile device — and that’s great news for marketers
According to data from the US Consumer Device Preference Report: Q4 2013 from Movable Ink, way more than half of all email — a full 65 percent — is now being accessed via mobile devices in the U.S. READ ARTICLE
Are You Really Marketing To Your Customer? by Shellie Sylia
The problem is that it doesn't give your potential customer the WIFM in the few seconds that they're looking at your advertising materials. The, "What's In It For Me" factor.
We often don't really consider what our customers' needs are when we are working on headlines, copy, emails, etc. Our advertising materials go on about the features of our product, not the benefits. The features, though important to us, definitely aren't the focus of our customer. Think about your customer and what's important to them. They want to know the benefits to them, the WIFM.
"Our community is gated" "Our offices are spacious" "Our landscaping is remarkable."
These are the features of your property. Why not change the focus from features to the benefits to your customer?
"Our community is gated" becomes "Controlled access for your convenience"
"Our offices are spacious" becomes "Wow your clients with your huge office"
"Our landscaping is remarkable" becomes "Enjoy nature as you walk around your beautiful new community" READ ARTICLE
The One Thing Successful People Never Do
Bernard Marr, Best-selling business author and enterprise performance expert
I have collected some examples that should be an inspiration to anyone who aspires to be successful. They show that if you want to succeed you should expect failure along the way. I actually believe that failure can spur you on and make you try even harder. You could argue that every experience of failure increases the hunger for success. The truly successful won't be beaten, they take responsibility for failure, learn from it and start all over from a stronger position.
Let's look at some examples, including some of my fellow LinkedIn influencers...FULL ARTICLE
"41% of email is now opened on mobile devices" by David Moth
The findings, which come from a report by Knotice, show that smartphones now make up 29% of the total while tablets account for 12%.
This increased from 26% and 11% respectively in the first half of 2012.
And despite the increasing dominance of Google's Android operating system, iOS devices account for the vast majority of mobile email opens.
Did eBay Just Prove That Paid Search Ads Don't Work?
Before you read the rest of this post, go to Google and try searching for "Amazon." You'll probably notice that the top two listings are both for Amazon's website, with the first appearing on a light beige background. If you click on the first — a paid search ad — Amazon will pay Google for attracting your business. If you click on the second, Amazon gets your business but Google gets nothing. Try "Macys," "Walgreens," and "Sports Authority" — you'll see the same thing.
If you search for eBay, though, you'll find only a single listing — an unpaid one. Odds are, after marketers at Amazon, Walgreens and elsewhere catch wind of a preliminary study released on Friday, their search listings will start to look a lot more like eBay's. The study — by eBay Research Labs economists Thomas Blake, Chris Nosko, and Steve Tadelis — analyzed eBay sales after shutting down purchases of search ads on Google and elsewhere, while maintaining a control set of regions where search ads continued unchanged. Their findings suggest that many paid ads generate virtually no increase in sales, and even for ones that do, the sales benefits are far eclipsed by the cost of the ads themselves.
Companies spend enormous sums on marketing their products. Yet it's notoriously difficult to measure the impact of ad expenditures. Companies advertise heavily at times when they hope to sell a lot — like Christmas Eve and Boxing Day — and in areas where they expect to see their sales grow. So a naïve examination of the relationship between ad expenditures and revenues will of course find they move in sync, even if customers don't pay the ads any mind.
Advertising has also traditionally produced a lot of waste — I see ads for Brioni suits when I open up the morning paper, even though the last time I wore a suit was on my wedding day. The study's authors quote 19th century retailer John Wannamaker: "I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I can never find out which half."
The internet promised to change all that. Google, Yahoo, Bing, and others gave sellers the opportunity to target their pitches to customers who were plausibly interested in their products. That's why paid ads for Amazon come up in response to a search for books, but not life insurance. Further aligning the interests of companies and consumers, advertisers only get charged for paid search listings that actually get clicked on, ensuring that they pay for attracting genuinely interested customers.
