How to use video as an effective marketing tool?

Video marketing

So what is video marketing? Well according to (Fire, 2013) video marketing is when you “use video to promote or market your brand, product or service. A strong marketing campaign incorporates video into the mix”. (Fire, 2013) continues to mention that “Customer testimonial, videos for live events, how to videos explainer videos, viral videos” are some of the types of videos that companies can use.

How can you use videos on your website and social pages?

The best way to use video on your website if the video is not your own and taken from somewhere else on the website is to use the embed code. This enables you to use the video on your website by copying it over and means that you do not have to download the video to have it on your site.

What companies use video marketing well?

Here’s my top 3 marketing videos that I think customer react really well too and have had the greatest impact lately.

Evian Baby Advert

This advert has great qualities, it has humour, fun and also a story. This is what most marketing videos should have. It should leave you thinking about it and make you want to talk about it to your friends and family. For this advert it certainly stayed in my head for a while and I will be telling my friends and family about it. Also it showed off some of their products, the Evian bottle can be seen in a number of shots.

Cravendale – Cats with thumbs

See this marketing video has branding from the start, the man is holding the product. It is also similar to the Evian baby advert in the terms of humour and fun factors. With this marketing video the company has also included links to their social sites (#catswiththumbs) which should help them gain more followers and likes through their connected social channels (Well you would have thought so with over 8 million views!)

Ronseal one coat fence life

This marketing video is quite a new one and had so much of an impact that national press actually picked up on it – click here for link

This video would have been low cost as it simply a man painting a fence for 3 minutes. This was played on TV and has had viewers glued to the screens to see what would happen, and nothing did. That was the point, but it was engaging in a different way and made viewers remember it and certainly the brand! – again this was another video which was supported by a hashtag (#ronsealadbreak)

Strengths and weaknesses of video marketing

Strengths

  • Videos are simple and easy to digest and as (Redbirdonline.com, 2016) mentions “what would you rather do, read a 30-page instruction manual or watch a 3-minute video?”
  • Video is memorable – they stick in your head and speak a thousand words if created well
  • Video is also extremely popular with over a billion people visiting YouTube each month according to (Redbirdonline.com, 2016)

Negatives

  • Video’s can be very expensive depending on what type of video you are trying to create
  • “A poorly executed video can actually harm your reputation or worsen your brand positioning” according to (Design, 2014)
  • Targeting the right audience when creating your video is extremely important, if you get this wrong your video will not have any effect at all

References

Fire, F. (2013). What is video marketing? [online] Frozen Fire. Available at: http://frozenfire.com/video-marketing/ [Accessed 7 May 2016].

Redbirdonline.com. (2016). The Pros, Cons and Costs of Video Marketing | Redbird Communications. [online] Available at: http://www.redbirdonline.com/blog/pros-cons-and-costs-video-marketing [Accessed 7 May 2016].

Design, O. (2014). Advantages and Disadvantages of Video on Your Website. [online] Omnivision Design. Available at: https://www.omnivisiondesign.com/pros-and-cons-of-video-on-your-website/ [Accessed 7 May 2016].

How to create the perfect Pecha Kucha?

So what is a Pecha Kucha?

“A Pecha Kucha is a presentation format that last exactly six minutes and forty seconds” according to (Rouse, 2016). A Pecha Kucha consists of 20 slides which last for exactly 20 seconds and can be sometimes referred to as a 20×20 presentation according to (Rouse, 2016).

Pecha Kucha stands for “the sounds of conversation” the slides will progress automatically with the presenter providing a voiceover the slides that are automatically turning according to (Rouse, 2016). Pecha Kucha’s should be fluid and run very smoothly without hesitation or people trying to go back to previous slide. They should be short and sharp and keep the audience engaged.

Tips for creating a good Pecha Kucha

Try and use images for words

By using images instead of words it helps the delivery of the presentation also makes it easier for the presenter to explain points. With only 20 seconds to deliver each slide it means that if you have lots of sentences once you have mentioned these your time could be up.

Make your presentation visually pleasing

It is really important that you make sure that your Pecha Kucha is visually pleasing and easy on the eye. It means that you will have to lose some of the more popular options like bullet points and long strings of text. Instead include some fancy text boxes and images like I said above to boost the impact of your presentation.

