Advertising-Customer: The Break Up

If nothing else, this proves that not every video Microsoft produces has to suck.

Negative Feedback Is Good For Business

It’s not the most detailed or scientific study I’ve ever seen, but this article on CNNMoney points out that, at least from this one example, getting negative feedback via your social media activities can be good for business. I’ve had personal experiences where companies I’ve had sub-par dealings with have noticed my negative review on Twitter, then contacted me, offered to make good, and in doing so have turned me into an advocate. We all know that life is perfect and it doesn’t matter which company you are, things are going to go wrong sometimes. What matters is how you handle those situations. If you care enough to turn a negative customer experience into a positive one, then you tell everyone watching that you are the kind of company that they can trust to make things right. So the lesson is – don’t be afraid to give your customers the opportunity to tell you what they really think as long as you’re ready to genuinely make them happy.

Video Testimonials Create +200% Conversion Rate

As a follow up to my post last week about using video testimonials, I discovered this July 2008 report on the Marketing Experiments site that claims an increase in conversion rate of +200% from using video testimonials at critical high anxiety points in your site.

Their conclusions:

Testimonials played a significant part in increasing the conversions in this radical redesign test. The size of the conversion lifts correspond to the different treatments (smaller gain from the text testimonials, larger gain from the video clip).

What factors made these testimonials more effective?

* Their proximity to aspects of the process that created anxiety — the last two pages of the registration process and submission of personal information.
* Their authenticity, particularly the video clip, helped prospects relate to real customers and see their own problems being solved.
* Their tone helped lend a more personal feel to the registration process; this tone was also reflected in changes to the copy and calls-to-action.

Video vs Text – Straight from The Horse’s Mouth

Today I’ve been doing some research on video testimonials. Do they work? And if so – why aren’t more websites using them as part of their marketing strategy?

The Research

I remember meeting an academic at some networking breakfast somewhere in the late 90s and we ended up talking about video conferencing. I made the comment that I didn’t need or want to see someone’s face when I was talking to them. This guy (obviously thinking I was a retard) pointed out that all of the research indicates that a very significant component of our communication is non-verbal. That’s how we communicated when we were still hairy little monkeys fighting over the large black monolith that appeared suddenly on the Serengeti. We pulled faces. We smiled. We snarled. We raised a hand.

So I went looking for research this morning to back that up. This is the best that I could find:

Humans intuitively grasp the power of images to convey meaning, as can be seen in the old  adage that values a picture at a thousand times the value of a word. Research in the past two decades has proven what we intuitively know: our brains deal with images differently than print (Merringoff, 1983). Words are processed in the neocortex where the higher thinking capability of the brain resides. Pictures, however, are handled in the limbic system, rapidly, and trigger instinct, emotion, and impulse (Bergsma, 2002). Because brains are programmed to remember experiences that have an emotional component, television has a powerful ability to relay experience through the emotions evoked by images (Noble, 1983). Television, of course, offers information in multiple forms: images, motion, sound and, at times, text. The richness of these forms of information benefits learners, by enabling them “…to learn through both verbal and visual means, to view actual objects and realistic scenes, to see sequences in motion, and to view perspectives that are difficult or impossible to observe in real life” (Wetzel, 1994). Early fears that these multiple channels might overtax the viewer’s capacity for comprehension seem to have been unfounded, and now most researchers agree that “…when presented together, each source provides additional complementary information,” thus increasing the chances that comprehension will take place (Kozma, 1991). Watching television may seem a very simple act, but it actually involves a rather complicated thinking process. Like any communications medium, the content of television is composed of symbols, in the form of discrete units of information. As literate humans our cognitive task is to decode those symbols. But with broadcast television, the symbols are more transient, more fleeting than with static media like books or pictures. Thus, television offers a “window of cognitive engagement.”.

(from the report Television Goes to School via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting)

Okay, that makes sense. So video seems to work in a learning environment. But what about for marketing? Back in the early 90s (before I discovered the interwebs) I made corporate videos for a few years. Clients would spend $50,000 – $500,000 to make a slick video that we would run off onto thousands of video cassettes (kids, ask your grandparents what a ‘video cassette’ was). These videos would tend to be very high end and shiny, more like television commercials. What about videos produced with a much smaller budget, like video testimonials?

