The Department of Veterans Affairs is suffering a shortfall of physicians, especially in mental health. A steady flow of scandals and attempts at strict reform by Congress may be hurting recruitment.
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Google+ Still Kicking: Collections Now Available In The iOS App
Collections, which gives Google+ users the ability to create topic-based streams, now has a home on Apple devices.
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Personality Matters: How one company doubled its ROI by customizing ads based on personality
Today’s algorithms can reliably predict people’s personality traits just by analyzing their Facebook updates.
As marketers, we have the ability to use the digital footprint data of our customers to assess their personality, create messages that resonate with them personally and build more effective campaigns.
To see if this really works, let’s look at return on investment (ROI) results from a recent test of customized ads based on personality traits.
Sandra Matz and her fellow researchers from the Psychometrics Centre, University of Cambridge, collaborated with VisualDNA, an agency helping companies leverage psychographic audience data to better personalize their messaging. Together, they worked with an online beauty retailer to conduct an experiment on Facebook, and presented their results at the 2015 Annual Convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP).
The researchers hypothesized that presenting customers with ads that fit their personality traits (extraversion or introversion) would result in higher ROI for the campaign
The test
To test their hypothesis, they created two sets of ads, one customized towards extraverts and the other tailored towards introverts. Although other personality traits could be relevant, the researchers picked extraversion/introversion for the test, because it was most conducive to creating contrasting ads.
Researchers described the typical extravert/introvert to designers, and the designers came up with corresponding ads.
Next they selected two groups of Facebook users — one consisting of more extraverted people and the other one consisting of more introverted people.
They then showed the two ads to both user segments, such that both groups saw both congruent (e.g., introvert customer/introvert ad) and incongruent (e.g., introvert customer/extravert ad) ads.
Results
Overall, the seven day campaign generated 6.43 million impressions, 390 conversions and 12,830 pounds ($20,000 USD) in revenue for an ad spend of 4,000 pounds ($6,300 USD).
Customizing ads to personality traits significantly improved ROI for both target groups.
Showing introverts an introverted ad was twice as profitable as showing them an extraverted ad. Showing extroverts an extraverted ad resulted in 30% higher ROI than showing them an introverted ad.
Takeaways
To sum up, personality can be a useful tool for better understanding your customers, creating marketing messages that will resonate more with them and increasing ROI for your campaign.
Although personality is a reliable predictor of behavior in situations when people have a fair degree of choice, different contextual factors (e.g., industry, complexity of the decision, social influence) can change the strength or even direction of this relationship.
Remember to study your customers’ personality-behavior relationship specifically; find out what personality traits your existing and potential customers have in common.
You can assess your customers’ personality internally, if you have enough dedicated resources, or you can outsource this task to a vendor. According to Vesselin Popov, Development Strategist, The Psychometrics Centre, University of Cambridge, one advantage of outsourcing personality prediction is that you can anonymize the data.
You don’t need to know your customers’ personal identity to learn what kind of messaging they would prefer.
Now, what is your dominant personality trait?
You might also like
Lead Nurturing: Market to personality and behavior, not job title (from the B2B Lead Roundtable blog)
Discover your personality with a 120-item personality test (from University of Pennsylvania)
1-click prediction of 34 psycho-demographic traits (prediction API of the Psychometrics Centre, University of Cambridge)
Penn Researchers Use Facebook Data to Predict Users’ Age, Gender and Personality Traits (from the University of Pennsylvania)
IBM researcher can decipher your personality from looking at 200 of your tweets (by Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat)
Using The Big Five For Customised Advertising On Facebook by Matz, S., Popov, V., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D., presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), 2015.
Doctor-Led Startups Offer New Career Path, Public Benefit
(MedPage Today) -- Innovating health care from the inside out
How to Improve Influencer Engagement? Avoid These 50 Fails
Brands: Stop Doing These Things!
Influencer Marketing is hot and that means the value of influencer relationships is higher than ever.
Working hard to romance in-demand experts to collaborate, co-create and even advocate can be a substantial investment. The mutual benefit from these long term relationships can mean anything from hugely successful marketing programs for brands to top billing at speaking events, book deals and consulting work for the influencers.
Unfortunately, outreach communications, expectations and negotiations with influencers to work together are often so lacking of empathy, relevant context or even courtesy that the industry expert “checks out”. Losing influencers is sad and wasteful.
But it doesn’t have to be that way if you know what makes them leave. Trust me, I work on influencer outreach nearly every day (sending and receiving) and am both guilty of committing some of these influencer marketing sins and having them committed against me.
