Make A Human Connection Posted by Tom Jagger on April 24, 2017 Greetings Fellow Video Marketers! When it comes down to it, if we like someone, we become engaged and we are more likely to listen to what they have to say. An old sales executive friend of mine always said “People buy from people they like.” I believe this to be true. When Viewstream was preparing to shoot a video to show off Cray Supercomputer’s manufacturing facilities, we were working from a script. We were planning on conducting a couple of interviews to provide clips to support a voice over artist in the final video. However, as soon as I spoke to the factory staff I knew we had to have them tell the story. They pour their heart and soul into their work. I think you’ll agree, they tell the story better than anyone, and you can tell they really care about their work. If you are interested in seeing how to market to beings and not bots – send me an email! I would love to discuss what Viewstream can do for you.
How to Get Better Marketing Results with Video Testimonials Posted by Priscilla De La Rosa on April 21, 2017 What matters to most potential customers is not what you say about your business, but what your existing customers have to say. Video Testimonials are an effective marketing solution that communicates your value by demonstrating your offer in the real world. With strong Video Testimonials you can secure credibility, invigorate your sales cycle and span across multiple communications channels, all while you tell the success stories of your most valuable asset—your customer. If you would like to know more about how Video Testimonials can help you drive home your marketing message, visit our Video Testimonials Resource Center linked below, which features eight example videos and case studies. GAIN INSTANT ACCESS
Your Customer Is More Believable Than You Are Posted by Tom Jagger on April 20, 2017 Greetings Fellow Video Marketers! We have a lot of metrics these days – way too many metrics. We can get caught up in the magic of Marketing Automation to the point we forget that people aren’t automated. We have such a need to get the word out, sometimes we forget that the delivery system can be just as important as your message. So how does a company deliver its marketing message without sounding like we want them to drink our kool-aid? When it comes to delivering an honest, sincere, believable message, no one can help you like your successful customer. You’ve changed the way they work. They love it! Let them be the voice that spreads the good word. Autodesk asked us to work with PCL construction to tell the story of their BIM 360 product in use. If your customer doing something life changing, or of general human interest with your product – you have struck gold! As an example, check out this video for the foundation of the Microsoft Cloud – Windows Azure. If you are interested in seeing how to market to beings and not bots – send me an email! I would love to discuss what Viewstream can do for you.
Current State of Use of VR/AR in Medical and Dental Device Marketing Posted by Priscilla De La Rosa on April 19, 2017 Medical and dental device companies who can incorporate VR/AR into marketing tools, presentations and trade show exhibits will provide their clients and potential customers with a cutting edge experience that can help to differentiate from the competition, creates excitement and takes advantage of the more immersive learning experience associated with AR/VR. Use of 2D animations has traditionally been the marketing tool of choice by most medical device firms, but larger industry players such as Medtronic have begun to incorporate AR/VR demos into tradeshows and device marketing. VR is growing in use and acceptance as a training tool for many allied health professionals but most especially surgeons and those performing invasive procedures. It is inevitable that the surgeons and medical professionals who trained on AR/VR platforms will begin to bring this technology and benefits to their clients for educational and marketing purposes in order to increase comfort and compliance with elective or emergent procedures and to better understand post-op home recovery protocols. “And while the field of virtual reality has remained mainly in academic medicine, there are promising applications in other areas of health care. One such avenue: Showing patients exactly the steps of a surgery or procedure and what happens afterward, to ease confusion and concerns of patients.” https://www.statnews.com/2015/12/30/virtual-reality-medical-device-testing/ If you are interested in Viewstream VR & AR services, please email sales@viewstream.com
Watch-Ability Posted by Tom Jagger on April 18, 2017 Greetings Fellow Video Marketers! You wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t realize the effectiveness of video in your campaigns and sales numbers, but what makes a good marketing video? We’re all constantly bombarded with requests to watch a product demo, pitch or overview, sometimes it can be overwhelming to know what type of video would be effective for your own particular needs. At Viewstream, while we see and deliver the benefits of marketing automation, we also realize you are selling to beings, not bots. Bots just do math, which can be interesting to a nerd such as myself, but human beings need more than numbers to make an intelligent purchase decision. Really there are only a few essential considerations, the most important of which, I believe, is watch-ability. Obviously, your video cannot be effective if no one watches it, or “tunes out” even if your metrics show the video was played from beginning to end. The biggest mistake you can make is to believe that someone will watch your video just because you made it, or worse, paid a lot for it. With so many ways for our potential customers to distract themselves these days we need people to WANT to watch our video, or even leave them wanting to see more similar videos. Sure, a potential customer may need to decide on a product or service to complete their project, but that doesn’t mean when you show your product features it has to be in a boring sales guy webex, or worse, an edited on demand webex. Check out what we did for a Microsoft / Toshiba joint project. You’ll get to see the features our clients wanted to share with potential customers, and the videos high level of watch-ability might keep you watching all five of the series: The original series of five was so successful, they inspired Microsoft and Toshiba to bring back Kyle for another series! If you are interested in seeing how to market to beings and not bots – send me an email! I would love to discuss what Viewstream can do for you.
Do Online Ads Featuring People Get More Clicks? Posted by Priscilla De La Rosa on April 17, 2017 Studies have shown that consumers are visually drawn to human faces, but does this maxim hold true for a digital advertising campaign for high-tech software? After conducting a thorough A/B test, we were surprised by what the results showed. Were you surprised that the results showed that online advertising with people can negatively impact the success of digital campaigns across multiple channels including Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and retargeted ads? Here at Viewstream, we believe marketing is built on the fusion of story and data. Accordingly, we follow the code of “Keep Testing!” and utilize A/B and multi-variate tests to determine most successful digital trends for your story.
