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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 26, 2016 7:59 PM
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To put this another way, for every $92 of advertising revenue spent, only $1 is being invested into CRO and A/B testing efforts - you know, the part that actually turns your ad dollars into converting leads.
Shocked? We were, too.
Why would anyone throw money down the drain like that? We’re guessing it is probably happening out of ignorance, but if you want more conversions, you can’t afford to ignore landing page trends, best practices, and A/B testing.
This is why we decided to take on a colossal task. We’ve chosen 100 landing page examples and critiqued them on their optimization efforts to show you exactly what works and what doesn’t when it comes to CRO.
We’ll start with the landing page example showcase, showing you a mug shot of every landing page. Then, we will discuss what page elements help the conversion process and which elements are a disgrace to landing page optimization....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 26, 2016 4:07 PM
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Tourism campaigns for Caribbean destinations often have a similar aesthetic—sandy beaches, honeymooning couples, frosty drinks by the pool. But the Belize Tourism Board and its agency, Olson, had enough of that. For its latest ad campaigns, the BTB focused on local experiences unique to Belize and making flying to the country easier. Three years ago, Olson started working with the BTB, launching "Discover How to Be," a campaign that showcased the country's culture and experiences you can have there. Olson and the BTB also worked with Southwest Airlines and WestJet Airlines to open up more routes and direct flights to Belize from the U.S. and Canada. The strategy worked—the campaign was responsible for increasing travel to Belize and boosting the country's GDP by 2.24 percent, according to the Central Bank of Belize.
BrandShare Content
"We set rules from the beginning—no honeymooners, no frozen drinks, nobody getting a massage by the pool," said Kevin McKeon, chief creative officer at Olson. "We want to go for someone who's a little more ambitious about what they're looking for in a vacation. The takeaway is you're going to meet some fascinating people and come back with a story you didn't expect to have."
Its latest campaign, "A Curious Place," which launched this week, continues that theme. Videos feature a cacao farmer, a meat pie seller and "Coconut Leo," a Belizean who climbs trees upside down and cuts down coconuts.
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 26, 2016 2:09 PM
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It looked like a garden-variety promotional tweet, designed to attract attention to the AP’s big investigation into allegations of conflict of interest on the part of the Democratic presidential candidate. But by trying too hard to drum up interest in the piece, the wire service made itself the target instead.
The post made a significant, and startling, claim. Namely, that “more than half those who met Clinton as Cabinet secretary gave money to Clinton Foundation.” Surely this was compelling evidence of a conflict.
As sharp-eyed reporters for competing news outlets noted within minutes of the tweet and article being posted, however, this statistic was only true if you ignored the thousands of government officials, dignitaries, and so on that Clinton met in her capacity as Secretary of State....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 26, 2016 10:50 AM
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Olympian Ryan Lochte, who was dropped this week by major sponsors including Speedo and Ralph Lauren, has found a brand willing to take him on. Pine Bros. Softish Throat Drops signed an endorsement deal today with Lochte, who will appear in commercial and print ads for the brand. The swimmer thanked the company in a tweet today. Lochte embellished the story of what he claimed was a robbery at gunpoint with fellow swimmers at a gas station in Rio de Janeiro during the Olympics earlier this month, lying about it to NBC's Billy Bush and Matt Lauer (and inspiring some shade from the likes of Al Roker, Stephen Colbert and John Oliver, who all called him out for his behavior). Lochte apologized to Lauer in an interview that aired on the Today Show on Monday, saying that he "over-exaggerated" the events of that night. Lochte's ads for Pine Bros. will feature the tagline, "Pine Brothers Softish Throat Drops: Forgiving On Your Throat," just as the company—and Lochte, himself —is asking the public to forgive him. ...
