EyeView's Blog

Twitter Excels At B2B Marketing

Yesterday we launched our new Video Marketing Quiz. The idea was for us to find an engaging way to present the data we have captured from real traffic on real sites. Once we settled on the format our designers worked overtime putting together the Flash elements and creating a neat user experience that was informative without being preachy. I think they did a great job, but you can decide for yourself when you take the quiz.

The next part of the puzzle was how to get people to find out about and take the quiz. We were never looking to explode, just to build some awareness which would translate into extra traffic. We wanted to tap into the online community of marketers who could see the value of the quiz and introduce them to EyeView without trying to sell them anything.

At the same time we wanted to put into practice some of the things we have learned from reading and participating in marketing blogs and discussions over the past few months. First of all we wanted it to be Free. I devoured Chris Anderson’s book when it came out and while I don’t believe he suggested anything radical, I think he captured the essence of something important regardless of what Malcolm Gladwell says.

Second of all, we wanted to try out our new interpretation of doing business as a B2B company. Instead of a business negotiating with other businesses, we want to be individuals in a business talking to individuals at other companies. This sense of building and maintaining trust is something we have gleaned from our contacts in social media and specifically from the Titan of Trust, Chris Brogan.

In honor of our launch on the same day as Chris launched the book he wrote with Julien Smith, we chose to run a modest promotion on the book’s Facebook fanpage.

 

We thought it would be a nice idea to try to give away 50 copies of the book to anyone who completed the quiz and tweeted their score on Twitter. Things were ticking over nicely until this happened:

 

That’s when it all went crazy. I want to present some of the statistics we have gathered from the first 24 hours since the Video Marketing Quiz went public. The viral impact of several points in a network choosing to microblog our link on Twitter at around the same time meant that in the first 8 hours alone, over 3,000 people came and took the quiz. We have connected with marketers all over the world who want to know more about effective video for businesses. I sent copies of Trust Agents across the world to places as far flung as Canada, England, Brazil, India, Malaysia and Kentucky. There is truly a global marketplace for good writing and smart marketing.

So far it’s been a heck of a day. I’ll let you know when it eases up.

Video Marketing Quiz 2009

One of the benefits of working for a company that is committed to testing is that we never have to fall back on guesswork. When EyeView releases data about the impact video has on conversion, you can be sure that the data comes from real sites using real traffic. We don’t deal with suppositions, simulations or uncertainties. Instead, EyeView has a scientific approach to conversion optimization where every element is tested to prove its worth and every assumption examined to establish its authenticity.

The Video Marketing Quiz (VMQ), which you can find here, is the culmination of several weeks’ work to find an engaging way to present some of the data we have collected to the community of marketers. The quiz will test your instincts and help you understand effective use of video for businesses.

How do we distribute content in 2009?

Once we were sure the quiz could provide value, we looked for the medium that was best placed for sharing that value with the marketing community. Much has been written over the past few months about Twitter and its value for businesses. For the most part that value has been ascribed to consumer-facing (B2C) businesses like Zappos.com or Comcast who are leveraging Twitter to maintain relationships with their customers and establish their reputations as companies that care. On the surface our company is a classic business-facing (B2B) business, but we are discovering that the old B2B models aren’t as relevant anymore. B2B relationships aren’t about businesses communicating with other businesses, they are about individuals within a business talking with individuals working somewhere else. Twitter is the perfect tool for humanizing relationships, not just with consumers but with business partners, colleagues and peers.

We are launching this year’s VMQ using Twitter as our main communications medium backed up by Facebook and LinkedIn. We believe that a friend spreading the word to other friends is the most effective way to reach a broad group of people. As more people take the quiz and share the experience with their trusted network, we hope reach a wider audience and share our experience and add value to the community that provides value to us very day.

So, enjoy the quiz, share the quiz and thank you for everything that you share with us.

You can find us on Twitter here.

Putting Video In Your Email With Duct Tape

In a recent episode of TNT’s cable hit The Closer, detectives respond immediately when they receive a package in the precinct house covered in duct tape… by calling in the bomb squad. It turns out that the package contains a dead body rather than any kind of explosive device, but the point is clear – duct tape is police shorthand for major crimes.

