MGT 6311 - Final Exam

Youtube Stats

- First video aired on 4/23/05
- over 1 billion unique visitors/month, 6 billion hours of videos/month
- 25% of views come from mobile devices
- Second largest search engine behind Google
- 17% of all internet traffic
- 56% of vides are

Most common videos

- Explainers
- Product Demos
- How-Tos
- Testimonials

Video Stats

\>4/5 Twitter users watch video content on Twitter

10billion videos/day are watched on Snapchat

500million people/day watch videos on Facebook

85% of videos watched on Facebook are watched without sound

Video Views

A video is considered a view on Facebook if it runs for at least 3 seconds

Impact on Video on email

Including video in email increase consumer engagement and has an overall positive impact on the channel

The word "video" in email subject line
- increases open rates by ~20%
- increases CTRs by ~65%
- reduces unsubscribes by 26%

A video included in the email increases CTR by 200-300%

Impact of Video on Websites

Video has a roughly 100% increase in conversion rates

Online Video Stats

- online videos will account for 80% of all consumer web traffic by 2020

- 83% of consumers indicate they're willing to share videos they like with their friends and peers

- 85% of the US internet audience watches videos online.

Online Video Business Goals

- Communication
- Sales
- Lead Generation
- Customer Service
- Promotion

Customer Preference/Behaviors

- 2/3 consumers prefer watching explainer videos

- 3/4 millennials say video helps them in comparison shopping

- 40% of consumers say videos increases the chance of purchasing a product through their mobile devices

- 69% of users prefer to watch a video to learn a product/service than reading about it

Video Content Tips

- Capture attention early

- Shorter is typically better (30secs - 2mins)

- Keep it casual

- Maintain relevance

Onsite Video

Onsite videos are a use of videos on an organizations website

Online Video

Online videos are videos residing on a third-party site such as YouTube

Benefits of Onsite Video

- Make Website Stickier: makes customers spend more time on our site

- Capture Customer/Prospect Attention: help pull the customer deeper into the buyer journey

- Create Buzz: create new awareness and interest via viral advocacy

- Disseminate Information More Clearly: easier for a customer to see a product in action

- Build product/service interest: Seeing and hearing a person talk can be a more engaging process

- Entice Conversion/Purchase: help the influence of conversion or purchase

Onsite Video Best Practices

- Providing Control: make it easy for users to control the video

- Context: think about the overall context to the video and potentially use text, music, imagery and so forth to further enhance the video

- Highlights: make it very easy for users to understand the topic or topics and the length of the video

- Ease of Dissemination: make it super easy for viewers to share our videos

VSEO (Video Search Engine Optimization) Components

- Keyword Relevance: we want to consider the best keywords to use that correlate with our videos

- Title: specify a title for the video

- Description: Users will see this when video results are returned, and they may show in search engine results as well

- Meta Tags: metadata associated with the video to help the platform better understand what the video is about

- Keep Channel Content Fresh: set up a brand account - Within this account, we can create a channel that's specific to our business or organizationThis is where we want to house our videos

- Encourage Likes and Sharing: This might be done within the video itself, and we can also encourage this behavior in the video description

- HD: Upload videos using a high-definition format

VSEO - Consumer Driven Components

- Rating: Viewers of videos can rate a video by giving it a thumbs-up or thumbs-down

- Comments: Consumers can also provide comments for the video. Comment count has been shown to strongly correlate with higher rankings

- Views: The total number of video views is also a ranking factor

- Shares: By encouraging users to share the video, we entice advocacy and drive more views. Shares have also been shown to have a strong tie to first page rankings

- Playlist Additions:

- Subscribes: users can subscribe to a channel. There's a moderate level of correlation between subscriber size and rankings

- Flags: Users can flag videos with the report feature

Video on Facebook

- 8 billion daily video views on Facebook

- 85% of users watch the videos with the sound off

- Videos are in the highest engagement rate despite making up only 3% of content

Facebook Video Best Practices

- Set the user's expectation: Provide a brief explanation of the video

- Keep the video short: Preferably 60 seconds or less

- Hyper optimize the first 4-5 seconds: Consider ways to capture their curiosity

- Select your thumbnail wisely: select an image that is intriguing and entices the user to press the Play button

- Include CTAs: Encourage deeper engagement when that's the goal.