But what do companies actually get for the billions they now spend on search marketing? The eBay team began by examining whether there's any benefit to buying search ads that contain the word "ebay." In these cases, it's possible that in the absence of paid listings, customers would simply click on the unpaid — or "natural" — listing, which would appear at the top of the search anyway. So in March 2012, eBay conducted a controlled trial to see what would happen if they shut off this "branded keyword advertising" by halting their purchases of search ads containing the word "ebay" on Microsoft and Yahoo search engines, while continuing to purchase search ads on Google as a control. There was no change in eBay sales via Yahoo and Bing, relative to those that came through Google — consumers simply substituted clicks on the unpaid search listing for the now-absent paid ones.
Encouraged by these findings, eBay management agreed to run a controlled experiment where they shut off all Google search ads in a third of the country, while continuing to buy ads everywhere else. In contrast to branded keywords — where it's inevitable that the company will end up as one of the top unpaid listings — there's a good chance that if you try searching for "used les paul guitar," a guitar reseller will appear ahead of eBay's search listing. So in order to drive a customer to eBay for his guitar purchase rather than, say, Guitar Center, it might be worth the cost of placing a carefully targeted ad.
But in aggregate, that's not what the eBay team found — overall, there was no appreciable decline in sales of eBay listings in the part of the country where Google ad purchases were shut off. People who thought to buy guitars via eBay were finding their way to the site anyway, either by clicking on natural listings, or by going directly to eBay's site without using a search engine at all. Search ads did generate a modest increase in the likelihood that internet surfers with little recent history of eBay transactions would end up making purchases on eBay. So paid search ads serve an informational function, letting a sliver of potential eBay customers know that they're in the guitar business. But by the time you get to customers who have had three prior eBay transactions in the last year, the effect of paid search on sales drops almost to zero. Overall, paid search turns out to be a very expensive way of attracting new business: The study's authors estimate that, at least in the short-run, paid ads generate only about 25 cents in extra revenues for each dollar of ad expenditures. (For branded keyword searches, the additional revenues are close to zero.)
People buying search ads aren't idiots — they've looked at the correlation between keyword purchases and subsequent sales and no doubt found it to be strong. But this study suggests that marketing departments should be more careful in confusing causation and correlation in assessing the returns to their ad expenditures, to avoid the equivalent of concluding that marketing works because you advertise and sell a lot in December.
The study's authors note that paid search may be more profitable for other companies than it's been for eBay. For example, as Stop and Shop tries to get a foothold in the crowded New York online grocery marketplace, they might sensibly buy some ads to compete with Fresh Direct. Paid search may also be worth it for smaller companies that lack the name recognition and high Google page rank that make paid searches less valuable for the eBays and Amazons of the world — some of Google's own research indicates that this is likely the case. Caveats aside, eBay's experiences suggest that all companies should look carefully at how much bang they're getting for their search marketing dollars.
Six Questions for Responsive Designers
Responsive design is like a car that is also a boat. It’s great that it does both, but it will never be as good on the roads as a car, or as good on the lake as a boat.
Dedicated desktop sites provide the best user experience for desktop users.
Dedicated mobile sites provide the best user experience for mobile users.
Responsive websites provide “good” experiences for both.
It’s too late to turn back the tides now though.
by Pete Prestipino | Posted on 03.07.2013
The response in “responsive” Web design provides a clue about how to think about the practice. It’s essentially a set of actual techniques – and yes, sometimes tools too – that move elements of the page (e.g. images, navigation, text) based on the capabilities of the device it is being viewed upon. Responsive design enables websites to obtain information about the device and then display a version appropriate for the layout. There are actually quite a few digital moving pieces, so if you’re using responsive design right now – ask these six questions of yourself or your designer before making anything digital come alive.
You likely need no further explanation of why going responsive is the best design choice for your digital presence, but you’ll also need some practical guidance – just the kind of information that subscribers expect from Website Magazine. Here’s a quick guide for those interested in using responsive design, some things you should and need to know, and more importantly ask, about responsive techniques and tools, today and in the future.
