3 Ways to Integrate Video Into Your Marketing Strategy

This story first appeared in the October issue of Entrepreneur. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

There has never been a better time to think about how you can make video a bigger part of your online marketing strategy.

Facebook is advancing aggressively into video (giving YouTube a run for its money as the top platform). Newer live-streaming platforms like Periscope (owned by Twitter) and Meerkat are finding traction, allowing users to effortlessly integrate video into social media. And the video tools and apps on your smartphone allow you to tote what’s practically a full production studio right in your purse or pocket.

So how do you make video a regular part of your marketing program, in a seamless way that feels like it’s not just bolted on but an integral part of your online presence?

1. Use video to promote other content you’ve created.

Say you’ve produced a “pot roast” piece of content—a weighty, meaty asset like an e-book or white paper that you’d like users to download, perhaps in exchange for their email address.

Create a short video to embed on the landing page of Facebook or LinkedIn—or wherever it is that you’re promoting it. The key here is to make the video not just promotional but educational: Feature the author or a subject-matter expert sharing an insight or two; don’t simply implore people to download the content.

It’s hard not to love video-hosting company Vidyard’s cheeky video that promotes its video marketing handbook. (Yes, that’s meta!) Kitchener, Ontario-based Vidyard gets points for making a video that carries off a hat trick: It’s funny; it’s creative, marrying old-school ’80s workout gear with Rocky-style training; and—most important—it’s useful as a tool for those looking to up their video marketing game.

2. Live-stream comments and discussion.

Video live streaming is beginning to gain momentum, with Periscope and Meerkat emerging as the frontrunners. These platforms allow you to broadcast video to anyone in the world. Early adopters are still testing it, and a few have amassed significant followings. (Amanda Oleander, a Los Angeles artist, has been called Periscope’s “breakout star.”)

The options are limitless. You could stream live events or openings or record a podcast live. Even better: Consider using live streaming to share thoughts you have about developments in your industry and to get immediate feedback from your social audience.

For example, entrepreneur and marketing consultant Marcus Sheridan wrote a thoughtful piece on his blog (thesaleslion.com) about the implications of live-streaming video—in particular, how transparency will transform business. Then he took to Periscope to discuss the findings with his followers, sharing the same content with a new audience in a new format, fielding questions and comments and extending the life and reach of his blog post.

3. Use video as the source for other content assets.

Video interviews or web series are fairly commonplace—you might interview an expert or thought leader, then publish the video on YouTube or Vimeo or your own site via a marketing platform like Vidyard or Wistia (to name two). Or you might create a regular series in which people from your company answer questions. Sheridan regularly makes videos answering common questions like “What’s the formula for writing a perfect meta description?” His answers are short (around two minutes) and specific—which makes them useful and easy to consume.

An even better approach is to use that video as source material to create even more content—reimagining it in various ways to reach new audiences. For example, you could syndicate the audio portion on iTunes and transcribe the video (using Rev or CastingWords) and edit it into a Q&A text interview for your blog. That way, your single video will have a bigger footprint that reaches more people in multiple formats.

San Francisco entrepreneur Mitchell Levy publishes a series of interviews with successful business leaders on a microsite called Thought Leader Life. He records each half-hour interview as a live-streamed Google Hangout (which is archived on YouTube). Then, he adapts the interview in four different formats, published on up to 10 platforms. So from a single conversation he can create a video published on YouTube and SlideShare; a blog post; a podcast (published on iTunes); a syndicated podcast (published on a PR network); social messages (posted on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn); a series of tweets (Twitter); and a collection of key points or messages in the form of a curated e-book.

Now, take these tips and apply them to your own business, considering how you might utilize video geared toward your specific market. Perhaps you can use Instagram video to give a sneak peek of a new release or to film answers for your FAQs. (ExpertBail does this.) You may want to use video to breathe life into your products, like gift site The Grommet.

Try something new. Have fun. Explore. Because as marketing strategist and writer Barry Feldman says, “If you’re not experimenting with video, you’re simply sitting on the sidelines watching the big game unfold.”

3 Ways to Integrate Video Into Your Marketing Strategy

5 Ways to Integrate Twitter Into Your Cross-Channel Marketing Campaigns

Your customers aren’t only on Twitter. They’re on Facebook in the evenings, watching TV while they get ready for work, reading the news on the subway and browsing forums in bed. In short: they can be anywhere, at any time. Is your message reaching them?

