Friday, February 28, 2020

Help! My Brand Went Viral: 16 Small Brands That Made It Big

When you think of viral marketing, your mind probably wanders to that Oreos "You can still dunk in the dark" tweet, which garnered an enviable 40,000 retweets and Facebook likes during 2013's Super Bowl power outage.

Or perhaps you think of the Dove "Real Beauty Sketches," a video with more than 67 million views to date.

When these global brands go viral, it's not a huge surprise.

Global brands have agencies and well-staffed marketing teams standing by to handle the good, the bad, and the ugly that can result when they go viral. But what happens to the little guys? What happens to small brands that hit on marketing gold, kind of by accident?

Below, we're taking a look at how small brands have handled their 15 minutes of viral fame. Some struggled, some succeeded, but all of them earned a spot on this elusive roster. Here's what they did, and what you can learn from their stories.

16 Small Brands That Went Viral

1. Dominique Ansel Bakery (The Cronut)

Picture of a cronut Image Credit: CNN Traveler

Pastry chef Dominique Ansel was not a doughnut devotee. The French-born, New York-based bakery owner had tasted a few, but he was far more familiar with the croissants he had grown up eating. When someone pointed out that he didn't have a donut on the menu of his New York bakery, Ansel decided to head back to his roots and invent a new kind of pastry.

Enter: the Cronut.

Ansel's new confection really gained steam after a food blogger from Grub Street tried a Cronut and documented the experience. Traffic to the bakery website rose by more than 300 percent, and hundreds would line up every day to get their hands on the trendiest pastry around.

Viral best practice: Focus on quality, not quantity

Each batch of Cronuts took Ansel's team three days to prepare. They could make about 350 Cronuts every day in their bakery, which meant the numbers were limited.

By managing the output of his pastries and avoiding the draw of producing more than his team and facility could manage, Ansel created controlled demand that he could meet without sacrificing the quality of his product.

Four years later, you'll still find a line outside of Ansel's bakery before their 8:00 A.M. opening. But the true secret to his success? Ansel claims that he's had one Cronut every day since their invention. I'm really hoping that's the key to my next promotion as well.

2. Eva Kor and Candles

When my colleague, Kayla, was in college, she went to a nearby Holocaust memorial museum run by Auschwitz survivor Eva Kor.

Hearing Kor tell her story at Candles during the tour touched so many hearts in the community, including Kayla's. Kor's story is why a visit to Candles is essential to anyone visiting the area.

In 2017, BuzzFeed did a profile on Kor and the impact of Candles. At the time of this post, the profile video has 15 million views on YouTube alone, and over 100 million views on Facebook.

BuzzFeed's profile gave Kor a global platform to share a story of bravery and remembrance. A visit to the cherished local museum became a viral topic that captured the hearts of millions, just like it had in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Viral best practice: Local stories can capture the hearts of millions

A large number of people in Terre Haute will enthusiastically tell you about their first time at Candles. Now, millions of people know about Candles and get to spread that message. Additionally, to keep Kor's legacy remembered for future generations, in April 2019, two Indiana natives teamed up with PBS to release a documentary about Kor.

Everyone has a story to tell. Candles' story is one of bravery, passion, and perseverance, feelings to which everyone can relate. By telling your story, you could capture the hearts and attention of the masses, as well.

3. ALSA (The Ice Bucket Challenge)

Ice bucket challenge screenshot Image Credit: Iconosquare Blog

In 2014, the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Association launched one of the most successful viral campaigns of all time. Justin Bieber, Oprah Winfrey, and Bill Gates were a handful of the celebrities who took the challenge and dumped buckets of ice over their heads to raise funds and awareness for ALSresearch.

By the time the videos had stopped filling newsfeeds around the world, the campaign had raised more than $220 million for ALSorganizations worldwide. Awareness of the disease rose and it reached the fifth most popular Google search for all of 2014.

In 2015, a year after the the ice bucket challenge went viral, money from the campaign was said to fund research that identified a new gene, NEK1, that contributes to the disease.