A quick note, if you’re reading this on a desktop version you’ll quickly notice that WebsiteMagazine.com is not actually “responsive” per say. Aren’t we practicing what we preach? Well, sort of – we are mobile compliant. Responsive design is terrific for lots of things (like our Web 100 project) but not for every enterprise in every single scenario. Website Magazine, for example, opted for a mobile website over responsive layout as it provided us greater control over the complexity of information we publish and some unique opportunities related to our mobile applications. So yes, Website Magazine is mobile compliant, just not responsive (and it works!).
OK, enough defending our business decisions! You want to know as much as you can about responsive design… and you’re about to. The following outlines several guiding principles as you design (or redesign) your consumer-facing websites for modern desktop, mobile and tablet experiences.
Is the Code Simple or Complex?
Remove/Reduce Interfering HTML
Many might believe that responsive design will limit the amount of information (it does, at least in appearance) that can be made available, but responsive design demands nothing more than a thoughtful approach to the user experience. The way to achieve that is to ensure that the layout is kept as simple as possible.
Are you prioritizing the elements correctly for optimum consumption? Take a moment now to test – remove all styling CSS and styling information from your email or Web design and display it in a browser. If the content is easy to read and ordered appropriately, you’re on the right track. If not, you’re likely engaging in some poor HTML practices, such as the use of inline styles or unnecessary absolute or float positioning.
Another option is to use a one of the many testing tools to see how your responsive designs hold up. One of my personal favorites is Responsi, a very straightforward design-testing tool, which provides drag-to-resize viewport and several standard device presents. Designers will find tools such as Responsi and others very useful in their day-to-day design tasks.
Are Media Queries In Place?
The IFTT of Modern Digital Design
If you’ve read anything about responsive design you have come across the term media queries; the code that queries the users device to understand how the site is best viewed and then providing an appropriate response for the width conditions. Essentially, depending on the client-side response, designers will load the right style sheet and even have the ability to add specific styles in different scenarios. Think of media queries as “if this, then that” statements.
Are Optimal Resolutions Targeted?
Know the Common Breakpoints
In order to create and use media queries however, it is important to know which are the most common resolutions used to view your digital assets. A business’ mobile efforts are best focused on the most popular devices, which fortunately makes quick work of the development process for designers. To work with these devices, designers must essentially just account for the minimum and maximum widths – 480, 768 and 1024 (in both portrait and landscape). Using a free tool like Responsi (listed above) or Screenfly helps to understand quickly if everything is appearing in an optimal way.
Is the Layout Flexible?
Adapt Quickly to the Viewport
When it comes to responsive design, layouts (obviously) need to be flexible, which means you’ll need to leave those pesky tables alone. The best option is to use a flexible, fluid grid (which uses columns to arrange content) and relative instead of fixed width to adapt to the right viewport size. If you’re using the right media queries in conjunction with a fluid layouts, you’ll have most if not all devices covered. To speed development on this front, consider the use of grid systems such as those listed here and here.
Are Images Acting Responsively?
Adaptive Sizing of Images
The use of pictures and images on a responsively designed website or email can cause headaches for designers – and if you’re not....
Pew Internet: Mobile
Highlights of the Pew Internet Project’s research related to mobile technology.
(Note: This page will be updated whenever new data is available.)
As of January 2013:
26% of American adults own an e-reader
31% of American adults own a tablet computer
For more information on e-readers, tablets, and libraries in the digital age, please visit the new section of our website: libraries.pewinternet.org.
As of December 2012:
- 87% of American adults have a cell phone
- 45% of American adults have a smartphone
A spreadsheet of the above data is available for download here.
The demographic breakdown:
Cell internet access:
As of April 2012, 55% of adult cell owners use the internet on their mobile phones; nearly double what we found three years ago.
31% of current cell internet users say that they mostly go online using their cell phone, and not using some other device such as a desktop or laptop computer. That works out to 17% of all adult cell owners who are “cell-mostly internet users”—that is, who use their phone for most of their online browsing.
For more specific information on cell internet access, visit our recent report.
Mobile phone problems:
In April 2012, we found:
- 72% of cell owners experience dropped calls at least occasionally. Some 32% of cell owners say they encounter this problem at least a few times a week or more frequently than that.
