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What’s your video strategy for 2021?

June 1, 2021

Video, when done right, is dynamic, engaging and helps a business break through the clutter. It used to be that producing a video was time-consuming, expensive, and there weren’t that many channels for sharing the finished product.

Today that is definitely not the case. An organization has infinite possibilities in terms of where to use a video these days. Your own website, landing pages, social media, email, ads, trade show booths, your lobby, employee and client onboarding, and virtual conferences are all smart choices. And that’s just scratching the surface.

Beyond the channel possibilities, there are also the power and versatility of video. It is attention-grabbing. You can deliver information effectively and efficiently, and your audience gets a sense of your brand’s personality. All of that builds trust with your audience.

Over the years, we’ve covered the know-like-trust model many times. No one buys anything of significance without knowing, liking, and trusting you. Video done well can deliver that in spades.

Here are some statistics to strengthen the argument:

• A minute of video is worth 1.8 million written words (Forrester Research).

• 90% of consumers say video helps them make buying decisions, and 64% of consumers reported that seeing a video makes them more likely to buy (Forbes).

• When video is present on a landing page, conversion increases by 80% (Hubspot).

Not sure how to use video in your business? Here are some approaches to consider.

Business overview: This is a first-person introduction to your business, your products and services, and your brand. Some business overview videos are you on camera and then your voice-over B-roll footage or still photographs and text. You could also set up an interview-style shoot with the company’s leadership to talk about how you serve your employees and customers.

Testimonials or social proof: Clients raving about you or case studies that demonstrate how you saved the day are incredibly compelling storytelling that video delivers beautifully. You can shoot these on location (or even on Zoom) or use voice-overs while you show your product or service in use.

Teach: One of the smartest marketing tactics out there is to share what you know generously and frequently. When you help someone without asking for anything in return, you forge a relationship long before they buy from you. This could be a single video or a series on your industry, an aspect of how your potential clients could be more successful, or anything else you know they need to learn.

Explainer: The explainer video has become much more popular and affordable in recent years. Most businesses use animation to create a video that introduces or explains a complicated process or idea. This is the one style of video you probably can’t do on your own. Fortunately, there are amazing resources that make this a very affordable option for even the smallest businesses.

Live videos: Up to this point, all of the examples are videos that are shot and edited before anyone sees them. But if you’re brave enough to take the risk, live video brings many benefits. It’s interactive and it gives you the opportunity to answer questions, get feedback and really get to know your audience. Live video works best when you go live on a consistent schedule so your audience can plan on joining you.

There are very few marketing tactics that I would say every business should be folding into their marketing plan, but I am hard-pressed to think of a business, big or small, that couldn’t be putting video to work to grow and strengthen their bottom line.

 

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

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The online consumer’s mindset

May 25, 2021

Even if you do not sell a single thing online, odds are:

• You have a website.
• People are “shopping” you on that site, even if they know they can’t buy there.

As consumers, on average, we now make between 70% and 80% of our buying decision online, even if we know we’re going to visit a brick-and-mortar store to make the purchase. Google and research partner the Behavioural Architects recently released a study on how decisions are made online.

When considering a purchase, consumers fluctuate between two mental modes. In the beginning, as they are considering the possibilities, they are in an exploration mode, which is an expansive activity. At some point in the journey, they shift to a more evaluative mode, which is all about reducing down the choices. Google refers to this state as the messy middle.

According to the research, brands have a significant advantage if they begin as first-choice. But if they fail to communicate their value proposition in a compelling manner during both the exploration and evaluation cycles, they run the risk of being knocked out of contention.

The study explored how behavior is influenced by six biases:

1. Category heuristics: key product specs that simplify decisions.
2. Power of now: the longer you wait, the weaker the offer becomes.
3. Social proof: the power of recommendations and reviews.
4. Scarcity bias: as availability decreases, desire increases.
5. Authority bias: trust and expertise can sway decisions.
6. Power of free: a free, even unrelated, gift with a purchase is a motivator.

When making a purchase, consumers seek out category and brand information in multiple locations, including search engines, social media, aggregators and review sites. They bounce back and forth between the exploration and evaluation stages until they make a final buying decision.

Which of the biases you lean on the most will depend on whether the purchase can actually be made online. If you’re selling ag equipment, the power of now is going to be less influential. But reviews and having an expert’s endorsement may be much more significant.

One of the more interesting aspects of this study was how the researchers were able to sway a buyer’s decision to a fictional brand that had no brand equity when they magnified one or more of the biases listed above. What that means for us is that we have to be mindful of how we’re leveraging different triggers, or our next buyer could be lured away. It also means even if you’re not the category leader, investing time, and energy into really understanding and wooing online tire kickers who are still in the exploration stage can win their ultimate purchase.