Viral best practice: They looked outside their target audience

True, most of those who made a donation during the video craze have never made a second. But overall A.L.S. contributions have stayed about 25 percent higher than the year before the challenge, and the average donor age has dropped from above 50 to 35.

By shooting outside of their target demographic and trying alternative marketing tactics (video) that might normally take a backseat to more traditional fundraising efforts (galas, email marketing, etc … ) A.L.S.A. was able to bring in millions in one-time donations, raise brand awareness, and gain an overall contribution baseline of 25 percent. I'd say that's enough incentive to shake things up in your next campaign.

4. Roman Originals (The Dress)

Picture of Roman Originals dress Source

What happens when your company isn't even the one behind a viral sensation?

"We woke up one morning and had the world and media coming down upon us," says Peter Christodoulou, the co-founder of Roman Originals. It started with a wedding photo posted online. A young woman was pictured standing next to a bride, and no one could agree on what color her dress was.

What followed was an international debate dubbed #DressGate.

Christodoulou explained that his company had hoped to sell 200 of the lace-detailed dresses per week, but the UK-based retailer sold 3,000 in just 10 days. Celebrities, global brands, and just about everyone else was tweeting, sharing, and talking about "The Dress." At its height, the controversy sparked 10,000 tweets per minute.

Viral best practice: Other brands can and will capitalize on your success

Brands around the world capitalized on the craze and amplified the popularity of "The Dress." Dunkin' Donuts, Legos, and Tide were just a few of the brands that came out with clever dress-themed ads of their own.

A few months later, Christodoulou said his company "won the social media lottery. We've had a brilliant year … Hopefully our spring/summer 2016 range will be well-received."

While the line might not have sparked the global frenzy the original $74 dress had, Roman Originals showed the marketing world that virality can happen to anyone. And retailers everywhere showed that jumping on trending topics can do as much for you as it does for the company that originated the trend.

5. Blendtec

In the early days of YouTube, there was some interesting content floating around — cat videos, sketch videos, and, of course, a guy in a white lab coat blending a whole chicken and can of soda.

 

Tom Dickson, CEO of blender company Blendtec, saw early on that YouTube could be a great marketing tool. With the platform's emphasis on funny and quick content, the infomercial series "Will It Blend?" was the result of a minimal marketing budget and an experiment.

The series was built around Blendtec's flagship high-speed blender. To show the blender's power, the CEO decided to advertise that users could even blend household items. So, he put on a white lab coat, found a box of matches, and turned on a camera.

Dickson puts everything from golf balls, Amazon Echos, and my personal childhood favorite, Thanksgiving Dinner, to the test while cheesy game show music loftily plays in the background. (Spoiler alert: It always blends).

Gaining billions of views and great interest in the high-speed capabilities of a Blendtec blender, the company has now flourished into one of the most reputable brands in its industry. Popularity of the series led to the company's CEO appearing on an episode of NBC's "How I Made My Millions" , a show about startups that quickly found great success.

Viral best practice: Leveraging YouTube to create content that connects to the platform's audience

Having little resources as a startup, Dickson stumbled upon a hidden gold mine. His story shows how adoption of YouTube as a digital marketing platform can skyrocket a company, even without a high budget or television ad slots.

Eventually, themed content, such as holiday episodes (Christmas Dinner smoothie, anyone?) began rolling out to expand its reach among YouTube's audience.

Today, you can still go back and watch the "Will It Blend?" series on their YouTube channel. And of course, you can still purchase the blender and produce a few videos of your own (something else that became popular in light of the show's success).

6. Metro Trains Melbourne (Dumb Ways to Die)

Dumb Ways to Die show screen capture Source

Are you already humming that catchy little song in your head? You're welcome for that all day.

Melbourne's metro system didn't have a safety campaign in market before "Dumb Ways to Die" (DWTD). They had information at stations, but nothing that was really influencing safe behavior or showing that the company cared, so they brought agency McCann Melbourne on to help.

Metro Trains' Chloe Alsop explained, "We kept coming back to the same thing: it's really hard to get hit by a train. A wrong or careless behaviour is required." Without a serious tone or tugging at heartstrings, an impactful, memorable, and shareable campaign was built.

