Posting business-related videos on YouTube

Dianna Huff asked the question whether or not businesses should be using YouTube for video. If you read through the comments, you'll see the opinion is mixed.

For situations where you can point people directly to your video (e.g. when you already have people on your website and you want to show them a clip), embedding the YouTube code on your page (or Google Video would work just as well here) seems to be the way to go...as mentioned by a few people in the comments of Dianna's post. That way you're not taking people to the YouTube site where there might be links to objectionable content appearing alongside yours. The other no-brainer way to post video on your own site is of course to put it on your own server, but because of the technical setup that's required, this might not be the best option for many people.

Of course, two of the major benefits of posting a video on YouTube are the viral component and the universality of its platform. These are benefits you won't get by keeping a video confined to your own website.

I would post a business-related video on YouTube if I thought it would help the clip gain a wider distribution and popularity among my target audience, even with the chance it might have links to not-so-wonderful content alongside it. It's not like business users have never used YouTube before and don't know what kind of content is posted there...and that they'll be shocked if they see a link to a stupid or objectionable video. I'd be willing to bet more than 90% of business users have been on YouTube before. They know that YouTube is like a soup with lots of ingredients floating in there -- some good and others not so good (lima beans!). They will choose to pick out the good bits and ignore the undesirable bits floating in there, without changing their perception of your brand.

Here's an example of good execution of business video on YouTube. Cap Gemini seems to understand the medium. The company is posting video regularly (when I checked, they had several videos that were posted within the last week, some last month, others two months old, etc.) so they're consistent. They also have a few formats of video -- interviews, case studies, etc.

The use of business video on social sites like YouTube is still in its infancy. I think you're going to see a lot of companies trying different things -- some succeeding, others failing miserably. The potential is there, especially within markets where visuals are important (e.g. construction equipment). But in the long run, once a set of best practices has been established for business video on social sites -- whether it's a business channel within YouTube or it's another website that gains traction and fills this market need -- you'll see a much clearer path for business video. Until then, it's the wild, wild West!

Engagement mapping: good article, and links to more information and resources

About two months ago, I blogged about Microsoft's Engagement Mapping (see post here) and how it could change the industry, since it's a more accurate representation of how online ads really work.

Here's an interesting new article about engagement mapping written in MediaPost's Online Publishing Insider. It does a nice job of breaking down a couple recent reports and white papers on the topic. The article also links to some resources on engagement mapping provided by Atlas, such as a white paper, two webcasts (one for advertisers and another for publishers), and an FAQ about engagement mapping.

Buying advertising from ad networks versus individual websites: Which is the better approach?

Online advertising networks have been around for a long time, but they've recently seen a resurgence. An increasing number of website owners are selling their inventory through ad networks now, which I think is due to several factors. Targeting on ad networks has gotten better than it used to be, social media has increased the amount of ad inventory (particularly what I'll call "non-premium inventory" because ads on social sites typically have much lower click-through rates and engagement rates), and advertisers are more likely to pursue The Long Tail of their audience.

From an advertiser's perspective, should you be running your ads on a network or should you deal with individual sites for your buy?

First of all let me say it's a complex question that depends a lot on your particular targets, the types of sites in your market, and a number of other factors. But whenever possible, I believe advertisers will get the best value for their advertising dollars by dealing directly with sites that reach their target market, rather than buying inventory from an ad network.

This is true because most site owners know their audience well, and they can make recommendations for how to reach the audience more effectively. Sure, there are lots of site owners who aren't willing to help you, might not want to give you insight into their audience, etc. But I think the majority of online publishers realize it's a win-win-win when they work closely with advertisers. Their audience is better served by seeing ads that are more relevant, the advertisers are happy because they're getting better performance, and the publisher is able to keep its advertisers happy which leads to repeat business.

For example, at IndustryWeek we see both types of advertisers: The ones who truly want to partner with us on a campaign and really care about making their campaign fit the site's audience, and also the advertisers who are buying ad inventory and applying a one-size-fits-all approach. I'm sure you'd expect to see the former group's campaign results outperforming the latter. But I'll bet you'll be shocked when I tell you how dramatic the difference can be -- it's often 10 times better! That's right...if an advertiser does a good job customizing its buy, creative approach, and watching and optimizing the campaign, they can get 1,000 click-throughs on an ad when other advertisers might only be getting 100 clicks. It's all about being relevant to the site's audience.