A key takeaway from this study is that brand-building is vitally important, but it’s not enough in an online environment. You will enjoy a definite home-field advantage if you’re the market leader. But you still have to communicate your value proposition in a very compelling way if you’re going to secure the sale.

The opinion of others (both reviews and authority endorsements) clearly plays an important role. Highlighting both directly on your site will reinforce the idea that you’re still in the running as the consumer is shifting into evaluation mode.

The results of this study remind us of two very important marketing truths. There is no such thing as set it and forget it anymore. You must keep revising your site, looking for new ways to leverage the biases to your advantage. For every entity out there, having a website built for your best-fit potential buyers is absolutely critical whether the website visitor is a frequent customer or is just beginning to learn about your brand.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

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Email’s role in your sales funnel

May 18, 2021

In last week’s column, we covered the power of email and some of the ways we could improve our use of this tool in 2021. I promised that we’d talk about the role that email plays in each segment of the sales funnel, and that’s what we’ll cover in this week’s column.

Before we can talk about the funnel, we need to talk about what you’re going to send. If the plan is only to send sales notices and product promos, don’t bother. Your audience will hit the unsubscribe button in a flash.

Think of your email as your best portal to creating a relationship with your buyers and potential buyers. Like any relationship, it’s about being interesting and valuable to them. When businesses create a newsletter, they often emphasize the wrong part of that word. It’s not the news they crave; it’s the letter. The getting to know you and your company part. If you want them to stick around, you must create a connection.

The top of the sales funnel is all about attraction and awareness. In this phase of the funnel, the prospect doesn’t know you or your company, and odds are you aren’t aware of them either.

Many companies will offer a lead magnet (downloadable information) to capture email addresses. You might also attract them to you via social media, advertising, re-targeting, etc.

However you get their email, the next step is critical. Creating a memorable first impression.

Your welcome email needs to bring value, a sense of who you are and what they can expect. Don’t try to sell anything in this email. Just create the connection.

The next phase of the funnel is what you could call the mushy middle. They’re not newbies to you anymore, but they are not ready to buy. The biggest mistake you can make at this stage is to hard sell. Many of your email contacts will remain in this phase for years. You need to be ready to provide value for as long as it takes.

In this phase, you are consistently helpful. You teach. You share resources and tools. You answer questions. You can soft sell, and when someone clicks on one of those links, they’re indicating to you that they’re ready to move into the next phases of your sales funnel – consideration and conversion.

Once someone has raised their hand and indicated that they’re ready to learn more about what you do or sell, they’ve dropped into the next phase of your funnel. Typically, in email, this is done when they click on a link to learn more about something you’ve mentioned in your newsletter or email blast.

Now you can begin to talk more explicitly about what you sell. But it should still be done from the “how can I help them be better at their job or make their life better today” point of view. This is where you ask them to move from email to another form of communication by filling out a form or picking up the phone to schedule an appointment, or maybe go right to purchase.

The phase of your sales funnel that most businesses forget about is the post-sale phase. This is where you move from a transaction to a relationship based on loyalty, and if you do it well, advocacy, where your best clients are also your best marketing.

In this phase, think about exclusive offers, insights you don’t share publicly or exclusive events.

This is where you make them feel loved and appreciated.

Email is an essential element throughout your sales funnel. But being mindful of where you and your audience are at will help you craft the right message for the right time.

 

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

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Email for 2021

May 11, 2021

As marketers, we are often drawn to whatever the hot new platform or channel is, and it’s fun to think about what strategy we might use for getting the most out of whatever new tool is on our radar screen.

Most marketers and business owners who do their own marketing will admit to a good dose of shiny object syndrome. We are drawn to what’s new and cool.

This is why I think email marketing often gets overlooked. It’s been around for a long time. There’s nothing incredibly sexy about it. But it works.

Email is very cost-effective and allows a brand to build on a relationship with known prospects. It’s particularly critical in B2B marketing, where the sales cycles are longer, and there’s usually no retail floor or experience. One of the reasons email marketing works as well as it does is that the average worker spends 2.5+ hours per workday checking email. Beyond that, 82% of us check our work email outside of work hours.

Email is one of the few pieces of the digital landscape that we still own and control beyond our website. When we market on social channels, we’re squatting on someone else’s ground.

Their rules and algorithms dictate what we can and can’t do, and those rules can change in an instant.

In contrast, when someone trusts you with their email address (which is the only way someone legally should get on your list), you can communicate consistently and directly. You know your message will get to their inbox and, if your content is compelling, you can be confident that they’ll read it.

By law, you have to make it easy for a recipient to unsubscribe to your emails, which means that anyone who is still on your list is there because they want to be. That makes it permission marketing (they’ve given you permission to market to them), which is a much warmer sales than most other channels.