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 26, 2016 1:33 AM
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With an ever-growing supply of mobile apps, it takes a lot to stand out from the crowd—both in functionality and design. With that in mind, we sloshed through app stores to handpick 30 beautiful mobile apps that designers and design enthusiasts will love. We’ve organized this article into seven sections, so you can easily find the mobile app that fits your needs best. It’s time to turn your phone into your own little robotic personal assistant! Let’s begin....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 26, 2016 1:02 AM
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As social media networks continue to evolve at a breakneck speed, so does the demographic of users on the respective platforms. We looked at the data and pulled together current 2016 trends with early predictions about where social media users will go in 2017. Key points - Facebook isn’t dead, yet. Millennials are still on Facebook, they’re just using the platform in a different way than their older counterparts. Rather than sharing personal stories and updates, they’re sharing third-party content. - Instagram ads bring big brand awareness. 97% of branded Instagram campaigns have generated a significant increase in ad recall. This is expected to grow even more as Instagram ad targeting becomes even more advanced. - Video will dominate. Video content will be responsible for 85% of search traffic in the US by 2019. There is already a massive rise in video content, especially on Facebook. - Snapchat might revolutionize ads. Leaked documents from the company show Snapchat is looking to capitalize on their large, young demographic. This includes image recognition technology to introduce a new round of advertisements that encourage users to share a brand’s message through user-generated content....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 25, 2016 11:59 PM
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Humans are, by nature, very visual beings. In the brain itself, there are hundreds of millions of neurons devoted to visual processing, nearly 30 percent of the entire cortex, as compared with 8 percent for touch and just 3 percent for hearing. Each of the two optic nerves, which carry signals from the retina to the brain, consists of a million fibers, compared to the auditory nerve carrying a mere 30,000. That’s all to say that social media images are a vital part of your content reaching the maximum amount of people, people who are very visual beings! Marketers that have dabbled in creating engaging images for social media know just how tough and time-consuming it can be. I’m no expert, but I’ve learned a thing or two about creating social media images after lots of practice (and mistakes!), and I’m excited to share with you my favorite social media design tips and principles to help enhance your social media images.
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 25, 2016 11:45 PM
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If you want the best pizza, you're not going to order Domino's. But if you want your pizza delivered in the most innovative way, well, Domino's may have that market cornered.
The chain took four years to modify a car to become the perfect delivery vehicle. And now it is testing drone delivery in New Zealand. And by all accounts, the first drone test went well, with the pizza landing gently and without major damage—save for a little cheese stuck to the top of the box. (Domino's did something similar in the U.K. way back in 2013, but that was when commercial drone delivery was years away from approval. We're much closer now.)
Check out a video of the successful test below, which is, aptly enough, itself quite cheesy. But the brand is serious about the method. According to Reuters, it's is looking to conduct tests in Australia, Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Japan and Germany....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 25, 2016 10:49 AM
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For Lowe’s, it was a virtual no-brainer. Many people can envision a new kitchen, but few can actually visualize it – not correctly anyway. That island ends up taking more space than you thought, and the refrigerator door opens right into the entranceway. So Lowe’s turned to virtual reality. It created the Holoroom, its self-described “digital power tool for kitchen and bath design.” Launched in November 2015, the Holoroom enables customers to design their dream kitchens or bathrooms on an app, and then, with virtual reality goggles such as Oculus Rift or Google Cardboard, virtually step into the design. With this technology, Lowe’s is literally extending the experiential phenomenon of virtual reality from a household word to a retail one. It is not alone. While augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) feel a little futuristic for commerce, big-name retailers are testing the technologies in ways that appear surprisingly simple and adaptable. If these efforts continue, consumers will increasingly come to expect them to aid their purchasing....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 24, 2016 9:22 PM
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The funding landscape in AR/VR has been defined by large rounds to the exceptionally well-funded Florida-based startup Magic Leap, which has raised nearly $1.4B in venture funding. After raising massive Series B ($542M) and Series C ($780M) rounds, the stealth AR company’s financings tend to distort industry funding trends.
To identify well-capitalized AR/VR startups that aren’t named Magic Leap, we used CB Insights data to see which companies are raising big financing rounds and building war chests to help build out the AR/VR ecosystem, which some theorize could become the next major computing platform.
Topping the list of big AR/VR rounds was Laguna Beach, California-based NextVR, which focuses on virtual reality broadcasts of live events. NextVR recently raised an $80M Series B round.
The next biggest deal went to Palo Alto-based cinematic VR platform Jaunt. The company raised a $65M Series C in September of 2015.
In third was UK-based Blippar, which produces a mobile AR visual search app. Blippar last raised a $54M Series D in March of 2016.
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 23, 2016 2:49 PM
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Take 2010, when BP was confronted with one of the biggest oil spills in history. It appeared that the organization waited to reveal all the facts until they knew that the spill had become unstoppable. Or 2015, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board uncovered widespread cheating by Volkswagen on emissions standards – something Michael Horn, president and CEO of Volkswagen America, was alerted to a year earlier but remained silent. Even when the EPA confronted the company with their findings, Volkwagen missed the opportunity to communicate first. And more recently, The Wall Street Journal revealed a culture of secrecy at blood-testing start-up Theranos and questioned the effectiveness of the technology driving their operation, leading to a federal investigation.