By April 2014, the campaign had been viewed 77 million times on YouTube. The accompanying game became the No. 1 free app in 101 countries, and in six weeks, DWTD had garnered an estimated $60 million in earned media. The most important stat that came out of the campaign? A 21% reduction in railway accidents and near misses following the campaign.

Viral best practice: Launch outside your target market to build buzz

McCann created the original campaign using North American voices and characters because "the video had to go viral first, later it would catch the attention of the real target audience."

Today, the campaign has become a franchise used by metro transit around the world. The takeaway for us? As McCann spokesperson John Mescall says, "It used to be ‘Think global, act local.' That's no longer true; we need to think and act global."

The next time you launch a campaign, try thinking about where you might launch outside of your target market to build buzz.

7. Invisible Children (Kony 2012)

Kony 2012 campaign materials Source

Invisible Children was around for eight years before Kony 2012 turned them into a household name. They got their start by showing a short film called "The Rough Cut" at high schools and community centers around the United States.

The goal was to raise awareness of Joseph Kony, a war criminal responsible for a decades-long civil war in Uganda and surrounding countries, and most maligned for his kidnapping and use of children as sex slaves and soldiers.

The group flipped Kony 2012, a 30-minute YouTube video, to public on March 5, 2012. It was not their first or their last video but it was their loudest. In six days, it garnered more than 100 million views becoming (for the moment) the fastest growing viral video of all time. As the days passed, however, criticism of the video, the organization, and its founders grew.

The San Diego-based company wasn't ready for the deluge of attention, traffic, or critique the video brought upon them. Invisible Children's co-founder and star of Kony 2012 received the brunt of the criticism, culminating in a public mental health breakdown a few days after the video's infamous launch.

Viral best practice: Have a PR plan in place

In 2015, three years after Kony 2012 ignited the internet's attention, the company shuttered most of its US operations. Joseph Kony is still at large, and Invisible Children's downsized African programs have honed their focus to early warning systems and defection messaging.

Kony 2012 is still a divisive subject, but it's also a cautionary tale for organizations whose aims to go viral may not match their infrastructure or readiness. Site traffic, man-power, and the lack of a PR agency/strategy all contributed to the chaos in the days following Kony 2012's launch.

8. Netflix's Bird Box

During the winter of 2018, it was pretty much impossible to access a Netflix account that didn't have an ad for a thriller starring Sandra Bullock plastered across the home page. We'll touch more on that a little later. First, some background history.

When Netflix released its original movie "Bird Box," the movie was watched by 45 million viewers in seven days. In tandem, viewers took to social media with memes and reactions. While the social media attention could be a huge culprit of some of the movie's widespread attention, it also could be something else.

Netflix's marketing team has an effective strategy outside of traditional marketing channels: the platform's own user interface (UI). Netflix decision-makers have complete control over what viewers see when they log in, so when "Bird Box" released, they made sure viewers knew about it, pushing the ad in the homepage slot.

Screenshot of Netflix homepageTo illustrate, this is how much space a homepage ad takes up. Users see this every time they want to watch or search for something. Someone who watches Netflix after work everyday sees this ad — at least the movie title — at least 5X a week.

Mix an ad that's virtually impossible to ignore with automatic playback, and viewers with more time to stream content due to the holiday season, and the result is a perfect viral storm.

Viral best practice: Leveraging UI to be advantageous in a campaign

Netflix recommendations are tailored to what viewers want to see, but everything else about homepage design is decided by the company's team and gives great potential for their original content to go viral. For a streaming service with over 100 million subscribers, it's excellent exposure.

Sometimes, the perfect aid to a campaign starts with what you can do in your own wheelhouse. Marketing for "Bird Box" created interest for viewers with an auto-play ad on the site homepage. Maybe you can leverage one of your popular webpages, e-books, or social channels to similarly shine light on an upcoming product or service launch.

9. Sphero (Makers of BB-8)

Daisy Ridley posing with BB-8 Source

How did a small, Boulder, Colorado-based robotics company become the creator of spherical droid BB-8? Sphero was part of the inaugural class of Disney's Accelerator tech-development program, which helps companies expand creatively using Disney's impressive resources.