So, with a little help from some of my marketing influencer friends, here’s a big list of what NOT to do.
50 ways to lose your influencer:
- Using the wrong name in a pitch email or other inaccurate information (that should really be correct).
- TLDR requests that take forever or never get to get to the point.
- Irrelevant requests that have little if anything to do with the influencer’s expertise.
- Not making it clear what the value exchange is.
- Being too familiar and friendly with influencers on the first contact. Hey, we’re not actually friends (yet) are we?
- Making it difficult by asking numerous, complicated questions, like those fun essays in college.
- Unreasonable deadlines: “Hi you don’t know me, but please send me 1,000 words by tomorrow.”
- No credibility. Emailing a pitch from a gmail address and pointing to a website that looks really spammy or just bad.
- #influencerstalking Following up one day after the first pitch. Then again the next day. Then again the next day and so on.
- #failuretofollowup Asking for participation and then never following up.
- Cold shoulder. Engaging an influencer online several times and then ignoring them when in person at industry events.
- Lying or being disingenuous in any way.
- Bait and switch. Offering access to a tool to preview, then requiring an guided demo where the influencer is “sold to”.
- Bait and switch 2. Inviting the influencer to an event, then requiring attendance of a presentation where the influencer is “sold to”.
- Micromanage. Requiring an unpaid influencer to cover specific topics in specific ways to the brand’s benefit that are not natural to the influencer (or their community).
- Taking advantage. Expecting an influencer to do for free, what really should be paid for – moderating a panel, writing substantial content, extensive participation requirements.
- When a brand takes unearned credit for ideas the influencer created, wrote about and used in their business.
- Misappropriating. Using influencer content in ways never intended, especially when it is monetized by the brand or someone else entirely. Also, misrepresenting how the influencer’s contribution will be used. For example, saying it is for a public article and then using it for a gated ebook.
- Making public, disparaging remarks or being disrespectful about an influencer.
- Not being patient – these people are busy!
- Switching the conditions of participation – shame on everyone if there is not a written, signed agreement for specific expectations.
- Not being thankful for the influencer’s efforts. This goes both ways too – influencers should be thankful for the opportunity as well.
- Failure to communicate. Managing communications and coordination poorly, in a disorganized way and without clear direction.
- No edits. Publishing influencer content “as-is” without copyediting.
- Being an asshat. Going over the line with sarcastic humor in influencer communications – you really need to know if they’re in to that.
- Slimy SEO. Taking the influencer’s contribution and then SEO-ing the heck out of it with keywords and anchor text galore.
- Backchannelling. Reaching out the the influencer’s “boss” or co-worker to ask why the influencer hasn’t responded to pitch emails.
- Not being clear about the premise or context of the ask and thereby confusing the pitch.
- Being one sided. When brands do not follow through on commitments made to the relationship.
- And you are? Changing the client side contact and not doing any kind of hand off to ensure continuity.
- Making it incredibly difficult to share the result of the brand/influencer collaboration. i.e. not providing pre-written tweets and social shares, properly sized graphics, embed codes, etc.
- Inappropriate asks. “As for asks like promoting your product (books, webinars, conferences, etc.) in exchange for affiliate revenue please DON’T.” via Carlos Gil
- “Out-of-the-blue Asks. I get requests from people I know really well every week. What makes you think I’ll make time to work with you if I’ve never interacted with you before? Take some time to comment on my posts, rate my podcast, review my book. I’ll return the favor in a heartbeat. If you hit my inbox out of nowhere… Delete.” via Drew Davis
- Too soon. “My pet peeve is when someone follows me on Twitter or Instagram and/or fans me on Facebook and immediately reaches out to me with a request to check out their business.” via Kim Garst
- “Ask Them To Sell. Your influencer is there to help you increase the awareness, association and consideration of your brand in a certain space – not to shill for you.” via Gerry Moran
- Using the wrong channels to communicate: “Sending me a message about LinkedIn using Facebook.” via Jason Miller
- Hello, can I interrupt you? Calling an influencer without an appointment to pitch. via Mark Schaefer
- Peerless pressure. PR people that try to persuade influencer involvement because their peers are involved too – except they are not. via Mark Schaefer
- Impersonal pitches. When companies send out generic en masse pitches, like a robo-call, but via email. The personal touch can make or break an influencer’s decision to engage. via Chad Pollitt
- “Don’t tell me your story, let me tell my story. ‘LESS fabrication, MORE facilitation’ = a boost to your Return on Relationship, #RonR.” via Ted Rubin
- Lazy duplication. “When you get that really interesting Tweet inviting you to take a look at something and then when you click through to it you also see that they have composed basically the same message to 579 other people on Twitter.” via John Jantsch