Video on other Social Media sites

- Consider platform capabilities/constraints:
o Length
o Sound
o Aspect ration
o Optimize (keywords & hashtags)
o CTAs
- Contemplate user behaviors on the platform

Measurement & Reporting

- Watch time
- Views
- Average view duration
- Likes and dislikes
- Comments
- Shares
- Videos in playlists
- Subscribers
- Audience Retention
- Demographics (Age, gender, and geography)
- Traffic sources
- Playback locations

Media Types

- Paid Media: This is media where we have to pay for it. We can think about this as advertising.

- Owned Media: This relates to media channels that we own (e.g. websites, social media, blogs)

- Earned Media: This refers to publicity obtained through promotional activities. whenever someone or an organization advocates for our brand without receipt of payment

Paid Video Promotion (Paid Media)

- Search Ads
- Discovery Ads
- Video Ads
- Overlay Ads
- Bumper Ads
- Sponsored Cards

Search Ads

These appear at the top of the search results page in YouTube above the organic results and have a yellow ad icon associated with them.

Discovery Ads

These are thumbnail image ads that appear in the upper right corner of the search and watch pages

Video Ads

These ads appear at the start of or during regular YouTube videos. With this format, brands can include a small banner ad next to the vide for free

Overlay Ads

These are ads that are only available on YouTube's desktop platform. The ad can be text or images.

Bumper Ads

These are non-skippable ads up to 6 seconds long that must be watched before a video can be viewed

Sponsored Cards

These are cards that appear during your video to display relevant product features within the video

Owned Video Promotion

Owned videos are housed on our website as well as being housed on our social channels such as Facebook and YouTube.

Earned Video Promotion

The pinnacle of media is earned media because we want to obtain the greatest exposure possible as efficiently as possible. From a pure earned video promotion standpoint, the key is to create videos that provide tremendous value

Mobile Usage Stats

- More than 1.2 billion people are connected to the internet via a mobile device

- Annual growth rate is between 50% and 70%

- ~40% of all internet pages being loaded by mobile devices

- 71% of all the internet usage is now on mobile devices

- ~90% of the mobile users' time is spent within applications on their devices

- Average US smartphone user access 27 mobile apps each month

- consumers have a roughly 3 second threshold for webpage load time

- 86% of consumers user their smartphone for shopping purposes

- The average American checks their mobile phone roughly 80 times a day and does so once every 12 minutes

Key Mobile Phone Characteristics

- Personalization: Mobile phones tend to be personal devices that are used by a single individual

- Proximity:Most consumers keep mobile phones within arm's reach at nearly all times.

- Always On: Most consumers keep their phones on 100% of the time.

- Payment Transaction Capabilities: Payments can be processed through the user's mobile network

- Native Content Creation Functionality: The ability to record video, take pictures, capture audio, draw, etc on a mobile phone

- Measurement: Capturing user analytics across mobile devices can be a huge value for marketers

- Social Connectivity: Each time a consumer has a brand interaction, they can easily share that experience with their social network

- Augmented Reality: This technology allows marketers to augment interactions with embedded content that can enhance the customer experience

- Digital Interface: Consumers are beginning to leverage their mobile phones to control IoT devices

Mobile Application Considerations

- Goals
- Customer Strategy
- Platform and Buildout

Goals

it's critical to begin the process of building out a mobile application by thinking about what the business and marketing goals are within the app

Customer Strategy

We want to leverage all insights we have about our target audience:
- Personas: A great starting point is to reflect upon our user personas

- Social Listening: We can use social listening tools to gather insights from our target audience

- Buyer Journey: What do we know about the process our target audience follows and the various paths taken to purchase our offerings

- User Stories: We can also build out user stories to help clarify the features and functionality within the app

- User Feedback: We can do so through focus groups and surveys to better understand their interests

Platform and Buildout

- OS & Data
- UX

Mobile Channels

1. SMS/MMS: This channel allows for both push messaging (where the brand sends the message to the customer) and the opportunity to receive messages from consumers

