Thursday, January 28, 2010

Are your readers switched on?


Website content discussions have been pervading the internet marketing blogs recently. The use of video clips on websites is becoming more common and research in the USA is showing a trend towards greater response rates for sites enhanced with video clips. Video has been used for years very successfully for educational purposes; teaching computer programs, how to service technical equipment, how to prepare and bake apple pie. 


But video clips on websites, albeit more visionbite than expensive TV advertising featurette, are gaining converts – partly because of small, very cheap handheld hi-res digital cameras and YouTube links. However, as targeting marketers, rather than getting swept away with the latest web techniques and gizmos, we also have to consider our audience. There are many people who positively despise any movement on screen – even simple animated gifs can make their blood pressure rise – so they meticulously switch off all browser support for anything other than basic text, and with it your message. 


The sexy flash-driven websites with super smooth image transitions are works of art on suitably advanced browsers, but if you need to grab a supplier’s telephone number from their website en route using your mobile phone, a Flash site will simply suggest you download the latest FlashPlayer (unless there’s another basic site living behind it and a savvy server). Even time-honoured HTML marketing emails can get short shrift from those with options switched off in the dungeon of their mailer’s preference files. 


So although there are many exciting marketing resources available in internet-land, it is vital that both the message and its delivery method are matched to the needs, and ability to receive, of your target audience. 

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

B-2-B slow to change marketing priorities


This morning I was prompted by an e-mail article on business blogs  to look back at some of the early blogs from the time when this Technical Marketing Diary started in August 2006. Our blog was launched without fanfare, more as an experiment over 3 years ago, which already seems a long time in the life of the Internet. We discussed RSS which we had already been using for more than 2 years, but Twitter and Facebook were yet to make their mark. So it is not surprising that  blogs frequently discussed change - the arrival of new marketing opportunities and equally the possible decline of other more established technologies, such as print. Accompanying the Internet developments came an increasing number of niche disciplines and experts ready to advise and consult on the intricacies of everything from search engine optimisation and usability testing to social media marketing. 


But despite an avalanche of advice from the collective experts that the Internet is the place to be and the marketing task is no longer to stand out from the crowd in busy media, but now to get visitors to your web site and retain their interest, anecdotal evidence suggests for many b-2-b companies this is not the case. Display advertising in the traditional printed media is still likely to attract the biggest portion of the marketing budget, possibly followed by exhibitions.

 As a generalisation it can be said b-2-b marketing has been slow to appreciate the business benefits of these new Internet based opportunities and continued to support the established and traditional communication tools. As long as companies warily watch their competitors and continue to advertise in the same media and exhibit at the same trade shows as each other, the media owners and exhibition promoters have an on-going revenue stream fueled by the fear of not being there, rather than a realistic marketing analysis.

Friday, January 08, 2010

The year of video?


Market research in the USA suggests greater response for web sites using video compared to sites without video. Further, that investment in online video was expected to have  grown by 45% in 2009 and to continue at a similar rate over the next 4 years.  

Arguments advanced in favour of adding video to web sites are that the medium of video has the power to engage visitors quickly and to effectively introduce a proposition and lead them into the web site to discover more, or to contact the company directly. With the popularity of sites such as YouTube many web site visitors can be expected to express a preference for video content over text and images alone. It is argued that online video offers the same benefits achieved by TV advertising with the added benefit of tracking response using web analytics. And how often do you see TV text and graphics only commercials. Now the technology allows video to be integrated remaining competitive will require companies to develop this within their marketing plans.

Clearly video has enormous scope, not just to promote interest in products and services, but also to provide instruction and demonstration of how things work. However it is unlikely many businesses will have budgeted or planned for producing video content. Although it is relatively easy to produce video footage, what may be acceptable for news stories will lack the quality to make a key statement on the home page of the company web site. Presentation and editing call for professional quality. A scene setting video should not be too long either - 45 seconds at the most. At the end of the video it is useful to include a call to action and indicate the path to follow to explore the web site.