- Delegated and impersonal. “Reach out to me directly yourself. Do NOT delegate this critical step to your marketing agency, PR professional, team member, assistant or intern. Do it yourself and make your note personal. If you want me to respond, I expect you to do the asking yourself.” via Heidi Cohen
- “Not greasing the skids. Influencers are most likely to add commentary if there is some kind of existing relationship. This means at least some kind of history where the person reaching out has already been sharing the influencer content.” via Joe Pulizzi
- “Expecting too much in one ask. For example, writing a 1000 word article on your platform due this week without a previous relationship.” via Joe Pulizzi
- Misleading opportunity. “Asking for 30 minutes of my time to discuss a “partnership” – which actually means you want me to sell your stuff to my clients.” via Ardath Albee
- Asks that are complicated, ambiguous and without deadlines. via Rebecca Lieb
- Not following up with that blog post, ebook, or copy of the interview the influencer contributed to. Influencers are indeed interested in seeing the fruits of their labors. via Rebecca Lieb
- Abusing the kindness of an influencer by asking over and over again without showing any special consideration. “Set the tone and rules upfront. Influencers can’t be expected to take part in everything you do, so say that. Set the ground rules and expectations.” via Bryan Kramer
- Giving up, as in not being persistent (over time) with credible, relevant offers and reasons to engage. “Give them a reason to come back, ask them what they are working on and keep the conversation going.” via Bryan Kramer
- Spamming. “Signing up for an app that spams your “top influencer” with automated messages is a sure path to a rocky relationship.” via Glen Gilmore
Basically your takeaway from this list is, don’t do these things! Learn from these mistakes, pet peeves and advice.
To be successful with an influencer relationship, brands need to consistently make an effort to research the experts they want to engage and find out what motivates them. Create value and set clear expectations. Make working with your brand a very easy and satisfying experience. Listen and communicate in a meaningful way – not too different than any relationship, actually.
For brand marketers that want to point their influencer marketing efforts in the right direction, I recommend these collections of resources for best practices:
- Featured Influencer Marketing Resources – Traackr
- What You Need to Know About Content & Influencer Marketing. BONUS: Case Study and 18 articles – TopRank Marketing
- Influencer Marketing eBooks – GroupHigh
- Influencer Marketing Education – Onalytica
- Social Listening in Practice: Influencer Marketing – Brandwatch
You can also learn more about the influencer marketing services at TopRank Marketing.
If you’ve been on the receiving end of influencer outreach and communications, what are some of your pet peeves?
Photo: Shutterstock
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | How to Improve Influencer Engagement? Avoid These 50 Fails | http://www.toprankblog.com
The post How to Improve Influencer Engagement? Avoid These 50 Fails appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.
We Hate Autoplay Too: 3 Experts on Landing Page Video Best Practices
Autoplay video seems to be growing in popularity, despite unanimously being seen as a real pain in the butt. We’ve all scrambled red-faced for the mute button at one time or another, and we know first-hand that it flat out annoying – and even embarrassing.
This guy’s not a fan of your autoplay videos. Image source.
But does that embarrassment translate to a dip in conversions on your landing page?
We asked three landing page video experts this question, along with other questions to help you make the most of your investment in a landing page video. Here’s the advice they shared.
Spoiler: the first five seconds of your video are more important than you may think.
What can video do that text can’t?
Let’s start at the beginning: why video?
We all know that many landing page visitors are skimmers, glancing over text and images to get a quick sense of your unique value proposition. Why would we ask our users to spend an additional minute or two watching a video?
Videos are the most powerful means of communication.
That’s from Maneesh Garg, Digital Marketing Manager at video production company Broadcast2World.
As he explained, when your users watch a video, they get so much more information than they would by simply reading text. They get:
- A visual understanding of your product.
- An emotional connection to your company through video components like color and music.
- The opportunity to learn aurally—according to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, 30 percent of the population understands and retains information better by listening than by reading.
There’s one more big benefit of using video on your landing page, and we’ll let Sarah Nochimowski, Marketing Manager at ecommerce video platform Treepodia, explain it:
Video acts as a stand-in for a real salesperson, filling the void created in the online world by disconnecting from a physical store. This results in sales conversion increases.
In other words:
Adding a video to your landing page is like adding a salesperson.