2. Proximity/Bluetooth Beacons: When a smartphone with the brand's app installed comes into range, it can receive a notification such as a sales promotion offer, recommendations or any other message the brand wants to transmit. Proximity Marketing

3. AR/VR: This technology can also be location based such that a user in a store can launch an app and see more information about the products around them

4. Applications: There are several distinct advantages of applications:
a. Native Functionality: Easy accessibility on the mobile device by simply clicking the app to launch it.
b. Push Notifications: Push notifications are dependent upon permission-based marketing

5. Mobile Sites:
a. Owned
b. Paid: We can also explore advertising on third party sites

6. QR Codes: These represent data in grid form, which only a computer can decipher

Mobile Implementation

- Mobile Advertising: These include mobile SMS ads, display ads on third party mobile sites, paid search ads, display ads within applications and push notifications.

- Mobile-Based Offers: Marketers can send a text message to opted-in consumers containing a promotional message that encourages a click to the brand's website.

- Mobile Loyalty: Making loyalty programs smartphone accessible

- Mobile Ticketing: Such as movie, airline and concert tickets purchased/used on a mobile device

- Text to Win: Including a call to action in the brand's website to collect email addresses and encourage the visitor to begin or continue their buyer journey

Mobile Implementation Best Practices

- Avoid Spam: Ensure opt in communication to avoid a negative brand perception

- Relevance: The content and promotions provided to consumers need to be relevant to where they are in the buyer journey

- Easy Interaction: UX is critical as consumers have low patience, and high expectations

- Addressability: provide as personalized an experience for each consumer as possible

Geo-Targeting: We want to be cognizant of location specific marketing capabilities that we can use to engage consumers at specific points

- Integration: Leverage information and functionality across platforms to provide the best customer experience

Email Marketing

Email marketing is defined as a type of direct digital marketing that uses electronic mail as the marketing communication delivery method. It is also a permission-based channel for communicating with prospects and customers.

Email Stats

- 92% of adults who are online use email

- Email has the highest conversion rate at 66% when compared to social, direct mail etc

- Click-to-open rate of 8.9%

Email Benefits

- Low cost per contact: The cost to send a single email message is often less than $0.1 per send

- Highly Targeted: Email is permission based and is thus sent to people who have expressed interest

- Easy to customize/personalize: Marketers can segment customers to provide more targeted content and offers

- Highly Measurable: Marketers can obtain metrics such as open rate, click rate, forward rate, opt-out rates etc. They can also determine the impact of content layout, content types, subject line verbiage etc

- High ROI

Customer Marketing Model

- Acquisition: This is creating interest for products and services to be purchased

- Awareness: This is letting the audience know about events, new products, product highlights, promotions etc.

- Retention & Loyalty

Types of Emails

- Transactional Emails: These are used to provide confirmation emails to consumers once a transaction has occurred.

- Newsletter Emails: These newsletters are a way to provide insights that help the customer become more knowledgeable and help build a positive brand perception.

- Promotional/Special Offer Emails: These are used to provide an incentive for customers to take more immediate action

- New Product/Service Emails: This relates to using email to inform customers about new products and services.

KPI Considerations

- Promotional
\-- Click through rate
\-- Purchase rate
\-- Contact us/request for more information rate

- Informational
\-- Open rate
\-- Download rate
\-- Forward rate
\-- Database growth rate

Promotional KPI considerations

These are used to highlight certain products and services, encourage the user to begin shopping

CTR: natural metric to monitor as it indicates the percentage of consumers that are shifting their behavior from the email to the organizations website.

Purchase rate: This is a reasonable metric to track as there are many ways a consumer can end up on a product page

Contact us: There are situations where the customer may not be trying to drive a consumer to a product or service page

Informational (Newsletters) KPI considerations

One of the most common versions of this is an email newsletter

Open rate: Open rate behaviors can provide information that helps the marketer better segment their email database

Download rate: In a B2B environment, it's fairly common to encourage customers to deepen their engagement via marketing assets such as whitepapers

Forward rate: marketers want to realize customer advocacy and their help spreading the marketing message. Forward rate is a good way to assess this activity for emails

Database growth rate: Presuming the opportunity for growth exists, this is a metric to monitor