- 68% of cell owners receive unwanted sales or marketing calls at one time or another. And 25% of cell owners encounter this problem at least a few times a week or more frequently.
Some 79% of cell phone owners say they use text messaging on their cells. We asked them if they got spam or unwanted texts:
- 69% of those who are texters say they get unwanted spam or text messages. Of those texters, 25% face problems with spam/unwanted texts at least weekly.
Some 55% of cell phone owners say they use their phones to go online— to browse the internet, exchange emails, or download apps. We asked them if they experience slow download speeds that prevent things from loading as quickly as they would like:
- 77% of cell internet users say they experience slow download speeds that prevent things from loading as quickly as they would like. Of those cell internet users, 46% face slow download speeds weekly or more frequently.
How Americans use their cell phones:
See: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Best-Worst-Mobile/Part-V/Activities.aspx
Additional activities:
The % of cell phone owners who use their cell phone to…
- Take a picture: 82
- Send or receive text messages: 80
- Access the internet: 56
- Send or receive email: 50
- Record Video: 44
- Download Apps: 43
- Look for health or medical information online: 31
- Check bank account balance or do any online banking: 29
See: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Cell-Activities.aspx
"Just in time" information:
An April 2012 survey finds that some 70% of all cell phone owners and 86% of smartphone owners have used their phones in the previous 30 days to perform at least one of the following activities:
- Coordinate a meeting or get-together -- 41% of cell phone owners have done this in the past 30 days.
- Solve an unexpected problem that they or someone else had encountered -- 35% have used their phones to do this in the past 30 days.
- Decide whether to visit a business, such as a restaurant -- 30% have used their phone to do this in the past 30 days.
- Find information to help settle an argument they were having -- 27% haveused their phone to get information for that reason in the past 30 days.
- Look up a score of a sporting event -- 23% have used their phone to do that in the past 30 days.
- Get up-to-the-minute traffic or public transit information to find the fastest way to get somewhere -- 20% have used their phone to get that kind of information in the past 30 days.
- Get help in an emergency situation -- 19% have used their phone to do that in the past 30 days.
Overall, these “just-in-time” cell users—defined as anyone who has done one or more of the above activities using their phone in the preceding 30 days—amount to 62% of the entire adult population. (See Just-in-time Information through Mobile Connections.)
CLICK HERE TO READ REST OF ARTICLE
Your Hidden PPC Prospect: Google
When using AdWords or any advertising medium, you always create ads with the prospect in mind. But unlike most other media that will run your ad as long as your checks clear and you don’t violate editorial policy, Google cares very much that your ad is relevant and appealing to its users.
Google began with a couple of guys and an idea. Two Stanford graduate students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, were thinking about how to make a better search engine.
At the time, this seemed about as good as an idea as trying to come up with another fast food restaurant that was going to dominate America. It certainly seemed like there were enough search engines already, and a powerful few maintained a stranglehold on the market.
But the search landscape was far from perfect. Searchers weren’t getting consistently relevant results, and those results typically took a long time to load.
Yet most people didn’t notice or mind these problems since online search seemed to be such a miraculous improvement over what had existed before: calling the theater and spending ten minutes listening to a recording of movies listings and show times; or lugging out the Yellow Pages and phoning 12 bicycle shops to see if they had a 24-inch unicycle tire in stock.
Online search, with useful information at your fingertips from the privacy and convenience of your computer, seemed like a miracle. Page and Brin assumed there were better ways to serve it up.
From Keyword Stuffing to Off-Page Factors
The big problem with search engines, prior to Google, were the rules those engines used to decide what page to show the searcher. The search engines would look at the pages, read the words on the page and say, “OK, so that’s what this is about.” The more times the keyword appeared on the page, the more relevant the search engine assumed that word was for the searcher.
Website owners quickly figured out that getting a top ranking on the search engines for important keywords was crucial to their success. Rather than thinking about the experience of the end user (their customer), they lured prospects to their pages by manipulating the search engines.