They happened to be in a meeting with Disney CEO Bob Iger as he was scrolling through offerings for Force Friday, a September 2015 toy and merchandising event held in anticipation of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Iger asked the crew if they could make the rolling droid, BB-8, and they spent the next 10 months working on the product in time for a Force Friday launch. They sold more than a million robots in 2015 alone, more than doubling their all-time selling record.

Viral best practice: Use social media in new ways (and it doesn't hurt to have Disney on your side)

Sphero hit the jackpot with their Snapchat marketing campaign for Force Friday. The droid's creators waited in lines with throngs of Force Friday patrons, snapping the hype and excitement of fellow fans.

They leveraged the cast of The Force Awakens, along with Snapchat influencers at five flagship Disney stores around the world to build buzz about the movie and their robot.

It's been labeled the first global product launch using Snapchat, and the results were impressive with 10.3 million views, 4.76 thousand screenshots, 69.1 million seconds watched, and 411 thousand social engagements.

Sphero also handled media requests and newfound attention with Brandfolder, a Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform that kept their product photos, company information, and tech specs easily accessible and accurate. For your next product launch, how could you leverage social media in unexpected or nontraditional ways?

10. Niantic Inc. (Pokemon Go)

Screen capture of Pokemon Go Source

Are you still recovering? Is it still too fresh to talk about?

Niantic Inc. was as surprised as you likely were when Pokemon Go became a global obsession. The company had prepared their server load for game launch with a 'worst case' estimate of five times the normal volume.

What they got was an astounding 50 times the expected traffic —within 24 hours of the game's launch. But frustrated players and downed servers eventually gave way to 2016's hottest trend.

Viral best practice: Focus on quality and innovation

After launch, the creators of Pokemon Go ironed out those kinks and continued to innovate on their product. They still release special, limited-time offerings like their ghost-themed Halloween event which saw a 1.3 billion increase in Pokemon caught by players, and a user spike of 13.2 percent globally.

Niantic also resisted the urge to monetize things too soon on a large scale. Instead, they focused on "core game mechanics, learning things on the technical side, the ops and customer support side, the community and marketing side."

A more natural way for them to monetize early on? Quigley says, "We're encouraging people to get out and about in their neighborhoods, their cities, their communities —what more natural way to integrate someone into the game than to have these paid sponsor locations that are interleaved among their other locations?"

Pokemon Go is a success story of a company that wasn't expecting success but, by focusing on creating a quality product and resisting the urge to monetize too soon, was able to create not only a global sensation but a lasting one.

11. Popeyes' Chicken Sandwich

So much has been said about the Popeyes chicken sandwich storm that exploded on social media in 2019. According to the CEO, because of taste and word-of-mouth, they just got lucky.

After a well-performing tweet, it seemed as if overnight, everyone had to get their hands on this sandwich.

Craze over the chicken sandwich grew to be so large that Popeyes ran out of chicken, drove sales up 16%, rose profits 13%, and caught the eye of their competition. Additionally, the response was so great that competitor Chick-fil-A got involved.

... y’all good? https://t.co/lPaTFXfnyP

— Popeyes Chicken (@PopeyesChicken) August 19, 2019

Needless to say, Chick-fil-A's response to Popeyes's turn in the chicken sandwich spotlight backfired.

Viral best practices: Use social media user-generated content to spearhead a campaign.

In essence, the CEO was right: they were just lucky. One viral tweet about the chicken sandwich inspired others to post their reactions, participation from competitors only helped, and online tutorials were popping up everywhere.

Now, the team at Popeyes knows their audience behavior, and they've learned that posting on social media, where their audience is active, is the way to drive sales. Take the creation of their clothing line, for instance.

Announced on Twitter as a thinly veiled response to Beyonce's athleisure brand Ivy Park, That Look From Popeyes was a real launch, and every item sold out. Social media is at the forefront of their campaigns, mixing pop culture into their brand to be more relatable to audiences.