In each case, the organization failed to self-disclose a crisis, and as a result, each faced enormous negative publicity that continues to draw critical attention from a broad public. Even Hollywood is interested: movies have been made, or are in the works, about all three scandals. The longstanding impact of a failure to acknowledge a problem cannot be overstated.
How should companies handle a crisis differently? Our research focuses on an alternative approach, one that is referred to as “stealing thunder.” It involves self-disclosing crises and major issues before media gets hold of the story. Earlier studies on stealing thunder have found that self-disclosing organizational crises increases the credibility of organizational spokespersons. When an organization breaks the news about incriminating events, these problems will also appear less severe. In addition, organizations that steal thunder are considered more reliable and consumers are more inclined to continue purchasing their products. Our recent study adds to these findings by examining if self-disclosing an organizational crisis may be as effective as it is because old news is considered no news. When self-disclosing incriminating information, individuals will perceive the subsequent negative publicity as old news, and hence, pay less attention to it....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 23, 2016 3:54 AM
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HubSpot customers have been running LinkedIn Sponsored Updates through HubSpot for almost a year now. Using these powerful social ads to get more from their content and inbound strategy. When we first integrated LinkedIn Ads into HubSpot, we weren’t sure what to expect. But since launch, we’ve had the opportunity to review our customer’s performance and we’re excited to share what we’ve learned.
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 22, 2016 3:35 PM
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Speedo and Ralph Lauren have ended relationships with U.S. Olympian Ryan Lochte, a decision that comes after the swimmer was accused of fabricating his tale of being robbed in Rio de Janeiro.
"Speedo USA today announces the decision to end its sponsorship of Ryan Lochte," the brand announced in a statement. "As part of this decision, Speedo USA will donate a $50,000 portion of Lochte's fee to Save the Children, a global charity partner of Speedo USA's parent company, for children in Brazil."
As for Ralph Lauren, the company said its endorsement agreement with Lochte "was specifically in support of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and the company will not be renewing his contract." ...
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 26, 2016 5:01 PM
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Some of my takeaways?
LinkedIn, for example, provided an excellent return on B2B ads, while Google still reigned supreme for B2C. StumbleUpon’s conversion rate for paid products was woefully low.
The top three paid ad spots on Google’s SERPs, for example, get 41% of the clicks. Even the best SEO techniques will only expose you to 59% of the viewing audience, and Google’s knowledge graph and infoboxes are quickly cutting into that as well.
Marketing professionals across the board agree that pay-per-click advertising works. The hard part is getting set up with a solid PPC plan to serve as your foundation.
We need to know how much to spend, when to spend it, where to spend it, and how to spend it correctly.
Those are tough calls to make, especially if you’re a paid advertising newbie. The paid platforms can be complicated and confusing. What do you do with all these options, data, and metrics?
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 26, 2016 2:37 PM
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Thursday’s Single-A minor league game between the Batavia Muckdogs and State College Spikes was interrupted by a fan on the field.
That fan was a sheep.
Presumably on hand for some sort of promotion, the sheep slipped onto the field when a stadium gate was opened, according to the announcers' conversation.
The grounds crew was able to guide the woolly visitor off the field eventually, but it wasn’t happy.
Maybe it just wanted a better view of the game....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 26, 2016 11:24 AM
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Mylan and its CEO Heather Bresch are under fire. It raised the price of its EpiPen product — an essential protection for people with life threatening allergies — by a factor of five in the last eight years. Mylan’s statement defending itself clarifies what it’s doing — providing rebates — but evades the main issue of why it increased the price in the first place. Here’s the dialogue between Mylan and the public, in a nutshell: Public: Why is this thing so hellishly expensive? Mylan: We’ll help you afford it with coupons and rebates. Public: Why is this thing so hellishly expensive? Mylan: We’re on your side. It’s the insurance regulations. Public: Why is this thing so hellishly expensive??? RtMylan: We even give some away to schools!S So Mylan’s position is that it won’t explain the massive price increase on a product where it has a monopoly on a generic medication product that millions of people could die without, a product that’s essentially unchanged from past years....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 26, 2016 10:19 AM
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Real Money has done the math and shared their findings in the infographic Examining the Real Cost of Donald Trump's Wall, designed by DesignBySoap. It appears that the actual cost of the wall would end up being 2-3 times more expensive than the publicly released estimate. Luckily, even many of his supporters do not believe he will build the wall. You can see the details of Trump's plan, as well as some statistics on how Americans feel about it in the infographic above.
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 26, 2016 1:24 AM
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Just like how specific wines bring out the best flavors in certain foods, specific wine glasses bring out the best characteristics of each wine. The Right Wine in the Right Kind of Glass infographic from Wine Coolers starts off by showing us some general characteristic differences between red and white wine glasses, then shows us the correct wine glass to pair with each wine.