Twitter can be a powerful tool on its own to drive brand awareness, create a stellar reputation and even generate leads. However, it is also a powerful tool when used in combination with other channels, to reach your audience on their terms.

Here are 5 ideas for integrating Twitter into a cross-channel marketing campaign:

1. Learn about your audience

One aspect of Twitter that many marketers overlook is its ability to provide deep audience insights, that can fuel not only Twitter-based campaigns, but all aspects of a marketing strategy.

Because Twitter is an open, real-time network, you can tap into the behaviors, demographics, interests and more of your audience (or any audience you want to focus in on). Using third-party tools to gather and analyze this social data, you can develop a more targeted marketing campaign, from the landing pages you create to the magazine ad copy you write.

2. Connect with their favorite TV shows

Many TV watchers – especially those who just can’t get enough live and reality TV – will use their “second screen” (typically a tablet, their smartphone or a laptop) while watching their favorite shows. So why not use this knowledge to your advantage, and run a Twitter campaign?

If you know what TV shows or sports games your audience loves, try searching for their hashtags on Twitter. Then, while the show is broadcasting, you can tweet alongside your audience. You have the opportunity to tweet a related contest, show that you share the same interests as your audience, or just monitor how they engage with this TV show to inform future campaigns.

3. Run a contest

A Twitter contest is one thing, but a “social media contest” is a different beast altogether. Running a contest that spans Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other networks isn’t necessarily easy, but the results are often worth it.

Your audience probably has multiple touchpoints with your brand, in addition to Twitter. So if you are running a contest of any type, promote it across all of your marketing channels – social media as well as your blog, website and wherever else it makes sense. This will ensure that your audience sees the contest wherever they are online.

And if you’re able to collect responses from your audience across multiple channels, you’re likely to see better participation and positive word-of-mouth.

4. Promote a live event

Whether you’re hosting a live event or just attending, using Twitter while it’s happening is a great way to engage with your audience. However, you can also bake Twitter into a multi-channel live event strategy – tweeting behind-the-scenes images while you blog about key takeaways and post Instagram pictures of visitors to your booth, for instance.

5. Target better search and display ads

If part of your marketing strategy involves using ads to reach your audience, Twitter can help with that, too. You can learn about the type of content that resonates with your audience on Twitter by examining your past tweets on Twitter Analytics. From there, it’s simply a matter of mirroring the tone of voice, images and content in your search and display ads.

(Marketing team image via Shutterstock)

5 Ways to Integrate Twitter Into Your Cross-Channel Marketing Campaigns

Social Media Recruitment: How to Successfully Integrate Social Media into Recruitment Strategy

As the landscape of recruiting changes, different methods are needed to reach talent, and social media is a key channel.  However, many HR and recruiting professionals are not equipped with the expertise to create a social media recruiting strategy.

In a series of easy to follow chapters and manageable steps, Social Media Recruitment covers the essentials from the beginning to the end of the process, including: how to implement a social media strategy; the crossover between HR, recruitment and marketing; measuring ROI; HR policies and procedures needed; big data and HR; using technology in recruiting, such as video interviewing; social media as an internal collaboration and communication tool across companies; how social media will impact recruiting and HR in the future.

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Social Media Recruitment: How to Successfully Integrate Social Media into Recruitment Strategy

3 Steps To Integrate Video With Email Marketing Automation

Many marketers have found that adding video to their email programs drives increased engagement and customer loyalty. People love watching videos online (4 billion video views on Facebook alone in 2014), and they aren’t all cat videos and sport bloopers.

Emails with “video” in the subject line have a 65% higher click-through rate on average, according to Vidcaster. When video is a central part of your email campaign, the CTR can be 200% higher than a similar campaign without video.

Email Video Strategies: Two B2C Examples

Video can help you cut costs and increase customer satisfaction as well as identify prospects and move them closer to a purchase decision when you integrate your email video strategy with your marketing automation and ecommerce platforms.

Reduce returns: A sports retailer uses video to help ski-boot buyers fit their new boots correctly and reduce unnecessary returns or customer-service contacts.

Every ski-boot purchase triggers a three-part follow-up emails series, which begins with a how-to video. The series generates a 57% open rate and 26% CTR., but most importantly has reduced costly returns and calls to customer service.