A lot of media buyers -- whether they're buying for their own company, or working on behalf of an agency for a client -- say that online ad networks are important because of scale. They might say, "We'd need to buy from dozens or even hundreds of individual websites, and it would be so cumbersome that it's much easier to deal with an ad network." This is certainly true, and I'm sure there are lots of advertisers who run into this situation. In many of these cases, ad networks might be the only way to effectively deploy a large-scale ad buy. But before you opt for a network buy, think about that 10x return I mentioned in the paragraph above. If you're able to get ten times the return for maybe two, three, or five times the work, often it makes financial sense to opt for the more custom, more personal relationship directly with websites -- even if it means throwing more resources (time and people) at the campaign.

Wilkes University's super-targeted ad campaigns, and can they work online?

You may have heard about Wilkes University's unconventional ad campaigns. This is the second year the Pennsylvania school is using super-targeted ads aimed at a handful of top seniors. It's placing ads like "Scranton High senior Nicole Pollock: Our goal at Wilkes University is to be as much a mentor as your mother has been. (Now, if we could only make her ravioli.)" These ads are appearing on billboards, on TV, and even on pizza boxes. See AP article here, NPR story here (audio), and one of the TV commercials embedded below (also linked here).


These are the first college advertisements I've ever seen that don't make me yawn. They're smart, they convey the intended message (Wilkes cares about getting to know you as a person), and they clearly generate a lot of buzz in the community. Of course, their effectiveness at recruiting some of the top talent to the school is just one facet of the campaign's objectives. They're meant to get those students' friends, classmates, teachers and staff, and members of the community to talk about Wilkes -- and to get this lesser-known school on many Pennsylvania seniors' short lists.

It got me thinking about customized online ads. There's the "Find a mortgage in insert your community name here" ads that you see on many sites today. Those are customized based on your IP address and other technology that helps the ad figure out your location. The first time I saw one of them, it made me say wow, but it also creeped me out in a way too. It seemed a little big brother-ish, even though the site really doesn't have any personally identifiable information about me. These types of ads aren't even in the same league as the Wilkes ads, but they came to mind first.

Then you have some of the more targeted campaigns that I've occasionally seen in the B2B world. A while back, one of my colleagues got a direct mail piece. If I remember correctly, it was in a plain, hand-addressed envelope. Inside it had an invitation that had a customized URL with his name as the subdomain (for example, http://johnsmith.xyzcompany.com). When he went to that particular URL, the page was customized with his name, our company name, and a demo or pitch for a product that was somewhat built around him. After he showed it to me, we discussed it for a while and tried to figure out how they had built the program. It seemed like the kind of campaign where they had taken a list, micro-segmented it down to a couple hundred prospects they were interested in pursuing (either that or they spent a lot of time and money to make it seem that way), set up the custom URLs which probably took a little time but I'm sure was database-driven, and then of course hand-addressed the envelopes to get the personalized factor on the outside too.

Wilkes' ads make me think about the concept of The Long Tail and how the Internet is enabling companies and organizations to pursue a niche strategy. Although Wilkes is using mass media, the university is using it in a much more targeted manner than the "photo of the three students sitting under a tree with laptops" that's prevalent in most college ads. The Wilkes approach is an interesting combination of a Long Tail strategy but in a mass media way. I have a feeling many other companies and organizations will be experimenting with this type of ad campaign soon.

Ever wonder why every marketing project comes together at the last minute?

It never ceases to amaze me how many companies scramble to get their marketing projects finished at the last minute, sacrificing quality on a program because they're constantly in panic mode. Sometimes it seems like companies are needlessly throwing their marketing dollars down the drain, just because they can't plan ahead effectively. They pay for something, dedicate resources toward that project, then squander opportunities because they miss deadlines or don't do as much with the project as they should have.

