It’s commonly assumed that creating effective video advertising means spending big money. But what if I told you that you could spend a fraction of your budget while providing enormous value to your marketing campaign, customers, and end goal? Thanks to the constant evolution of technology and a grown-up consumer market, the future is here, and it’s full of relevant, effective, and affordable options for creating video. The New Wave in Video Video is a highly effective advertising medium. A powerful series of images and compelling commentary can suck a viewer in and induce sidesplitting laughs or a relentless stream of tears in seconds. But the nature of quick-hitting digital media drives the need for equally quick-hitting video marketing and advertising content that doesn’t sacrifice ROI. Affordable video can get your message across with less time, money and expertise than ever. Whether it’s ELLE Magazine’s adorable digitally-aided teacup pigs video or last year’s crowdsourcedALS Ice Bucket Challenge craze, with a quicker pace to market, these videos cut right through traditional ROI to help digital campaigns achieve a new level of profitability. Invest in Video Without the Sticker Shock Not sure how you can incorporate less expensive videos into your strategy? Technology is making it easier than ever. Here are three ways to reap the benefits of engaging video production without the hefty price tag. 1. Get creative with distribution. Short-form social media outlets such as Vine and Instagram offer new opportunities to connect with your audience without breaking the bank. Take your reach a step further by partnering with popular Vine and Instagram personalities who have the audience reach you need. After all, the five most influential figures for teens are online video entertainers. A notable example of this kind of brand partnership is Buick’s recent promotion with Vine star Zach King. The brand tapped into King’s millions of followers by partnering with him to create several fun visual effects videos for its Vine account. 2. Reuse and repurpose. You can also reduce production costs by licensing and repurposing previously existing materials rather than creating your own from scratch. Look to licensed stock footage and ready-made graphics repositories such as Shutterstock and Getty Images. For example, a wedding stylist...
Read More
While that may be true to some extent, more often the culprit is an outdated Web site with confusing messaging or lousy content. These days, a lot of attention is paid to social media, mobile apps, big data analytics, retargeting, email automation, etc. However, your humble Web site is the hub of all these efforts and the lynchpin to making it work. Your site should increase sales to new and existing customers. In the past, closing new business was 80% sales effort and 20% marketing; these ratios are now reversed. 1. Are you employing a mobile-first design that is responsive across all platforms and browsers? In 2014, for the first time ever, the number of people accessing the Internet via mobile channels surpassed those using desktop. If your site experience is not suited for mobile, it is likely visitors will leave and not come back. Google also announced that it would penalize sites that are not mobile optimized. Have an old-school site? You can count on your page rank dropping. Speaking of search engine optimization, you’ll want to make sure your site is buttoned up with updated title tags and descriptions that follow Google’s algorithm rules. These rules change constantly, and if you don’t rank on search, you might as well not exist in the digital advertising, digital world. 2. Is your Web site the hub of a well-constructed digital ecosystem? Put a strategy in place for getting qualified prospects to your site and bringing them through the sales funnel. When a prospect comes to your site, he should be led through a clear path to convert to a lead. Minimize the amount of clicks it takes a user to get the information he’s looking for, and you’ll reap the rewards. Your site’s digital ecosystem should also encompass a combination of social media, email, marketing automation, and paid media to nurture prospects. Keep in mind: The average person gives a Web page seven seconds to decide to engage or leave, so make it worth their time. 3. Do you have a content marketing strategy? Content marketing may be the single most important element of your site. Content adds depth and encourages engagement by being the payoff to the visitor’s...
Read More
Vibes, a mobile marketing leader, today announced the release of WalletAds, a patent-pending mobile ad technology that allows consumers to “tap and save” branded content and offers to Apple¹s Passbook or Google Wallet directly from a mobile ad. According to the latest mobile wallet report released by Forrester Research, Inc. last week, mobile wallets will see tremendous growth in 2015. For consumers, loyalty and coupons are the highest requested benefits for mobile wallet (more than 50 percent in the U.S. requested both), and for the industry, 41 percent of marketers plan to use mobile wallets in the next year, up from 14 percent in 2014. BI Intelligence also says spending on mobile advertising is expected to increase to $42 billion by 2018, growing much faster than any other digital advertising category. Despite this significant expenditure, mobile advertising is fraught with many issues for advertisers and consumers alike. Most mobile banner ads take consumers to either a mobile commerce site, where 97 percent then abandon their shopping carts, or to download an app, which requires many extra steps for the consumer. As a result, purchases resulting directly from mobile ads are very low. WalletAds solves this problem by letting consumers click on mobile ads then save branded content, such as coupons and special offers, directly to their phones using Apple¹s Passbook (on iPhones) or Google Wallet (on Android devices). This can be done in just two taps and will allow the consumer to save the offer for when they next make a purchase, whether in-store or online. WalletAds also allows brands to send updates and push-like notifications directly to the consumer¹s saved mobile wallet content, reminding them of offers they have saved, at relevant times and influencing the consumer through the entire purchase process. “Mobile advertising is broken, but the rapid growth of mobile wallets is set to change that,” said Jack Philbin, CEO and co-founder of Vibes. “By making the consumers’ personal mobile wallet the post-click destination for any mobile ad they click on, we are giving them a far more effective way to respond to the ad, which will in turn bring greater ROI for advertisers.” Here are the main ways WalletAds makes mobile advertising more effective and easier...