The chicken sandwich wars showed that knowing your audience and connecting to them can yield great results. Though every tweet might not go viral, you'll build a loyal customer base that feels understood by your brand with consistency and relatability.

12. Cards Against Humanity

Cards Against Humanity Source

You know it, you love it, and you're embarrassed by it when your mom asks what it is. Your answer is invariably, "It's like Apples to Apples … but different."

This self-proclaimed "party game for horrible people" did not come from some hip Silicon Valley incubator. Instead, it was the brainchild of eight friends who'd known each other since grade school in their hometown of Chicago. They had no major outside investment, unless you count their one small crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, and it took them a while to even have a business address. "Our main priority is to be funny -- and to have people like us," says game co-creator Max Temkin.

Viral best practice: Know your brand voice (and stand by it)

Cards Against Humanity has always taken an unorthodox approach to marketing. You can download the full game for free on their website (something more than 1.5 million people have done). They once ran an anti-sale for Black Friday where they priced the game, normally $25, at $30 a box. With a tagline of "Today only! Cards Against Humanity products are $5 more. Consume!" the company inexplicably sold more cards. Their marketing strategy (or anti-strategy) would make most marketers cringe, but it works for them.

2016's Black Friday campaign featured live video of the company "digging a holiday hole" and asking people to donate to its "cause." They raised close to $30,000 with the stunt. Most recently, they launched their first-ever Super Bowl ad featuring nothing but a potato and a clever article about why the ad "failed."

Cards Against Humanity is one of the clearest cases of knowing your brand voice and sticking with it. Their copy, creative, and campaigns are uniquely their own, and uniquely unapologetic about it, just like their game.

13. Chubbies

Chubbies on Instagram Source

Love 'em, hate 'em, or loathe 'em, Chubbies is here to stay. The founders were four Stanford buddies who bonded over their mutual love of short shorts. Says co-founder Tom Montgomery, we noticed that "If you had a really cool pair of shorts, people would talk about it." They decided to test their idea for Chubbies out at a Fourth of July beach party before going all in. They donned their "Chubbies," headed to Lake Tahoe, and quickly found "the shorts struck the same emotional chord with other people that it struck with us."

Their website launched in September 2011, just a few months before winter, giving them time to prepare for the busy spring months. Chubbies' team spent that time building up inventory and marketing to their target audience: fraternities.

Witty emails, unapologetic copy, and bro-friendly photography set them apart, and their guerilla-style email tactics spread their name and their product through college towns everywhere.

Viral best practice: Build a strong narrative before you go viral

In 2014 they raised a $4.4 million round of funding and a steady growth curve followed. They've expanded beyond their signature shorts but continue to build the brand around what made them successful in the first place -- the weekend. "We're constantly building this brand around the weekend and the feeling you get around Friday at 5 p.m. When a guy throws them on, the stress and rigors of the work week can be put on hold for a bit."

That connection to their brand identity creates a strong narrative in their marketing efforts across channels. They speak to their audience unwaveringly, and their audience responds.

14. James Frey (A Million Little Pieces)

Cover of A Million Little Pieces Source

Author James Frey had an explosive product launch in 2005. His book, A Million Little Pieces originally marketed as his memoir, was catapulted to overnight success after being named on Oprah's television book club.

Two million copies were sold, making it the fastest-selling book in the club's 10-year history. It topped the New York Times Best Seller list for 15 straight weeks and was published in 28 languages by 30 different publishers all over the world.

Unfortunately, months after Oprah lauded his bravery as well as his book, it was revealed that his memoir was more fiction than fact. Winfrey publicly chastised Frey on her show, famously asking "Why would you lie?" Frey was dropped from his publishing house and he was hit with lawsuits from many readers.

Viral best practice: It's never too late to refresh your brand

Frey continues to write books, with successes like I Am Number Four being made into movies. Even Oprah apologized for how she turned on him so suddenly. While he enjoys renewed success, Frey maintains a life decidedly out of the spotlight. The lesson here? Well, make sure your marketing isn't full of lies, and be prepared to stand by your content if Oprah ever picks it up. But it's also never too late to reinvent yourself and still have a successful career, even after a bad viral moment.