A search for “24 inch unicycle tire” would return the pages that contained that phrase the most. Search engine optimization (SEO) became an arms race to stuff as many keywords into the web page as possible.
As you can imagine (or perhaps remember), search engines rewarding “keyword stuffing” meant that searchers were landing on pretty dismal web pages.
In this face of this less-than-optimal search experience, Larry and Sergey asked a crucial question: in other settings, how do people decide if a source is relevant?
They applied their question to the world of academia: How do researchers know when a particular paper, book or study is really important?
How Scholars Vote
Scholars vote for important works by citing them in their own work. The value of a study can be determined by how many times it’s referenced in subsequent work.
If a work is published and never gets referenced, it probably isn’t of great value. In contrast, a book or paper that appeared in the notes and bibliographies of other academic publications – that must be an influential work.
Google was built on this insight and analogy. Page and Brin devised what they called “off page factors” to determine whether a web site or a web page was relevant for a particular search term. A web page would be deemed important and relevant by Google and would rank highly for a keyword if a lot of other web pages linked to that page using the keyword as the visible part of the link.
For example, a post on a blog read by many unicycle enthusiasts that links to unicycles.com/tires as follows:
“… I got a great deal on a 24” Panaracer unicycle tire, so I was able to refurbish my unicycle…”
...would help that page rank highly in Google for the keyword [24” Panaracer unicycle tire].
The more “popular” those linking web pages are, the more popularity they confer upon a page they link to. Like how you can identify the popular kids in high school because they hang out with the other popular kids.
For the first time, the top positions on search results pages were assigned based on merit as determined by a broader community.
In a matter of few months with no advertising, Google eclipsed the other search engines and become name brand of search. We don’t Lycos, we don’t Webcrawl, we don’t AltaVista; we Google. The improved search experience made Google the overwhelming winner.
What does that fun history lesson mean?
Moral 1: Your Ads and Website Must Support Google’s Prime Directive
Google understands that its prime directive is to quickly give searchers relevant results. When they launched AdWords in 2002, they applied the same principles to advertising that they did to their “real” content. Ads that aren’t relevant, or annoy searchers, threaten Google’s dominance by diminishing the search experience.
Google discovered that search is different from newspapers or television. People don’t pick up newspapers or flip through channels on their television hoping to find an ad for unicycle tires.
When people search online, on the other hand, they are almost as likely to be looking for a sponsored listing as a free one. Whatever scratches their itch, whether it be organic or paid.
Unlike typical advertising media, Google allows and rewards ads that provide a high quality experience for searchers. Google measures this in two ways:
- Does the ad match the search intent, as represented by the search query?
- If someone clicks that ad, do they get a high quality experience on the website?
Only when the answer to those two questions is yes will they pay attention to the auction that determines placement.
Google cares about the experience of the searcher much more than they care about you giving them a dollar in exchange for a click. A click today means a dollar today, while a satisfied searcher means many more dollars tomorrow and beyond.
Even though you pay Google when you use AdWords, you aren't their customer. The satisfaction of the searchers who never give Google a dime is the cornerstone of their vast empire.
Moral 2: Stay Ahead of Changes by Understanding Google’s Motivation
The second relevant aspect of Google psychology is this: Google understands it rose to prominence out of nowhere really quickly, based on a slight edge. They had made, initially, a slight improvement to the search experience.
Therefore, everyone at Google has profound paranoia drilled into their DNA: they think of Google as being one tweak away from being out of business completely.
Just as their rose to dominance based on a slight edge, lots of people are out there trying to create better search engines, aiming to eat Google’s lunch.
Page and Brin ran the company from a friend’s garage for six months, so they know that a good idea is more powerful than lots of funding and huge a staff.
Google has never stopped experimenting to improve the search experience. That’s why thousands of Google advertisers woke up one morning in summer 2006 to discover that all their five cent keywords now cost them $10. Google had determined that their ads represented a poor quality experience for searchers, so it penalized the advertisers until they improved that quality.
And pretty much every month over the past 7 years, Google advertisers have been surprised and shaken by “Google Slaps”: changes in policy and algorithm that kick them off the first page of search results.