Please see below an example of a visually pleasing Pecha Kucha;

As you can see by the example above no words were used, only pictures. Pictures can speak a thousand words. This is why Pecha Kucha’s can be so effective if created properly and effectively!

The above video was taken from PechaKucha.org this is a great place to understand the power of Pecha Kucha.

Practice, Practice, Practice

It is essential that your Pecha Kucha flows properly and this can only happen if you know your presentation inside out. You have to know what is coming up on the next slide and practice many times before you have to present it. The best Pecha Kucha’s rarely have many words and only images so these need to be enough to prompt you as with no words there is nothing else to help you out. It needs to be like a script, practiced in this way too. You should know what to say without looking at the slides.

Timing

You only have 20 seconds per slide your timing has to be perfect as you cannot pause the slide progression or go back to slide if you haven’t quite finished this is why my point above is so important, to practice. I would recommend that you give yourself 16 seconds per slide to give you a bit of room for error or thinking encase you get stuck on a slide. If you do it could ruin your Pecha Kucha.

What software to use to create Pecha Kucha?

PowerPoint

The best way to create a Pecha Kucha is by using PowerPoint. The following steps to take to create a template can be seen below;

You can also download a template from this website by clicking here!

Prezi

This is another website that can be used to make a Pecha Kucha. According to (prezi.com, 2016) it uses “infinite canvas, unlike slides, Prezi uses an open canvas, allowing you to freely move in and out of ideas”. Prezi presentation are much more appealing on the eye than your usual PowerPoint. So if you want something different which will engage your audience Prezi is the one for you.

References

Rouse, M. (2016). What is PechaKucha (Pecha Kucha)? – Definition from WhatIs.com. [online] WhatIs.com. Available at: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/PechaKucha-pecha-kucha [Accessed 2 May 2016].

prezi.com. (2016). Why Prezi is Better | Visual Storytelling | Features | Prezi. [online] Available at: https://prezi.com/features/ [Accessed 2 May 2016].

Tips for creating the best content for your company

When creating and writing content it is important that you draft out your work and come back to it to amend and improve. Your first draft should be whatever comes into your mind. If you were to spend to much time thinking about what you are writing and to get it right first time it is likely to take you much longer and could cause writers block according to (Content Marketing Institute, 2011)

Next you have to make sure that you write the content in the right style to match your target audience. So it is important to know your customer base and match it to them. In doing so the content will be received better and they will be able to relate to the content you have written. (Johnson, 2013) mentions a good point that you should “Always write as if you were writing for that particular user and not for a crowd of faces”. This is very true content should be designed to appeal and persuade your target customer.

Creating SEO friendly content

It is important that your content is unique, it doesn’t have to be something completely new but it shouldn’t be a carbon copy of another person work. Google will actually identify content that is duplicated so it is important to make sure that your content isn’t copied from another site or blog.

The title and description are very important when writing content. This should be thought about in detail to ensure that it will be picked up in searches when people search for a certain area. According to (Chris, 2014) “you should give attention to title and description of your page but you should also consider adding keywords naturally in the body of the page as well.” Keywords are important, these in essence are tags and words that will be picked up in the search. For instance, if you are stag company, including references to stag and best man a certain activity this will help the content or blog be picked up within a google search.

(Chris, 2014) also identifies another great point that is important to consider when writing website content to boost SEO. It is really good to use interlinking. This is when companies use “internal linking in their articles/pages to create their own small webs within their websites” according to (Chris, 2014). When writing the content, they could be writing a blog post about a product that they sell, within the blog possibly when they write the name of the product they could create a hyperlink which will direct them to the landing page of the product.

Being on top of SEO

A piece of software that you can use to monitor your SEO called SEMrush. There is other SEO tracking software on the market but this is seen to be the market leader. According to (Semrush.com, 2016) this software enables you to see competitor’s best keywords, discover new competitors in AdWords, analyse competitors display ads, conduct link analysis, find the right keywords for SEO and PPC campaigns and also lets you create reports to see who the top publishers and advertiser are for your company.

An example of SEMrush’s dashboard can be seen below;

SR-Report_1

So by having the power to discover all of these facts mentioned above it should put you in a great position when writing specific content and also it should give you an idea of what you should be writing your content about.