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 26, 2016 12:53 AM
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Although many sources may claim to know the best day and time to post, a strategic social media strategy ultimately depends on your location, type of business, and type of audience. For a B2B company like NewsCred, we choose to stop using social media to market to brands and instead choose to start communicating with people. To do so, brands need to know the right place and the right time to share, so NewsCred created a guide to help you along the way....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 25, 2016 11:54 PM
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One such significant trend that might govern the future of SEO is:
Voice queries on mobile…
The chronically expanded use of smartphones and the arrival of personal assistants has led to their prominence.
Voice queries are like a two-way conversation and they aim to help the user complete tasks from their life in real-time, like booking tickets and making a purchase.
Rather than links, users want direct answers, when they perform a voice search. So, such queries are inherently different from the typical keyword search in the search box....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 25, 2016 11:36 PM
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The humans sprinkled throughout the Ikea catalog traditionally have been pure background material, a supporting cast to the furniture and other brand goods for sale. But no longer!
In this spot from DDB Brussels, they speak out, during the photo shoot for the new catalog, about their hopes and dreams, display their impressive thespian chops, and most of all, are thrilled to be poised on the cusp of what will surely be worldwide fame on the A-list level.
That end line nicely puts a bow on the whole video, which is in keeping with a lot of Ikea catalog marketing lately—jokey, self-aware and culturally smart, as seen most notably in the BookBook spot from BBH Singapore two years ago.
"The Ikea catalog is one of the most read books in the world. So it makes sense for the models to consider this their breakthrough moment. Their door opener to stardom," DDB says. "We listen in as they dream out loud of becoming household names in TV, modeling, acting and mentally preparing themselves for a life in the spotlight."...
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 25, 2016 10:27 AM
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Forget trying to design your deck, patio or porch with a drawing. Wayfair LLC is setting up outdoor furniture in another dimension. The home furnishings retailer launched a virtual reality app to let consumers design an outdoor patio area. Wayfair debuted the app, Patio Playground, last week for consumers with the Oculus Rift 3-D gaming headset.In the app consumers can arrange patio furniture in a virtual setting, see how it looks from different angles and in various types of daylight. Wayfair has 85 products for consumers to place in the patio scene, and they can place up to 15 items in the setting at one time, says Mike Festa, head of Wayfair's research and development lab. Consumers wearing an Oculus Rift headset can select a pre-configured patio, such as two chairs and a table with an umbrella, and then switch out the products, or they can build their patio layout from scratch, Festa says. ...
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 24, 2016 11:30 AM
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In this week’s episode, Robert and I discuss a contrarian article that claims content marketing is a meaningless buzzword. Its author also counsels marketers to ignore the continuing evolution of marketing, which is flat-out bad advice. A companion article reminds us that we ought to focus on the needs of our customers, not on writing to justify the practice of content marketing to our peers. Next, we ponder the emergence of a new position at large publishers, the e-commerce editor, and explain how it fits into the evolution of media business models. Finally, we interpret BuzzFeed’s disastrous last quarter. Does it point to fundamental problems at the huge online publisher or simply a market correction for an over-valued company? Rants and raves include Dan Lyons’ tell-all tale about BuzzFeed and a must-read HBR article about the end of solution sales. This week’s This Old Marketing example: Ripley’s Believe It or Not....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 23, 2016 4:06 AM
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The way to think about where voice and content creation intersect is to consider audience: the audience you have, and the audience you want. From the blog and video topics chosen, to the content’s production style, every aspect of a brand’s content creation needs to be geared towards its audience. Some brands already know their voice. You, as a blogger, may already know yours. Even when your client provides keywords and example content, you still should visit their social media pages and website blog to get a feel for the content. Often, however, you’ll work with a client without a clear voice, and that’s where this article will focus. Whether you’re branding your own blog or helping a new client develop a clear voice before you begin any content creation, you need to know the audience you’re writing for....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 23, 2016 3:46 AM
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Comic short films about the absurdity of the ad business have a proud history going back to Tim Hamilton's brilliant Truth in Advertising. Here's the latest one—director Tim Mason's No Other Way to Say It, about an amusingly bleak voiceover recording session for an ice-cream commercial. As the creative team tries to get the voiceover artist to nail the right tone for a single line, over and over—and the latter gets more and more distracted—the truth in advertising here becomes painfully clear: The project is mired in idiocy and inertia...
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What a superb resource for social marketers! InstaPage analyzes 100 best landing pages and provides excellent guidance and tips.