Read More
Social Networks Report Record: More people than ever reacted to last night’s Super Bowl using social media, according to reports from a number of tech companies. Facebook today says that this year’s Super Bowl was the biggest yet on its social network, and YouTube says more people than ever before watched ads and teaser videos on its site. Meanwhile, Twitter set a new record for Super Bowl tweets. Across the web, top tech companies, including also YouTube parent Google and TiVo, analyzed how well the big game and its popular TV commercials performed on their networks, revealing trends related to the content and other details about how people watched and engaged with others during the game. Facebook: The “Most-Talked-About” Super Bowl Ever This year, Facebook launched a real-time experience on its site, offering fans a dedicated page where they could see, among other things, posts from friends and others in their network, photos and videos from new outlets, posts from the NFL and team players, and reactions from others around the world in the Facebook Super Bowl page’s “live feed.” This site appears to have helped fuel a big jump in user engagement, the company reports today. Last year, more than 50 million unique users joined the conversation on Facebook. This year, more than 65 million participated. In total, users shared 265 million posts, comments and likes, which soared during the game’s final moments to more than 1.3 million unique “People Per Minute” who were posting, commenting, and liking content related to the Super Bowl, says Facebook. That “People Per Minute” metric is something Facebook examined in more detail this year, as competition with Twitter heats up around real-time social conversation. For the 2015 Super Bowl, Facebook also revealed a number of related stats, including the game’s “top social moments,” “top five states,” “most mentioned players,” and more. They are, as follows: Top Social Moments 1. New England Patriots win Super Bowl XLIX (1.36 million people-per-minute) 2. Katy Perry’s “Firework” finale at halftime (1.02 million people-per-minute) 3. Russell Wilson TD pass to Doug Baldwin gives Seattle 24-14 lead in the third quarter (701,000 people-per-minute) 4. Malcolm Butler’s game-deciding interception on the goal line with less than 30 seconds remaining (676,000 people-per-minute) 5. Jermaine Kearse’s catch...
Read More
It’s that time of the year again. With 2014 behind us, we have come up with a few predictions for 2015 regarding the mobile advertising industry. Mobile is continuing to disrupt the industry, and the most successful marketers in 2015 are the ones that will embrace what mobile has to offer, but do so responsibly. As the technology available becomes richer, and as consumers continue to become more entrenched in mobile, the opportunities to engage with them continue to increase. Marketers need to capitalize and harness the big data that they have to drive engagement and that engagement needs to move well beyond the click. At the same time, the industry needs to continue taking measures to combat ad fraud. Here’s a snapshot of my predictions for the year: Mobile Won’t Be Synonymous With ‘Simple’ Anymore During 2015, it will become acceptable to expect mobile users to complete more complicated tasks that were typically reserved only for their desktop counterparts in the past. Marketers will no longer need over-simplified conversions for mobile devices. Purchases that require long sign-up forms (insurance quotes, product signups, shopping cart completions) are no longer daunting for the experienced smartphone user and this provides marketers much more flexibility in what they can serve. Hyper-Local Conversions Will Actually Happen We’ve heard about hyper local for years, and beacons have been all the buzz in the last year or so. In 2015, I believe that brick and mortar businesses will begin to fully harness hyper-local technology, such as iBeacons. They’ll use these not only to connect with consumers in the area, but to track in-store conversions with consumers that they’ve previously engaged with via advertising. These type of in-store conversions have largely been ignored up until now and will be an exciting opportunity for marketers in 2015. The Internet of Things is Expanding Mobile won’t just mean iOS or Android anymore. This year, more semi-mobile devices will be allowing limited advertising, such as set-top boxes, TVs, kiosks and self-checkouts. To the contrary, wearables that have become mainstream in 2014 will not really have an impact on the advertising landscape in 2015. Bigger Data in Mobile Continues to Grow Big data in mobile will only continue to get bigger....
Read More
Follow Us!