Email Service Provider (ESP) - Commercial

- Serves as a platform to create, store and manage email templated and email campaigns
- Ability to A/B test and segment customers
- User segments can also be set up in the ESP for more effective campaign management
- Provide tracking information showing the status of emails sent
- Provide the ability to segment address list into interest groups or categories
- ESPs often have dynamic personalization capabilities that can insert information on a customer
- An ESP can also help ensure deliverability (white list).
- ESP can help ensure compatibility across platforms
- An ESP provides analytics to the marketer
- ESPs make it easier to build emails via responsive design, and test how they look across devices
- ESPs make it easy for a marketer to set up trigger-based welcome emails

Spam rate

Over half of all emails sent are considered spam

Email Structure Considerations

Sender Info
Subject Line
Email Copy/Content
Use of Imagery
CTA
Layout
Mobile Email

Sender Info

It's super important consumers are able to clearly identify emails as coming from the brand they recognize

Subject Line

email subject line length should be concise but also convey a compelling message that encourages consumer engagement. A subject line length of 15 characters or less had the highest open rate

Email Copy/Content

Header: the top of the email is generally referred to as the header

Greeting: a greeting may also be included just before the header section (include customer's name when possible)

Body: The body of the email is where most of the content resides. It's recommended the body be designed to align with customer needs and marketing goals.

Footer: The footer is the bottom part of the email. This section includes brand name, social icons, contact info, an opt out link and necessary legal language

Use of Imagery

Imagery can be very helpful to convey information and entice consumers to further engage with the brand.

Call(s) to action (CTA)

Include one or more calls to action within the email. Anything that has copy enticing the customer to take action, and links to the website can be considered a CTA. Prominent CTAs typically appear as button

Layout

It's also important to think about where content is physically placed within an email. Consumers tend to scan emails in an F-shaped pattern, moving from the top to bottom and right to left

Mobile Email

- About 3 in 5 consumers check their email on the go
- 75% say they use their smart phones most often to check email

Email Best Practices

- Emails should be permission based (Opt-in)

- The marketer should send an email confirming the opt-in

- The marketer should also make it easy for the consumer to unsubscribe from emails at any time

- Make it clear why the consumer's going to want to receive the emails

Ways to build an Email database

* E-commerce & In-store sales: The consumer may like the green benefits of receiving an electronic receipt as well as believing they will receive valuable offers from future emails
* Online & Offline promotions: sales promotion offers, such as coupons can also be used to entice consumers to provide their email address


* Trade Shows: Fairly common in B2B environments where initial contact with a prospect or consumer takes place offline
* Satisfaction Surveys: Print and electronic satisfaction surveys can also be used to entice consumers to register for future emails
* Networking: - This can be a great way to connect, build rapport and ask the contact for their permission to send future emails, such as their organizations newsletter.
* Buying a List: There are email list providers that will sell email contacts to marketers. It's important to note that the although you are allowed to send unsolicited emails to anyone, they must opt-in to receive additional emails

Welcome Email

This is the first email a customer should receive when they sign up for an organization's email. Roughly 3 in 4 consumers expect a welcome email when they subscribe

Product Related Emails

Leverage the product purchase history for a customer and send them an email reminder that it's time to restock

Personalized Emails

Email marketers attempt to capture some personalized information, such as a consumer's first name. Leveraging demographic data such as the customer's location, age and gender can help the marketer provide more relevant content within their emails

Incentives

This gift to get scenario helps better understand customer preferences while simultaneously providing the consumer customized offers and content they actually want

Testing and Measurement

Assessing the core KPIs that have been established on an ongoing basis is a must. A/B testing to measure subject line, content, and call to action effectiveness are some of the tests that can be run.