Welcome newcomers: A U.K. sports retailer’s welcome email to new customers and subscribers links to video interviews with the CEO and three customers to explain its flash-sale ordering and fulfillment system.

This email moves new members back to the website and uses video to answer questions and reduce uncertainties about the buying process. While helpful, text and images would not bring the story and value proposition to life as powerfully as interviews with athlete customers and the company’s founder.

3 Steps to a Video-Email Marketing Strategy

The innate activity associated with sports makes video marketing a natural for outfitters, but integrating email and video can help any brand achieve a variety of marketing and business goals.

Here are some suggestions (taken from a webinar I co-presented) for launching a video marketing strategy that incorporates email, ecommerce and marketing automation in a top-to-bottom sales funnel model:

1. Top of the funnel: Just get started.  All you need is a camera (even the one on your phone), a topic and a platform (embed on your website or host on Facebook, YouTube or Vimeo). Most smartphones and desktops have basic recording and editing tools like QuickTime or iMovie, or you can purchase a video editing software solution.

And you need one more thing: a clear business goal for the video. This, in turn, sets up a distinct call to action. Videos at this level can raise awareness and drive traffic to your website.

Your company might even be in the video business already. Scout around for product demo and trouble-shooting videos, even customer/fan videos. Don’t forget your own recorded webinars.

2. Middle: Qualify and move leads faster. Here, prospects reach your website from a public platform (Facebook, YouTube, etc.). Put up a simple lead-generation form that collects identifying information to unlock premium content.

Use that data to launch a drip campaign to these viewers, but watch their video viewing choices for indications that your prospects are closer to buying. This can let you skip ahead a few levels in your campaign schedule and move them to the funnel’s bottom.

At this point, you might need to move from a basic video platform to an enterprise-level program that provides more data management and integration with your marketing-automation program.

3. Bottom: Decision time. At this level, you have enough data on your prospects to point them to the videos that will persuade them to take the business action you want (purchase, sign up for a demo, call for an appointment, etc.).

Where are you on the video spectrum? What works, what doesn’t? Let me know in the comments.

Until next time, take it up a notch!

3 Steps To Integrate Video With Email Marketing Automation

Custora Raises $6.5MM Series A to Integrate Predictive Customer Insights into the Marketing Cloud

       

April 07, 2015 12:33 ET | Source: Custora

NEW YORK, April 7, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — via PRWEB – Custora, a marketing software startup based in NYC, announced today the close of a $6.5MM Series A led by Foundation Capital with participation from Greycroft Partners and Valhalla Partners. The new funding will enable Custora to scale out sales and marketing and more rapidly develop the company’s B2C marketing software platform. Custora, a Y Combinator company, raised its seed round in 2011 and has been growing based on customer revenue over the past few years.

Custora provides a predictive marketing platform built for e-commerce teams. Its software analyzes data to predict how customers will behave in the future – the things they’re likely to buy, how much they’ll spend, even how often they’ll shop. These customer-specific insights enable brands to advertise and communicate in more effective and meaningful ways.

“It’s a new type of software – part predictive analytics, part B2C marketing automation,” says Corey Pierson, Co-Founder and CEO of Custora. “The goal is for marketers to spend more time thinking about how to treat their customer segments at different points in the buying cycle, and less time caught up in data analysis and list management.”

Customer data is spread across so many silos that it is a real challenge for marketers to surface meaningful insights about their customer or implement marketing campaigns that leverage those insights to drive more sales. To respond to that issue, Custora has built the first platform that aggregates data from the whole ecosystem, leverages predictive analytics to surface customer insights, then integrates those insights back into existing marketing tools – making it easier for marketers to utilize those insights in daily campaigns.

For example, Custora monitors in-store and online purchase data along with website and email engagement data and identifies specific customers who seem to be veering off their usual purchase tendencies. Then, the platform integrates with existing email marketing software to automatically trigger the appropriate “win back” email at the appropriate time.

“Custora has surfaced deep, actionable insights about various customer segments,” says Jason Wang, Senior Director of Strategic Planning and Operations at Guess?, Inc. “We have a much better grasp of our different shopper types and of our omnichannel customers – and when we’re tailoring campaigns based on those insights, it’s driving real lift.”

“It doesn’t make sense for insights and actions to be disconnected. Dashboards don’t drive revenue for marketers,” says Anamitra Banerji, partner at Foundation Capital and newest addition to Custora’s board. “Shoppers are demanding smarter, more relevant marketing campaigns. What makes sense is for software to help marketers bridge this gap.”