Now I can't claim to be the most proactive person in the world. I miss plenty of little opportunities with my own projects -- for doing an extra round of testing on an email, for building a new feature that's going to impress a client, etc. -- because I didn't have enough time or give enough thought to the project in advance. There are plenty of times when I look back and say to myself, "Wow, I missed an opportunity there. I could've done that better." But I can't remember blowing a huge amount of money and effort on a project that went out the door half-done and way late -- which is something I see pretty frequently (way more often than I should!) in this business.

I always thought this stuff was common sense, but I guess it isn't. I'm not writing anything groundbreaking here, just a gentle reminder:

• Build a project plan and stick to it.
• Get buy-in from the key people in your organization who need to be involved, to make sure they understand how important the project is. If you don't sell the project's importance to them, they won't cooperate in a timely manner and you'll miss deadlines.
• Communicate effectively. Keep other people in the loop. If you're going to miss a deadline, at least let the interested parties know why, and let them know what you'll do to rectify the situation.
• Brainstorm with your team. Just give a few minutes' worth of thought to each project from a wider view. Am I missing anything here? Are there any opportunities for cross-promotion, or to use assets that have already been created?

If you're able to do all these things, you'll be a step ahead of most other people in this industry. (It's sad but true.)

Lock up your web forms: Google has started indexing the "invisible web"!

Webmasters and web marketing managers should be sure to read a recent post in the Google Webmaster Central blog. Google is beginning to submit web forms in an effort to find additional content that resides behind them.

It's part of Google's effort to index the "invisible web" -- pages that aren't currently being spidered by the Googlebot. Up until now, when the Google spider hit a page that required you to fill out a form to continue, it would stop there. But now Google says that in some situations, the spider will attempt to submit the form so it can find out what's on the other side.

Is this good or bad? I'd say it's more good than bad. It's good for web searchers who use Google. And it can be good for webmasters and marketers, as long as you're aware of Google's new spidering policy and you design your web forms with the Googlebot's new capabilities in mind.

Take a typical B2B landing page. It's a single page with an offer -- let's say "Download our latest white paper on widgets!". But in order to get the white paper PDF, the visitor needs to fill out the form. Under the old rules, Google wouldn't be able to get to that white paper because it was housed behind the form.

But with this new initiative, Google might try to fill out that form and get to the white paper. Once it gets there, it would spider the white paper (because of course Google can index PDFs) and the white paper might appear in search results. So if someone types in "Widgets" and your white paper is relevant enough, it could appear high in the search results and people could be viewing it thanks to Google -- without filling out the form!

So if you have critical pieces of content like white papers that you don't want to appear in Google searches, make sure you exclude those form pages in your robots.txt file. (A simple Google search can tell you how to edit your site's robots.txt file.)

Webcasts: What's more important -- leads or thought leadership?

The April 7 issue of BtoB magazine has a graph with results from an online poll they conducted about webcasts. The question was "What's your top webinar objective?" and the two choices were leads or thought leadership. Interestingly enough, 69% said their top objective was thought leadership and only 31% picked leads.

These results really surprised me. I'm sure this wasn't a scientific poll, so perhaps I should take this data with a grain of salt. But in my many years of experience conducting webcasts, I'm accustomed to most sponsors being obsessed with leads. That's how sponsors usually evaluate success -- based on number of registrants and number of attendees, plus the quality of those people. It's just the way many companies are set up right now...they're dependent upon leads.

But after thinking about this poll, I realize just how difficult of a question "thought leadership or leads" is. A webcast needs to do both to be effective, so it's silly to say that one or the other is the primary goal.

If a webcast doesn't generate leads, it's going to be difficult for the sponsor to quantify results. How will sales and marketing turn that thought leadership into action without leads? But on the other hand, if the webcast doesn't provide thought leadership, the leads are actionable but they're not nearly as valuable. After all, there are a lot of easier and less expensive ways to get leads. But the thought leadership conveyed during a well-executed webcast, combined with the fact that the person just sat through an hour-long presentation about a topic, makes for a very qualified lead.

This is exactly why I believe webcasts are so popular in B2B markets right now. It's not about the lead -- nor is it about the thought leadership. It's an inseparable combination of the two.