Despite the potential of email marketing, most don’t take full advantage of the channel because they don’t invest the time, money, and energy to do it well. Email marketing has gotten so sophisticated, if you’re willing to take advantage of your options.

All too often, emails are hastily written and sent. There’s not an overarching strategy or a strategy for each individual email. We rush to execute without doing the proper planning.

One of the most important aspects of email marketing is testing. There are so many elements worthy of testing. You can and should test subject lines, what time of day is most effective, and various calls to action. How frequently you email your audience will also affect open and click-through rates.

But there is no uniform answer to that question. You have to test your audience to get that answer. Even the placement of your call-to-action button can influence the performance of your email.

One of the best aspects of email marketing is how measurable it is. You can track and count just about every aspect of your campaign. Four critical metrics that should be part of the evaluation of just about every email campaign are delivery rates, open rates, click rates, and conversions. Not every email will warrant vigorous measurement, but delivery and open rates are still worth tracking even at the awareness level.

For other emails, click-through and conversions won’t matter, but engagement and pass-along will. Every email will have a unique set of metrics because, ideally, your strategy will have a unique set of goals and calls to action.

Of course, measurement is often tied to where in the sales funnel the email falls. In next week’s column, we’ll explore how email can be used differently for each stage, from awareness to conversion.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

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What’s your strategy for a cookie-free web?

April 27, 2021

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2021 trends: Staying relevant in the age of e-commerce

April 13, 2021

In this second column of the 2021 trends series, I want to talk about the acceleration of e-commerce adoption. The pandemic forced many consumers to change their purchasing habits, and e-commerce was the lucky recipient. Techcrunch predicted e-commerce would be up more than 20%, and in the third quarter of 2020 e-commerce increased by over 30% over the second quarter.

There’s no doubt that the forced isolation, stay-at-home orders, and working from home have all accelerated e-commerce growth globally, and most marketers predict this shift is permanent.

On the flip side, we are all urging each other to buy local and support the businesses around us. The question is really: How do we take the best from each buying experience and weave it throughout the other?

As consumers, we all love the 24/7 convenience of online shopping. It’s hard not to delight in being able to do your holiday shopping in your jammies while enjoying a roaring fire at 10 p.m.
But that delight often turns to frustration when you can’t reach anyone to resolve a problem or ask a question.

On the flip side, we love being welcomed into a store or business and enjoy the personal service. But it’s frustrating when we made an effort to get there and what we want is out of stock, or they can’t help us.
On the local front, many businesses have had to reinvent how they deliver their products and services in 2020. Innovations around deliveries, curbside pickups, ramped-up websites with more functionality, and even Zoom delivery of services that had traditionally always been face-to-face. But finding ways to integrate the warmth of the in-person experience with a robust website and active social media channels will be critical for survival in 2021. “We don’t have time or the money” just won’t cut it anymore. Having a digital presence is mission-critical.

It’s time to go beyond the convenience factor for businesses that are already crushing it on the e-commerce side. Creating brand loyalty and a community of happy customers will allow you to develop a connection with your customer base that will encourage repeat purchases and word-of-mouth buzz.
The other area that needs plenty of improvement is the gap between the organization’s brand and the online experience. Convenience loses its allure when you can’t get hold of someone to answer a question or deal with an issue.

Every business needs to be paying close attention to how and where their brand shows up online. Findability goes beyond simple SEO. Getting on referral sites, digital shopping lists, and ramping up your efforts to get reviews are all going to be critical.

But it’s not all about the online aspect of the relationship. Building your brand promise and ensuring it’s delivered at every touchpoint is even more critical when you have never met your customer in person. Your brand has to be much bigger than the channel. Your brand needs to be channel-agnostic.

Another aspect of e-commerce that needs some attention is the whole concept of packaging and presentation. There’s a lot to think about in this arena. We immediately go to protecting the contents from breaking. Given the power of social media, live streaming, and influencers, the unpacking process itself should not be ignored. How do you make the opening of your package an experience unto itself?
How do you bring your brand to life if you don’t get to interact with your consumer in person? How does your brand translate to Zoom, an e-commerce site or an email interaction?

That’s the most important question we need to answer as we acknowledge that the digital revolution is here to stay. It’s filled with opportunities if we’re smart enough to seize them!

 

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

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Are you a need?

March 30, 2021

We often spend time thinking about how our potential customers view our products or services, but we often focus on the offering instead of the audience considering that offer.

How would your customers classify what it is you do? Are you a luxury? A nice to have, or are you actually a necessity?

As consumers, we all got very clear about what we needed versus what we wanted in 2020. If something you offer was still in high demand this past year, you know your customers consider it an essential purchase. You should be going to market with a very different strategy for products and services that are must-haves, as opposed to being more of a “nice to have” offering.