Though the company has yet to invest heavily in sales and marketing, they have attracted an impressive roster of customers including Ann Taylor, Guess, Reebok, Bonobos, and more. “Retailers are finding us by word of mouth because they hear our product simply works. ROI sells,” Pierson says.

About Custora

Custora provides the leading predictive marketing platform for e-commerce teams. It helps retailers acquire valuable customers and improve customer retention. The software analyzes data to predict how customers will behave in future — the things they’re likely to buy, how much they’ll spend, even how often they’ll shop. The software then integrates with existing marketing tools so marketing teams can leverage customer-specific insights to advertise and communicate in more effective and meaningful ways. Custora is proud to work with a variety of online and omnichannel retailers including LOFT, Guess?, Crocs, Bonobos, and Backcountry. Based in Manhattan, NYC, Custora is a Y Combinator company, and is backed by prominent venture capital firms and angel investors. To learn more, visit http://www.custora.com/

About Foundation Capital

Foundation Capital is dedicated to the proposition that one entrepreneur’s idea, with the right support, can become a business that changes the world. Foundation Capital has helped companies like Lending Club change the way money is lent and borrowed and Netflix revolutionize media distribution and consumption, among many others. Foundation Capital is currently invested in more than 60 high-growth ventures in the areas of consumer, information technology, software, semiconductors, and clean technology including Beepi, BoardVantage, Chegg, Coverity, DogVacay, Kik, ForgeRock, Lending Home, Simply Hired, Spoon-Rocket, Sunrun, and Venafi. Foundation Capital’s twenty-five IPOs include Lending Club, OnDeck, MobileIron, Control4, TubeMogul, Envestnet, Financial Engines, Netflix, NetZero, Responsys and Silver Spring Networks. For more information, visit foundationcapital.com.

This article was originally distributed on PRWeb. For the original version including any supplementary images or video, visit http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/04/prweb12634817.htm

Custora
elizabeth conway

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Custora Raises $6.5MM Series A to Integrate Predictive Customer Insights into the Marketing Cloud

8 ways you can better integrate social into your marketing mix

As anyone who’s spent some time on the conference circuit will tell, social media is (somehow) still being treated as an exciting new trend, even though its obvious to anyone with hands-on experience social media is something that needs to be integrated into your digital marketing efforts rather than being allowed to exist within its own silo.

In fact, it seems pretty likely that the term “social media marketing” will disappear in the not-too-distant future and people will once again refer only to “marketing” as a whole. Measuring the true return of social media can be quite daunting, but integrating social media with your other marketing campaigns is the easiest method if you want to measure the ROI of your campaigns.
Here’s a couple of tips on how you can use social media with your current marketing and business strategies.

1. Content marketing

Use Twitter with your traditional content marketing strategies. This includes your website and blog as well. Share your content on your favourite social media channels. If the content is interesting, the content can be shared and seen by more people. This is a great method to make sure your content is seen by more people and also the search engines.

2. Customer service

Servicing clients on the social web is a great way on establishing your business as a social business and build your community online. Let your current customers know that you have a service desk on the social web.

3. Brochures

On any business brochures you might have, add information to your social media profiles on the brochure so that interested people can connect with you.

4. Invitations

Invite people to connect with you on the social web to receive more information, coupons, discounts, access to additional services, etc. See how you can make a campaign out of this.

5. Recruitment

Social media is a great way you can use for recruitment purposes. Let users apply via social media or you can scan the applicants online by looking at their social media profiles. This can help you find the right person suitable for the right position. Do you really want to hire someone who’s only posting nude drunk photos online?

6. Trade shows

If you are running any trade shows, create a specific #hashtag relevant to the trade show to connect personally with attendees and to market the trade show.

7. Lead generation

Do some research online to find information on new clients and to find out who the key decision makers are. Connect with them via social media and start engaging with them. This is a great way to connect with industry leaders that can help you with lead generation.

8. Stay in contact with your customers

Social media is a great way you can stay connected with your customers. Use this to your advantage by connecting with your customers on their favourite social media channel to keep the relationship going.

Social media should never be seen as a standalone strategy because it should be an integral part of your business. At the end of the day it really comes down to how you are integrating social media within your business.

8 ways you can better integrate social into your marketing mix