Viewstream Marketing Growth Matrix Posted by Priscilla De La Rosa on April 14, 2017 Introducing the Viewstream Growth Matrix. Dive in below as we discuss how these four areas can work together to put your business on the path to growth and beyond. Network Networking is like finding a new friend: you’re simply on a search to connect with someone on a deeper level. And from one successful relationship, many more will blossom. Networking can feel cold, however, it can warm up quickly by attending top events relative to your industry and interests. So, get searching in your area. Run Campaigns Demand generation is an art…and a science. Targeting the right audience in the best market to buy your product can be complex. And to achieve scale, you’ll need to drive awareness and interest in your offering. A follow-up mechanism allows you to place contacts inside a pipeline, qualify the ones that have a need, and finally, generate more customers. Do Meetings You have a relationship with one of your contacts, either personally or professionally. Now, it’s important to cultivate relationships with periodic meetings. Meetings are about them, not you. They’re also about listening and understanding their goals. So, prepare a bunch of questions and be prepared to listen. Nurture Your greatest assets are your established relationships. As your offering already aligns with your customer needs, it’s time to nurture those relationships. It’s not only essential to maintaining your existing client base, but it utilizes more personal forms of communication. Now it’s time to give more than you ask, and deliver value at every step along the way.
The Magic Bullet is Not Magic Posted by John Assalian on April 11, 2017 No matter how great your product is, if you are marketing to the wrong person and/or industry, you will have challenges. Identifying the right target audience is the most important thing you can do for your business and marketing. This market/customer fit, and the continual process to discover and rediscover the fit as times change, is the eternal task of business. Some businesses have tight fits that make marketing relatively easy. For other businesses, we need to perform more trial and error between offers, content and targets, using various media, like 3rd party publishers, 1st party data, social media, email lists and others. Don’t assume the marketplace cares about you (they don’t). Put in the time and effort to identify the right targets, reach them with creative, put them through a funnel and then sell. The only thing you can count on is that the magic bullet is not magic. The latest algorithm, creative trick or marketing automation tech won’t solve your marketing problems. You need a human touch.
Predict innovation through search keywords. A beer example. Posted by John Assalian on April 10, 2017 “Change before you have to.” Jack Welch What Jack Welch means by that is that all business revenue lines eventually lead to zero. Think about the graveyards of businesses: Blockbuster. Kodak. Borders. Myspace. We can never rest on a single revenue line. But how? What is the right market? What business ought we be in? What products and services will define the future? Here’s a quick and easy way to get some instant feedback on what’s next. Using a SEM/SEO keyword tool like Google Keyword Planner or Sem Rush, look at search keywords to identify future market trends. What’s interesting are the long tail keywords, down the list in the twenty-five spot or the fifty-spot depending on keyword volume. That’s where things get interesting and opportunities are identified. Let’s look an example: beer. Say we want to innovate in the beer market. The keyword “Beer” gets over 1.3M searches a year. Let’s look at some of the long tail keywords that are insightful in identifying new markets. Root Beer: 27K per month Root Beer is trending up strongly. Diversify up market with a craft, non alcoholic play? Nonalcoholic beer: 18K per month A lot of interest in nonalcoholic beers – could be another way to diversify up market. Beer cheese dip: 18K per month License your beer brand and recipie to a company making cheese products? Yum. Sapporo Beer: 15K per month Sapporo is a rice beer, so perhaps this is a health trend showing demand for beers that avoid gluten? A gluten free beer? Beer Belly: 15K per month Could be a marketing stunt of some kind? Hard root beer: 12K per month Even better than regular root beer – add some alcohol. Grapefruit Beer 12K Grapefruit beer is a German type that further fits into the health trend. It’s 2% alcohol and even has vitamin C. If you are in the beer business, those are some great ideas. I developed those ideas in a few minutes, so a bit more time and testing could yield significant dividends. And if you do happen to end up in the dustbin of history, have a beer and get back to the Keyword Drawing Board! If you want some help identifying new markets, let Viewstream know. We would love to help. One other thing: once you have a new product identified, use this handy tool to define your market position.
Marketing Can Make or Break Your Business Posted by Priscilla De La Rosa on April 7, 2017 We were recently asked to do a marketing audit by an investor of a troubled startup. We.Software*, a young company offering software design services to healthcare companies, set forth to conquer the world. They had set aside a marketing budget of 100K per year over three years. Three years went by, but they didn’t get the traction. When going back and analyzing the marketing spend by their marketing agency (a boutique agency based in Seattle), we noted that a full forty percent of the budget went to pure design related assets, like logo, website design and document assets. STOP. If your agency wants to spend forty percent of a budget on design related assets, please find a new agency. At the start of a company, lean and agile approaches means spending very little on design assets and more on customer research and product marketing (things that actually grow your business). For a logo, use a crowdsourced asset for an inexpensive logo. For a website, use a WordPress template. As your company matures, there will be a place for more significant spend on design and brand assets. In the meantime, here are things that maybe wise to spend your budget on: Explainer Videos: Helps to communicate who you are and why you are different to prospects and employees. Customer Research: Spend budget on research that delivers tangible information about your customer – this is invaluable and ought to be an ongoing process. Media Spend: Despite popular wisdom, it is never too early to put your name out there. Pro Landing Pages that Convert: You need to get people in your world, and there is no better way. Viewstream can help with any of these items, and we won’t ask you to spend a ton of money on design. By the way, We.Software went out of business. *Not the real name!