Why Should The Apartment Industry Use Pay Per Click Advertisement?
One PPC analyst says, “PPC is most effective in industries where a customer is worth a lot of money over the long-term.” Why is this? Simply because PPC can be expensive. You most likely want to use PPC in a lease-up situation or during a low occupancy period to quickly shrink vacancy. It is generally not used for everyday advertising, but many apartment operators will use PPC regularly in a weak market.
Why Should The Apartment Industry Use Pay Per Click Advertisement?
Written By: Spherexx.com
Pay Per Click (PPC) ads can produce quality leads, and therefore leases in a short period of time. Plus, you can track this advertising effectiveness to know your exact ROI.
One PPC analyst says, "PPC is most effective in industries where a customer is worth a lot of money over the long-term." Why is this? Simply because PPC can be expensive. You most likely want to use PPC in a lease-up situation or during a low occupancy period to quickly shrink vacancy. It is generally not used for everyday advertising, but many apartment operators will use PPC regularly in a weak market.
Typically, apartment keywords range from $.50 to $5.00 every time a prospect clicks your advertisement. A click on your PPC ad doesn't even get you a name and phone number of a prospect - so the "click" is just the beginning of driving that prospect to give you their information. Note: the Insurance Industry can pay more than $54 a click. A cost per lead (CPL) averages around $50.00. Here are some articles on how PPC works: check out Wikipedia and Google Adwords for more detailed information.
What if my site already ranks well on Search Engine pages?
If it does that's great. But let's think for a second about how search engines make money with advertising money from PPC ads. For example, Google makes $3 billion a month (yes, billion) on these ads. So Google wants their ads to be clicked on first. Even if you rank #1 on page 1 for your keyword, there can still be three PPC ads right above your listing. It also allows you to target keywords you probably could not win with just organic SEO efforts. You can always benefit from PPC when you need it.
Should I do PPC myself or hire out?
Of course you can do it yourself, but remember how Google make it's $3 billion a month-with PPC. If you aren't an expert on search engine optimization it is easy to lose a lot of money and quickly. What about landing pages, setting up tracking, call leads? And don't forget the time it will take you to educate yourself on best practices, and of course monitoring the account itself.
What if you contract your PPC campaign?
Who should you hire? This is where it can get tricky. Let's look at two philosophies for PPC methods.
Traffic Producing Philosophy
The first and most prevalent system is this: we will get you lots and lots of traffic.
There are lots of large national companies that claim to have the best "algorithms" in the market. They send all that traffic to your website and hope it will produce leads. These companies will get you lots of impressions and will do a really good job at getting you a low cost per click (CPC). This works well for some industries, but not so great for the apartment industry.
Lead Producing Philosophy
The second system of thought is to optimize the campaign to target quality prospects and thus produce highly qualified leads. These providers will produce quality, lead-generating landing pages and track the customer from the landing page to your website. The CPC is much higher when applying this philosophy, but the amount of leads produced and the cost per lead (CPL) is significantly lower, thus giving you a much better ROI than the traffic-producing philosophy.
In a three month comparative case study (same budget, same keywords) between two companies using these two philosophies, the lead-producing philosophy prevailed.
Note: Company A is traffic producing, Company B is lead-producing.
Company A produced 21 leads a month with a $52.16 CPL (Cost Per Lead)
Company B produced 33 leads a month with a $30.31 CPL (Cost Per Lead)
Company B (lead-producing) had:
63% more leads
58% less cost per lead
Look for a company with a lead-producing philosophy.
Ask these questions:
Do they produce a lead generating landing page?
What is their tracking method: can they track all the leads, even the ones that come back later?
What about phone call tracking, make sure it is included in the package
How much are their fees? Most companies can't or won't tell you. So pick someone that is honest about their fees, even if it may seem a little high to you; you may not know how much an undisclosed bidder is actually taking.
In Conclusion:
PPC campaigns will impact your traffic, so use them when you need a traffic surge.
Don't try it yourself, leave PPC strategy to the professionals.
Pick the right company that will send you leads that you can convert to leases.
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