Click To Tweet
Take a look at this explainer video from Tapinfluence. It has a friendly, personable salesperson acting as your guide, along with a walkthrough that’ll give you a visual understanding of the product:
That’s what a landing page video can do that text can’t. Are you ready to learn more?
What is the ideal video length?
“We recommend 30-second videos,” Nochimowski told me.
She cited a statistic from The New York Times/Visible Measures that indicated 19.4 percent of users stop watching video after the first 10 seconds, and 44 percent stop watching after 60 seconds.
This basically means that it’s crucial to pack the first few seconds of the video with your critical messaging.
“The first five seconds are crucial enough for people to decide if they want to proceed further or not,” Garg went on to explain. “If you make the first five seconds of your video interesting, it’s very likely that most people will watch your video all the way to the end and take further action, which you want them to do through your call to action.”
Here’s an example of a landing page video that Broadcast2Video created for LockerGenie. Pay close attention to the first five seconds:
Not only do they hook you by describing a relatable pain point in great detail, but the five-second mark ends right as the cartoon man is running across the screen with an armful of laundry.
You want to know what’s going to happen to him, right? That’s audience investment — you’re curious about what’s going to happen next, and you are putting emotional stakes into this cartoon man’s journey.
Broadcast2Video and LockerGenie used the first five seconds of this video to relate to prospects and then build investment in the story to keep ‘em watching.
Should landing page videos autoplay?
Who among us hasn’t lunged for our headphone jack or mute button after opening a page that contains an unexpected autoplay video? Well, it turns out that neither of our experts recommend autoplay video as a way to drive conversion. Nochimowski explained:
This can be perceived as aggressive to the user.
Garg added, “I believe that anything which is pushed on users irritates them and make them suspicious about your product or service.”
What’s the best solution? Nochimowski suggests that “the best is to have a prominent play button displayed on the landing pages (above the fold, for example).”
Garg agrees, with a caveat:
Ultimately, the only way to decide if your video should play automatically is to A/B test two versions of your video landing page; one with an auto-play video and another that gives users control over landing page elements like video.
Conversion optimization blog ConversionXL suggests that Facebook and Twitter’s recent adoption of autoplay video might prime your users to be more accepting of autoplay.
Video production company Basetwo Media reminds us that Facebook and Twitter often use silent autoplay video (that is, the user sees the video play automatically but has to manually activate the sound), which is one more option for you to consider — and test!
Here’s one more video data point for you: Treepodia’s research states that adding a play icon to your video boosts video views by up to 100 percent. So if you decide against autoplay, make sure your prospects know they’re supposed to press play.
Is it better to use animation or live action?
“In our experience, when used on landing pages, animated videos convert significantly higher than live-action videos,” Garg told me. “Animation is simply more conducive to helping your target audience understand your brand, product, or idea, which is why explainer videos are so successful.”
What can animation do that live action can’t? Garg explained that animation helps you communicate ideas with “simplicity and the right emotions.” He also notes that animation is often best for introducing users to a new, abstract topic.
Check out how user analytics company CrazyEgg uses simple animations and lighthearted emotional pull to explain how heatmaps work:
Does animation always outperform live-action?
As with autoplay video, you’ll never know until you test it.
As Nochimowski puts it:
We create animated videos but we also give our clients the option to upload full-production videos and let them be A/B tested one against the other. Results vary; sometimes the smallest detail can make the difference.
Don’t forget the hero shot
“When buying products, users want information about the product and how to use it. I believe it needs to be the most practical and useful as possible,” Nochimowski stated.
Unbounce’s Oli Gardner calls this the hero shot:
A visual representation of your offer that demonstrates how your product or service actually works so your prospects can picture themselves using it.
Here’s a video from Screenr that shows the hero shot in action:
After watching that video, you can picture yourself using Screenr, right? You can picture exactly how using it will help solve your screencasting woes. That’s why the hero shot works.
As Unbounce’s Oli Gardner put it:
Your hero shot should sell the hell out of your product. Make it clear & dominant.
Click To Tweet
Add video, increase conversion
If you aren’t yet sold on the idea of adding landing page video to your website, here’s one more fact for you, from Treepodia: according to an Adobe Digital Report, 61 percent of businesses indicate online video as their top sales converter.
So now you know why landing page video works and you have tips to help you craft an effective landing page video of your own.
Are you ready to start thinking about adding video to your landing pages? If not, it’s time to read this article again — or maybe we should have made it into a 30-second video!
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)