Lead-obsessed marketers and the same-day wedding

I just saw this white paper entitled "Blind Date to White Wedding: Best Practices for Lead Nurturing that creates B2B relationships, builds trust and increases sales," (hat tip to Tom Pick) and it made me think about a play I saw a few weeks ago. Yes, I'm going somewhere with this...

For the first time in more than 10 years, I went back to my high school alma mater. My wife and I went to see a series of one-act plays (we knew one of the performers: great job, Brielle!). One of the plays was called "Wanted: One Groom," and the basic premise was that the main character, a young woman named Kayla, wanted to get married -- so she placed an ad for a groom in the New York Times. The ad included her address, the date and time of the wedding (later that day!), and asked prospective grooms to apply in person immediately.

When Kayla's best friend heard about the ad, she thought the idea was completely absurd, and spent the entire play trying to persuade Kayla and her parents how crazy it was to get married the same day, to a total stranger who was found through a newspaper ad. But the friend's complaints fell on deaf ears, because Kayla and her parents thought it made perfect sense.

It amazes me how many marketers spend their budgets entirely on lead-generation campaigns. I talk with more and more advertisers whose sole purpose is driving leads. If the marketing effort doesn't have some sort of lead-gen component that identifies prospects who are ready to buy, their boss or their management won't let them do it. So let's go back to the "Blind Date to White Wedding" white paper, and think about the purchase process as a courtship between marketers and their prospects...

These short-sighted marketers see lead-generation as a way to cut to the chase. They think, "Why should we bother with identifying someone who isn't ready to buy immediately, and take the time to nurture these people...when we can just go after people who are ready to buy right now?" The lead-obsessed marketer is just like Kayla in the play who wanted to find a groom without going through the process of dating, steady relationship, and engagement. They want to skip the "courtship process" and just place an ad for someone who's ready to buy their product.

Just like the best friend in the play who thought an ad for a groom was absurd, I'm saying that marketers who are solely dependent on generating ready-to-buy leads are equally absurd! (But just like in the play, I have a feeling my complaints will fall on deaf ears as well.)

That's not how marketing is supposed to work. Of course you want to identify people who are close to purchasing your product or service, but that shouldn't be the only group you're after. Marketers should be developing a pipeline of potential customers through many different sources, in all stages of the buying process. The ones who aren't ready yet should be "courted" or "wooed" until they're ready...and only then is it time for a wedding!

When someone else messes up your perfectly-crafted work

In this post by Dianna Huff, she discusses the difficult situation marketers face when they have a boss rewriting their copy, often making it worse.

While I try not to press myself too closely into the inner workings of our clients' communications, I can usually tell when an ad was created by a boss or a committee of managers -- rather than by an intelligent copywriter who has an eye on results.

It's always wonderful to see the great performance a campaign that's well-crafted and "unfooled-around-with" (to steal the slogan of Simply Orange brand orange juice) can yield. But when someone in the process feels like they need to include "this is why our company is so great" wording, or they lose sight of the customer's desires and objectives, the results can be disastrous. I've seen click-through rates that have differed by a factor of 25 (yes, 25 times better!) when one well-written ad runs in the same medium as a poorly-written ad.

Aside from Dianna's suggestion of printing out that article and leaving it on your boss's chair, I'd simply recommend pushing back (delicately, of course). If you're dealing with a medium that's measurable, like most online ad campaigns, suggest some testing to see which ads perform best. Remind your boss to put themself in the prospective buyer's place (maybe using the personas you've developed). Sometimes it just takes a small nudge to make them remember the basics and snap out of their short-sightedness.

Media industry similar to music industry

I'm beginning to think the media industry is a lot like the music business. The music biz's main product (the CD) saw double-digit sales decreases in 2007. Music downloads are increasing, but they're increasing at a decreasing rate -- and they're not making up for the revenue loss the record companies are seeing with CD sales decreases.

This sounds like a similar story to what many B2B media companies are feeling. Marketers are spending more money on eMedia, but less money on print advertising, causing many magazines to struggle or shut down. Even with double-digit increases in eMedia spending, in many industries marketers' total spend with media companies is still decreasing overall.

To combat the problem, the music industry is trying to create a new business model by filing lawsuits against their customers. Maybe media should try that? :-)