References

Content Marketing Institute. (2011). Content Writing: 10 Ways to Write Like a Content Marketing Jedi. [online] Available at: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2011/06/content-marketing-jedi/ [Accessed 7 Apr. 2016].

Johnson, A. (2013). How To Write Great Content That Deserves To Rank: In 4 Simple Steps. [online] Moz. Available at: https://moz.com/ugc/how-to-write-great-content-that-deserves-to-rank-in-4-simple-steps [Accessed 7 Apr. 2016].

Chris, A. (2014). How to write SEO friendly content. [online] reliablesoft.net. Available at: https://www.reliablesoft.net/how-to-write-seo-friendly-content/ [Accessed 7 Apr. 2016].

Semrush.com. (2016). Features. [online] Available at: https://www.semrush.com/features/ [Accessed 12 Apr. 2016].

Methods in measuring affiliate marketing

Before starting an affiliate marketing campaign, you should understand what the company is trying to achieve. By knowing what you are trying to achieve you can set yourself some useful KPI’s to judge and measure your success.

The most commonly adopted KPI’s for affiliate marketing according to (Skeldon, 2014) is;

  • Leads
  • Conversions
  • Conversion rate
  • Cost per acquisition (CPA)
  • Return on ad spend (ROAS)
  • New traffic (First-time visitors), generation
  • Social engagement (likes, shares, comments)
  • Purchase intent (store locator, shopping basket activity)

The points in red are paid affiliate techniques, the ones highlighted in green are free affiliate marketing techniques.

Leads are often used as pay per lead. This is when a company will pay out for every lead the affiliate sends to the site. This is usually done through a sign up form that requires the customer to provide their email address. Leads are to gain new customers either bringing them to the site or by providing contact information.

Conversions according to (Kirkpatrick, 2012) is “The point at which a recipient of a marketing message performs a desired action”. This could be either to respond to the marketing email or just to open the email which has been sent, they need to respond in some way. Conversion rates are worked out on the percentage of customers who take the action required, for example purchasing the product after they have been tagged by a marketing campaign.

Cost per acquisition according to (Marketing Terms, 2016) is an “Online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely on qualifying actions such as sales or registrations”. The main benefit of CPA is that the person creating the content or website providing the lead relies on good conversion levels as their commission will depend on whether it has converted or not.

Return on ad spend is the revenue generated divided by the spend of the company. According to (iAffiliate Management, 2015) “ROAS is how much gross revenue is generated for every $1.00 of marketing spend”. To work out a companies spend you will take the total spend and the amount generated and divide this amount to give you a total of how much revenue is generated per $1.00 spent.

New traffic, social engagement and purchase intent are all free methods of affiliate marketing.

Third party applications for monitoring affiliate partnerships

All of the above third party applications are software which you have to pay for. The pricing ranges from $47.95 per month to $1,750 per month.

According to iDevAffiliate’s their software includes features like different marketing options ranging from banners, page peels, text ads, video, emails templates also a great way to manage the commissioning structure. It will show you the percentage pay-out, flat rate pay-out, pay per click and many others. A great feature is also being able to create reports, these can create daily activity reports, the top affiliates which is a great way to see how well you are performing to the KPI’s you have chosen from above.

A tutorial video for iDevAffiliate’s software can be seen below;

Third party software makes it easier for the end user to manage their affiliates with many company who offer this software providing templates and easy to read reports to make it as user friendly as possible to the end user.

References

Skeldon, P. (2014). Measuring the success of affiliate marketing – eSeller. [online] eSeller. Available at: http://eseller.net/measuring-success-affiliate-marketing/ [Accessed 6 Apr. 2016].

Kirkpatrick, D. (2012). Marketing 101: What is conversion? | MarketingSherpa Blog. [online] Sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com. Available at: http://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/marketing/conversion-defined/ [Accessed 6 Apr. 2016].

Marketing Terms. (2016). What is Cost Per Action (CPA)? – Definition & Information. [online] Available at: http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/cost_per_action/ [Accessed 6 Apr. 2016].

iAffiliate Management. (2015). How to Improve Return on Ad Spend | iAffiliate Management. [online] Available at: http://iaffiliatemanagement.com/blog/affiliate-marketing-how-to/how-to-improve-return-on-ad-spend/ [Accessed 6 Apr. 2016].