Granted, there were some needs that were pandemic-specific. Masks, toilet paper and hand sanitizer aren’t always going to be on the top of everyone’s shopping list. But if your organization sold a lot of a specific product or service that wasn’t triggered by the most basic needs of security, safety and health, then you’ve got something that people will continue to categorize as a must-have.

The significant advantage you get when your product or service is considered essential is that you can cut to the chase. You don’t have to convince your prospects that they should buy what you’re offering. They’ve already decided that they need it. Your marketing needs to answer three critical questions that the buyer has on their mind:

1. How is yours better than your competitors’?
2. What are the mechanics of buying it? (Do I have to order it direct? Does it require a purchase order? How is it packaged and priced? And so on.)
3. Is this a one-time purchase? If not, what’s the timing of recurring purchases?

The first question is all about features. In classic marketing, we often talk about not focusing on the features but instead narrowing in on the benefits. But your consumer doesn’t need to be convinced that they need what you sell; they already understand the benefits.

So you need to ignore conventional marketing wisdom and dig into the features. What does it do that the others do not? Help me understand why choosing one of your competitors’ products would be a disappointment or a riskier choice.

The second question is all about the how. In 2020 we all learned how vital it was to be very specific and directive to assist our potential customers in making the actual purchase. Even with a must-have, buyers want to understand their options and look for the most convenient purchase path. COVID-19 forced many businesses to find contactless or friction-free ways to buy. I don’t think consumers will let go of those options once we’re free from the pandemic.

The third question has a lot of elements wrapped up in it. But they are all about the investment required. In some cases it’s about the money, and in the case of services, it’s often about the consumer’s time commitment. It’s also about the quality and durability of what you sell if it’s a product. If you sell something that people will need to keep purchasing, convenience will also be a factor.

Understanding the lens through which your customers and prospects see what you sell can help you hone in on your messaging that will be most helpful to them and shorten the sales cycle. Recognizing that your audience has already decided they need this particular product or service will allow you to cut to the chase and just show them why your particular offering is the right choice for them.

 

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

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Does being negative generate positive results?

March 2, 2021

In last week’s column, we looked at why so many of the political ads take an aggressive, negative stance rather than exalting the candidate’s platform, past performance or beliefs. The data shows that the negative ads are effective, so we endure them every year through the election cycle.

But what about using negative ad tactics for nonpolitical advertising? Does it still work? The data is far less conclusive. We expect political candidates to trash-talk their competitors, but it seems like we have a different standard for brands. People are drawn to brands that they can connect with and that share some of their same core values. In general, we hope our marketing builds a bond that makes our consumers proud to buy what we have to sell.

In the ideal world, they feel as though using our product or service says something about them.

For example, when Dawn started promoting that it was the product used to save/clean up animals after an oil spill, it was a game changer for them.

Their campaign Dawn Saves Wildlife achieved the highest ROI of any commercial in the home care industry and scored them an off-the-charts consumer equity index score of 168.

We love brands we can love and connect with, and we love it when our dollars support something we believe in. Despite that, taking a negative approach can be effective if it’s done well. The nuance here is that it can’t be vicious or mean-spirited, like political ads.

Here are some ways you can generate positive reactions to a negative campaign.

Taking on your competitor: If you’re going to go head to head with a competitor and either name them explicitly or make it clear who you’re talking about, you need to tread carefully. Using humor or a lighter tone will soften the audience’s reaction to your attack. We’ve seen this in the mobile phone space.  With quirky characters and catchphrases, they poke at their competitors, but with a light touch.

Take on an issue: Another way to put a positive spin on a negative is to point out a risk or social issue. We see medical commercials and nonprofits paint a grisly picture (like those sad, abused dogs in the SPCA spots) and then give us an opportunity to help right the wrong or avoid the symptom or disease. The power of these negative spots is that we can do something to avoid or fix what is broken.

Show what might happen: There are plenty of spots that use this strategy of showing us the consequences if we fail to take action or if we make the wrong choice. Political ads take this to an extreme, but many brands go down this path as well. The Rid-X spot that shows how a little girl’s garden party birthday was ruined because her dad didn’t use Rid-X is a perfect example of this strategy.

As you consider using one of these negative strategies, be mindful of your brand. It has to be authentic and in alignment with your organization’s values. Not every brand can step into this negative space and pull it off. Beyond your brand, you have to think about your audience as well. Some are going to embrace that negative tone, and others are going to find it off-putting.

Really smart marketing communicates and resonates. It not only tells the audience who we are, but it tells them how we are a good fit for them.

Keeping that in mind as you explore using one of these negative-toned strategies will help you decide which one, if any, is a good choice for creating a connection that will hopefully lead to ongoing sales and brand loyalty.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

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