Social Media Goals & Benefits

- Transmitting ideas
- Indicating support for other people's beliefs
- Weighing in on products and services
- Experiencing a sense of connectedness

The average daily time spent on social

Youtube - 40 minutes
Facebook - 35 minutes
Snapchat - 25 minutes
Instagram - 15 minutes
Twitter - 1 minute

Social Media Stats

30% of all time spent online, is now allocated to social media interaction

60% of social media time spent is done on a mobile device

The average person spends nearly 2hours/day on social media

The majority of consumers use 2 or fewer social sites

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

- Communication and Outreach

- Advertising and Awareness

- Sales and Lead Generation

- Insights and Research

- Community Management

- Support and Customer service

- Reputation Management

- SEO

Communication and Outreach

Social media provides the opportunity for 2-way communication between the brand and consumers. Organizations can leverage this channel to support its promotional activities

Advertising & Awareness

Paid media can be used across social for advertising purposes

Sales and Lead Generation

Social is also conducive to filling the sales funnel via lead generation initiatives

Insights and Research

Use social channels as a way to obtain customer insights and market research

Community Management

Finding brand evangelists and encouraging them to support the brand is a common goal with community management. Creating brand trust and credibility through thought leadership is also a common goal.

Support and Customer service

Social media can be used to engage customers pre sales and post-sales to answer questions

Reputation Management

Part of brand and reputation management includes monitoring social media for brand mentions and having a plan to correct brand attacks if and when they occur

SEO

Social links and measures of engagement, such as likes and comments, can have a positive impact on an organization's SEO efforts

Organic Social Reach

This is the content marketers would post through their own social account without putting paid or sponsored dollars behind it

Facebook is the most popular social media advertising channel; 93% if advertisers use Facebook ads.

Social Media Marketing Best Practices

- Establish Social Media Goals
- Know Your Audience
- Establish a Strategic Presence
- Social Landscape
- Engage Your Audience
- Consider Content Size & Type
- Transparency & Credibility
- Invest the Time
- Measurement & Adjustment

Establish Social Media Goals

Begin by determining the goals associated with this digital channel. What are you trying to accomplish?
- Gain more customers
- Increase revenue
- Generate awareness
- Enhance customer service
- Reduce operating expenses: Leveraging technologies that accelerate decision making, reduce overhead and enhance effectiveness

- Develop new products: Analyzing customer comments and feedback on existing offerings can help an organization develop new products

Know Your Audience

Goal setting should be a function of the target audience.

Gathering, analyzing and grouping internal information, through email marketing efforts, contact us forms, online comments telephone calls etc. in conjunction with external information, going through blogs, forums, online news feeds, tweets and so on can all be used to better understand market segments.

Establish a Strategic Presence

Identifying content that will appeal to and engage audience segments is a critical aspect of social media marketing best practices

Social Landscape

Here we need to think about how certain platforms have been adopted by consumers to serve certain purposes

Engage Your Audience

Providing compelling content that stimulates positive conversation about the brand is at the heart of social media marketing

Consider Content Size & Type

- 2 in 3 people are primarily visual learners
- The average attention span of adult online users is roughly 8 seconds
- Consumers are bombarded with about 3,000 brand impressions each day

Making written copy easy to scan through bullet points, shortening promotional messages that focus on just one or two things

Transparency & Credibility

It's important to allow for both positive and negative comment on social.

Having a proactive policy of being respectful and having respectful dialogue and a consistent position, on sensitive topics can help ensure the brands reputation remain strong in the minds of the target audience.

Invest the Time

Thinking about and planning resource allocation for various tasks and establishing a structured approach for consistency will help ensure customer expectations are met.

Experiment to determine what investments provide the greatest returns

Measurement & Adjustment

Assess the core metrics that are available to determine which platforms, content types, frequency etc., are performing the best and focus efforts accordingly.

An organization should revisit its social media marketing strategy with some degree of frequency (e.g. twice a year)

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

The goals for any website should be a function of the organization's strategic goals:

- Increase brand awareness
- Lead generation
- Drive product/service sales

Optimization goals

- Drive Increased Traffic: The traffic should be targeted and qualified, meaning it aligns with the target audiences' interests

- Deepening Customer Engagement: Moving customers deeper into the buyer journey and/or building brand loyalty

- Improve Conversions

CRO - Email

- Subject Line: The marketer should be selecting language or copy that actually has an impact on consumers' behaviors