Affiliate marketing

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a marketing method which refers people to make online purchases. In return they earn commission by promoting other company’s products and services. This is a benefit for both parties as mentioned by (Strategies, 2016) the company promoting the product or service is happy as they are earning a commission just for advertising something on their website. The company who owns the product or service is of course happy because they have a sale from a customer who might not have normally come to their site direct.

The size of the affiliate marketing industry

So to give you an understanding of the size of the affiliate marketing industry in the UK, in 2013 advertising companies spent a total of £1bn marketing through their affiliate sites which in return generated a total of £14bn according to (Iabuk.net, 2016). Within a report by (Iabuk.net, 2016) it continues to mention that for every £1 spent it would bring a return of £14 for advertisers, and the most common method they use is OPM – (Online Performance Marketing) this according to (Iabuk.net, 2016) is “when advertisers don’t pay publishers to show the ad, they only pay if the ad causes someone to complete a defined action, such as making a purchase”.

OPM Examples

Compare the marketwww.comparethemarket.com/

This is a website where consumers can go to find the best deals for a whole range of services including car insurance, home insurance, credit card, life insurance and broadband deals.

Comparethemarket

Wowcherwww.wowcher.co.uk/

Wowcher describe themselves as “a deal a day site that uses the power of group buying or bulk buying to get unbeatable deals on the best stuff to do, see, visit, eat and buy in a variety of cities in the UK” (Wowcher.co.uk, 2016).

Wowcher

Nectarhttps://www.nectar.com/

Is a loyalty card programme which people can use in a number of UK high street retailers to generate points, in return for the points people can redeem them for days out, flight and meals.

 

Nectar

What are the advantages and disadvantages for companies using affiliate marketing?

Advantages
  • Companies will be available in many different areas of the internet which will result in more potential customers and certainly leads for the company, this will also mean that the company doesn’t have spend time and money in finding these customers.
  • The risk is very low for companies as they will only be paying the affiliate companies once they receive a lead or sale from the customer they found.
  • As a company starts to build its affiliate network it will in turn increase it rating for inbound links. In doing so it will mean that search engines will recognise this and boost their rankings when the company is searched for in a search engine.
Disadvantages
  • The company could lose track of how the product is being advertised and in term gain negative press for their products or services.
  • Companies can suffer from commission costs. If companies are using to many affiliates to gain customers, this could result in receiving bad leads and mean that they are paying out for customer’s details of poor quality.

Summary

All in all, affiliate marketing can be very profitable for both parties. It is important that the affiliate understands the product that they are advertising and believes in it in order to gain the most from it. The company needs to be wise with who they let advertise their product and where they are being advertised. It is important for the company that the affiliate understands and appreciates the rules and regulations when advertising products. If they do not, it could become costly for the company using the affiliate and in turn the company will lose money through it.

 

Strategies, S. (2016). Smart Affiliate Marketing Strategies. [online] The Smart Passive Income Blog. Available at: http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/affiliate-marketing-strategies/ [Accessed 28 Jan. 2016].

Iabuk.net, (2016). Affiliate marketing & lead generation ad spend hits £1bn | IAB UK. [online] Available at: http://www.iabuk.net/about/press/archive/affiliate-marketing-lead-generation-ad-spend-hits-1bn [Accessed 28 Jan. 2016].

Wowcher.co.uk, (2016). Wowcher | About Us. [online] Available at: http://www.wowcher.co.uk/aboutus.html [Accessed 31 Jan. 2016].

Vine as a digital marketing tool

So what is Vine?

Vine is a video sharing app which launched in January 2013. Vine was acquired by Twitter in October 2012 just before its launch. How this app works is that users can only record a total of 6 seconds worth of footage, then it will play to the continuously on a loop either in the app, twitter or on embedded webpages.

Vine is available on iOS, Android and Windows according to the companies website – https://vine.co

The impact of Vine

Since launch Vine boasts over 200 million active monthly users according to (Smith, 2016). Some other interesting statistic’s that (Smith, 2016) mentions is that the 10% of top brands that are on twitter that use Vine and 100 million people watch Vines each month!

Companies that use Vine

Many companies are now using Vine as a digital marketing platform, companies such as Cadbury’s, Nike, Sony and ASOS. Vine’s produced by companies like these are receiving “loops” in the 100,000’s which shows that it is reaching the masses.