Despite the sinister overtones ascribed to duct tape on TV, John Jantsch has been blogging at Duct Tape Marketing for some time now without even the slightest whiff of homicide. His latest post talks about the impact of adding video to email.

He shows examples where it’s being trialed already, but only as a workaround. It’s easy to put an image of a player in an email and then link the image to a player somewhere else online. Given the level of comfort that people have with video that image can go a long way towards increasing the click-through traffic to your site. But how much more powerful would it be for the video to play within the email and deliver the call to action right there?

I haven’t come across this technology yet, but it’s only a matter of time before it’s developed and works smoothly. If you know of anyone who has solved this riddle, I’d love to hear about it.

In the meantime check out the company brochure that we put together as a PDF that has our video embedded in it. It’s an example of putting compelling video in places that you might not expect.

Your Video Elevator Pitch

It’s been a couple of months since I inadvertently coined the term ‘twelevator pitch’ in a comment on Brian Eisenberg’s blog. It’s the Twitter generation’s version of the elevator pitch. The idea is that every company should be able to explain what they do in a 140 character tweet.

Since then I’ve been think more about the idea and trying to define some rules for brevity and precision not just in 140 characters but in translating that pitch into an effective homepage video.

The added ingredient here is that a video on your homepage should serve a role beyond pure exposition. A homepage video is a key part of driving visitors to your conversion goal whether that goal is to capture an email address or to download a piece of installation software.

How do you build the perfect homepage video? It’s a combination of your elevator pitch, your company’s visual style and a clear call to action all delivered in around 70 seconds.

In other words:

• Say the right thing
• Show the right thing
• Ask for the right thing
• Get out in around a minute

I think this video that we made for TradeSmarter is a great example. The script clearly describes the purpose of the site while the visuals establish a tone that is fun, professional and welcoming. The call to action is delivered at the end with viewers encouraged to register on the site and the whole thing comes in under 65 seconds.

I'd love to get your suggestions for the most successful homepage videos that you've seen.

What's The Best Format For Boosting Purchase Intent?

I came across a fascinating piece of research recently. It was carried out by Dynamic Logic, a leading market research company for DoubleClick, a division of Google which specializes in ad serving.

While the focus of the research was to discover the most effective kinds of ads there are a number of interesting facts that spring up from the findings. DoubleClick investigated four different delivery formats for their advertising messages.

• Static images
• Simple Flash
• Rich Media without video
• Rich Media With video

At the time the research was carried out, simple Flash ads accounted for 55 percent of ad serving volume with any kind of rich media making up a mere 6 percent.

Once they have established the four different formats, the authors break down the purchase funnel into five branding goals as follows:

• Aided Brand Awareness
• Online Ad Awareness
• Message Association
• Brand Favorability
• Purchase Intent

Despite the overwhelming preference for Flash ads the research shows that rich media combined with video is the most effective format for 4 out of the five branding goals.

Just focusing on purchase intent, the report found that exposing audiences to rich media with video can increase the intent of users to purchase more than any other medium. The report states unequivocally, “When your goal is to sell, use rich media formats.”

The research concludes that rich media with video is “a significant improvement over simple Flash” and far and away the best format for achieving most branding goals.

Check out the report for yourself here and let me know what you think.

Web Video Is Key

One of the joys of the Internet is finding other people who really get whatever it is that you are interested in. I stumbled across Wayne Ford and his site Video is Key recently and was excited by his take on all things video.

Wayne comes to video as a producer and editor for Buzz Media and it’s clear that he understands what it takes to make great video. But, more importantly, Wayne is able to articulate how to make video work online for bloggers and small businesses.

I downloaded Wayne’s report, Web Video Is Key (cheekily subtitled: A Kickass Report For Bloggers And Internet Marketers) and found plenty of great ideas in it.

One of the bravest things Wayne does is to segment web video into a number of types of video such as The Introduction Video, Product Demos and Customer Testimonials. He includes with each description a suggested time limit. It’s one of the things I am always concerned about when dealing with customers who have a clear idea of their message and are convinced that every element of it must be delivered during the course of the video. Pre-defining limits for your video’s duration is a tough thing to do and a tougher thing to enforce with willful clients, but it’s great to see someone putting this down in print.

The rest of the document is packed with useful tips, case studies and links and I highly recommend that you take a look.