Exhibit 1: MyHome

MyHome is a New York based full service design and remodeling firm. They could have settled with writing the same basic marketing information on their site that I’m sure all of their competitors have – you know,

“We are a full-service, owner operated construction firm with an outstanding team of trained remodeling professionals and our own crews of skilled trade professionals. We promise quality and service – and we keep our promises…. zzzzzz.”

But instead they have video testimonials from happy clients. Check out a couple of the video testimonials on the MyHome site.

I don’t know about you, but these work for me. They are unscripted, natural, compelling. When I watch them, I think “these people seem genuinely happy with their MyHome experience”. If the same testimonials were written as text on the site, I don’t think they would have anywhere near the same impact. I can’t tell from text whether it was written by a real customer or someone in the marketing department. With a video, on the other hand, I think I can tell pretty easily if the person speaking is the real deal or a fake.

I also don’t think these would work anywhere near as well if they were scripted. I don’t believe someone who is reading a script (well, unless the person reading it studied under Lee Strasberg). Most people reading from a teleprompter sound flat and fake. To see what I mean, check out these examples. I think these are genuine customers who had a good experience, but they are obviously reading prepared statements and it just leaves me cold.

Exhibit 2: Case Doctors

Production values don’t seem to matter much in terms of credibility, either. Check out these videos on the Cash Doctors site. The audio is a bit soft, lots of background noise, most are shot in a park. None of that seems to matter. My immediate emotional response is “these people are happy customers, Cash Doctors worked for them”.

Videos are Social Objects

Although I wouldn’t typically classify video testimonials as “social media”, they can be social objects. They can be passed from friend to friend, via email, Twitter or Facebook. They are probably unlikely to go viral (unless there’s an unusually great story involved), but they can work for a client as a sales tool. And we all know that word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing, especially in this era of DIGITAL word of mouth on social networking platforms. So why not make it easy for our customers to tell their closest thousand friends/contacts/followers exactly how much they enjoy doing business with us?

It carries so much more weight when it comes from the horse’s mouth. (And if you want to know where that idiom comes from, watch the below clip!)

If you have any good or bad examples of video testimonials – of if you have a different perspective on their utility in marketing – let me know in the comments section!

2 Million More Australians Go Social in 2009

Comscore recently released the results of their study on social networking usage in Australia, which found that more than 70 percent of Internet users in Australia visited a social networking site in June, up 29 percent from the previous year:

Nearly 9 million Australians visited a social networking site in June, making it one of the most popular content categories on the Web. Facebook led as the most visited social networking destination with more than 6 million visitors and growing 95 percent from the previous year. MySpace Sites ranked second with 3.5 million visitors, up 5 percent, followed by Windows Live Profile with nearly 2 million visitors. Twitter witnessed the most substantial growth, surging to 800,000 visitors in June, up from just 13,000 visitors a year ago. Orkut also achieved significant growth reaching 252,000 visitors, up 607 percent.

As Newlight’s digital strategy guy, I’m constantly talking to clients about the importance of these numbers. And I’m still hearing people say things like “I don’t know where they get the time to use Twitter” or “people who live on Facebook have no life”.

Well those things may be true. Maybe you’re right and years from now you’ll be able to say “I told you so”. In the meantime, whether you agree with it or not, your customers are spending an increasing amount of their time on Facebook and Twitter (and, by the way, less time reading the newspaper, magazines, listening to radio and watching TV) and if you aren’t communicating with them on those platforms every day, then perhaps your competitors are.

By the way, have you protected your brand on those platforms yet? We’ve had a number of clients go to set up the Twitter page for their company or product, only to find out someone beat them to it. And it could be a long, expensive slog to get control of those brands back.

Don’t let that happen to you.

Having a Facebook and Twitter account for your company are a good start, but if they aren’t part of a comprehensive and forward-looking digital strategy that incorporates an understanding of social media marketing, they probably won’t be very effective. There are some great examples of companies using social media marketing to actually drive sales. Come along to one of our upcoming pizza and beer nights and we’ll show you how they did it.