Some great examples of Vine working for companies are below;

Sony

Nike

How to create a successful Vine?

The most important aspect of being successful in Vine is that you need to make sure that your Vines are creative and funny. These are essential for your company’s success on Vine. It is in truth a method of viral marketing. With viral marketing it takes a lot of luck to be successful, according to (Scott and Scott, 2011) “The formula is a combination of some great (and free) web content (a video, a blog entry, or an e-book) that I ground-breaking or amazing or hilarious or involves a celebrity, plus a network of people to light the fire”. I believe this is also the formula for Vine. Each video needs something that grabs the viewer’s attention, which (Scott and Scott, 2011) explains being “ground-breaking or hilarious” and also a celebrity endorser. If we look at an example of a company below that has created a video which is funny and includes celebrities and look at the loops at which the video received it shows how this method can work.

So for example if we look at this Vine shared by Jake Paul. He is advertising for Coca-Cola. This video currently has over 5 million loops. Jake Paul himself has 4.8 million followers. Coca-Cola would have seen Jake Paul as a “Vine Celebrity” and would have used the formula that I mentioned above, to create a video with something which is funny and then to help its success used a celebrity to push it.

Coca-Cola will also be gaining other benefits from getting Jake Paul to record and post a video on his account, he would have posted it to their account and used a hashtag to push it. Coca-Cola will have in return received advertising for Coca-Cola and also boosted its own followers by being mentioned by Jake Paul.

Would Vine work for everyone?

The simple answer is no. Vine will not work for everyone and it will cost companies a fair bit of money to have “Vine Celebrities” create a video for them. According to (DeSimone, 2016) another “Vine Celebrity” Brittany Furlan could charge around $43,500 for one six second Vine. She has 8.7 million followers and is in the top 5 list of “Celebrity Viner’s”.

The idea and concept for the video has to be right in order for the video to have any effect. The video would get lost amongst the masses, according to (Smith, 2016) on average there are 12 million videos uploaded everyday! Lastly when companies post their videos they must make sure that they hashtag them in order for them to be found, without this they are extremely unlikely reach any people.

Smith, C. (2016). By The Numbers: 25 Amazing Vine Statistics. [Blog] DMR. Available at: http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/vine-statistics/ [Accessed 28 Jan. 2016].

Scott, D. and Scott, D. (2011). The new rules of marketing & PR. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons.

DeSimone, E. (2016). How Do Viners Get Paid? 3 Simple Ways Vine Stars Make Money. [Blog] New Media Rockstars. Available at: http://newmediarockstars.com/2015/03/how-do-viners-get-paid-3-simple-ways-vine-stars-make-money/ [Accessed 28 Jan. 2016].

Argos Case Study Insight

Introduction

Argos is one of the market leaders when it comes down to high street retaillers. With over 40 years of trading there is no doubt that there customers have high expectation when visiting there stores. In this brief post i will be mentioning and looking into the data sourced by Brandwatch for Argos as they try to understand their customers in order to launch their digital stores.

Keeping up with the digital age

It is no suprise that Argos would need to incorporate the use of IT in their stores as they are the leading digital retailer, offering over 43,000 products through their website and also mobile channels. As Argos’s customers are extremely important to them and the expectations are very high they need to see what intial feedback they are recieving for these new, “digital stores”.

Brandwatch

“Brandwatch is one of the world’s leading social media listening and analytics technology platforms”. With a statement like this Brandwatch are  an internationally recognised company who work with thousands of brands such as Pepsico, British Airways and Sky. Brandwatch can provide Argos with incrediably accurate and detail information about what Argos’s customers are saying about them. This is very beneficail in this case as they need to track their customers and see what their concerns are and what they like about these new changes.

Conclusions via brandwatch’s data

With the information gathered by Brandwatch, Argos are now finding it very easy to track what customers say by having key terms to track what they say. By doing this they can help improve what the issue was or send praise to a certain store that has done well. Within the case study there was an instance that they were tweeted about the sign not being spelt correctlty, the person who sent the tweet had mentioned the store this was picked up by the filters and the issue was dealt with. This couldn’t have been done without Brandwatch’s system. By using big data analytics Argos is now able to easily track and montior consumers thoughts about their brand.

For an example of how Brandwatch has used big data analytics to look at the most talked about brands, please look at this post by Brandwatch