- Headline: This is where the marketer wants to reinforce or extend the messaging contained into the subject line thus pulling the customer deeper into the email
- Layout: Consider differences such as a single column vs 2-column layout
- Call to Action (CTA): contest different copies such as, "Buy Now!" vs "See Plans and Pricing"
- Images: The images being used in emails can also be tested to determine whether or not customers are more likely to engage with the email
- Personalization: This might be in how you address the customer (e.g. "Mr. Buchannan" vs "Michael") but may also be a function of the shopper behaviors, which ties back to the images used

CRO - Display Ads

Consider testing the difference between using a product image versus an image containing a person

CRO - Search Ads

For paid search ads, you can test:
- Headline Copy
- Body Text: The body text of an ad can also be modified to determine whether or not variances and promotional messaging and sales offers affect consumer behavior
- Link: The marketer can test this copy to determine its impact on consumer behavior (CTR)
- Ad Extensions: The marketer can select different ad extensions and try testing the impact of them

CRO - Organic Social Media

A marketer can run and test display ads, and this applies to display ads that are activated on social media. The marketer can also create organic, or non-paid posts on their social platforms, as well

CRO - Landing Pages

Within the landing page, the marketer can test several attributes including:

- Heading: This copy which might also be overlaid on an image can serve a few different purposes such as reaffirming the topic or purpose of the page or intriguing the customer to dive deeper into the content on the landing page

- Copy: The copy on the landing page should be helping the consumer find the information they need, as well as enticing them to take action

- Call to Action: The marketer needs to think about the different types of versions of CTAs, the language used, button sizing, button color, etc

- Color: Typically, CTA buttons are made in a contrasting color, relative to the other colors used on the page

- Images: Different images can have an impact on conversions

- Offers: It is important for marketers to consider how their offers will resonate with consumers. Sometimes the same offer worded differently can impact results

CRO - e-Commerce

- Images: Images of different sizes, or entirely different image content, could make a big difference.

- Call to Action: "Add to cart" or "Buy now" may affect shopper behavior.

- Shipping Information: Test to see whether displaying shipping costs before actual checkout affects the volume of customers starting the checkout process, as well as its effect on completing the purchase.

- Credibility Information: For lesser known sites this can still be a very real concern for consumers, therefore the marketer might consider using images to help address this concern

A/B Testing

When conducting A/B (also known as split testing), the marketer should only be changing one element at a time so that they can easily isolate which factors have an impact on conversion rate.

Marketers are advised to use A/B testing if just beginning the process of testing and if the test size will be small from a statistical validation perspective

Multivariate Testing

A number of elements are tested simultaneously to determine which combination provides the best result.

It's not always the best of the A/B tests results positioned together that produce the most favorable overall results in a multivariate test.

CRO Process Steps

- Gather Data: it's important the marketer be grounded in a very clear understanding of the websites purpose relative to the industry they operate in. Obtain data from the website analytics software used, or focus group testing. Essentially, any feedback that come through contact us forms, emails, and customer service can also be potentially useful

- Analyzing Data: We want to better understand the types of customers that are visiting the site, what they are doing while on the site, and how these behaviors map to the marketers' expectations of what users should be doing

- Design the Test: the marketer should consider all of their hypotheses that would have a positive impact on consumer behaviors

- Implement Test: ensure tracking is in place to measure outcomes

- Assess Results & Repeat: marketers should assess the results, make implementation changes where it makes sense to do so, and repeat

CRO Tools/Techniques

Optimizely: It is designed to provide a robust set of tools to run tests across applications, digital channels, device types etc

VWO: provides A/B testing capabilities that easily integrates with other platforms

Google Optimize: For smaller and medium business.

Data Considerations

- Decision Making: : It is important to know what the marketer wants to affect

- Data Mining: One approach to data involves assimilating the data such that the marketer can observe important patterns in consumer behaviors. This is a bottom-up approach to data, meaning the marketing is observing what has happened and attempting to understand the rationale and benefits underlying those patterns of behavior

- Validate Hypotheses: Top-down approach to data analysis involves constructing decision trees and creating hypotheses about how marketing related actions will affect consumer behaviors. The marketer is implementing specific changes and testing them to determine whether or not they have the desired positive outcome

- Monitoring and Timing: Regular monitoring is essential. it's very important to think not only about the frequency of data monitoring but also when to do it

- Universal Analytics: This centers around the notion of being able to track specific users across devices and browsers