15. Dollar Shave Club

Dollar Shave Club on Instagram Source

At this point, Dollar Shave Club's (DSC) inaugural video is legendary. My first reaction to a shaving subscription service was, "huh?" But with a single video, DSC flawlessly spoke to shaver pain points, poked fun at themselves, and announced to the world that they were ready to shake up a previously forgettable industry

Co-founder Michael Dubin wrote the video, starred in it, and had a friend shoot it in a single day for less than $4,500. It crashed the company's servers 90 minutes after it went live and catapulted the company to become the second-largest men's razor seller in America.

Viral best practice: Don't be afraid to poke fun at yourself

That video has been viewed over 22 million times, and DSC has 1.1 million subscribers and growing. They earned a $615 million valuation in 2015, and in 2016 they were acquired by Unilever for $1 billion dollars cash. They continue with successful marketing, expertly branded packaging, and a unique presence in an industry that has finally been woken up. All thanks (in part) to a video that poked fun at the company while educating their consumer.

16. Chatbooks

Screen capture of Chatbooks on YouTube Source

A four-minute viral video? It goes against every 15-, 30-, and 45-second best practice in the book, but boy did it pay off for Utah-based subscription photo service Chatbooks. The video educates its viewer on how to use a relatively new app that turns your photos into albums so you don't have to.

Why was it so successful? They nail their buyer persona. The video features a busy, realistic mom. She speaks to the audience with all the advice, sarcasm, and "I get it, I've been there" relatability that you'd look for from a fellow cool mom. It closes with a catchy tagline: "done is better than perfect."

Chatbooks sold 1 million subscriptions in its first 18 months. It's racked up over 1 million views on YouTube and the company is pushing 200,000 "likes" on Facebook. They continue to put out honest, pain-point driven videos featuring the same now-recognizable mom.

Viral best practice: Get detailed and personal with your personas

It's easy to phone in your user personas. Instead of just targeting "moms," Chatbooks clearly thought through how that mom thinks, what she worries about during the day, how she's spending her time, and how photos figure into her hectic schedule. The result? A video their target audience couldn't help but share.

The Next Time Your Boss Asks for a Viral Campaign …

It's nearly impossible to know what will go viral, and trying for that elusive result will usually come across as forced and futile.

Instead, research your target audience, decide if you can expand that audience, and create campaigns that are thoughtful, actionable, and relevant. But before you launch, make sure you're prepared for the maelstrom that could follow. It's always smart to have a PR plan in place should the worst (or the best) happen.

Check out the webinar below by HubSpot Academy featuring a member of BuzzFeed's video team, and how she's managed to amass more than half abillion views from her content (with the right defenses for potential backlash).

As a final send-off, keep in mind that you shouldn't expect every piece of content you release thereafter to be equally successful. Continue to create content that resonates with your audience and you'll do just fine.

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10 Free Project Management Software Options to Keep Your Team On-Track

59% of U.S. workers say communication is their team's biggest obstacle to success, followed by accountability.

Managing multiple projects at once, delegating tasks, and collaborating across teams is difficult on a good day — but can become downright impossible when unforeseen obstacles get in the way.

Miscommunication and inefficiencies in your project management process can lead to confusing and stressful experiences for your employees, and hinder your company's ability to satisfy your clients' needs or hit end-of-year goals. This can lead to major losses over time.

Fortunately, there are plenty of free project management software options to keep your team on-track without breaking the bank. To streamline your process and ensure everyone on your team is on the same page, take a look at these ten exceptional free project management tools.

1. Project.co

Project.co is a client-facing project management system that connects your team with your clients' teams in one place. Each piece of work you do can be setup as its own project, with its own discussion feed, notes, tasks, team, and payments. You can also record time spent on each project.

A variety of different task and project views are available including calendar, scheduler and Kanban view — to give you the ideal overview of the work that's happening within your team. 

Features include:

  • Ability to quickly add/invite both internal and external users
  • Discussion feed for each project - with email alerts (and the ability to reply by email without logging in)
  • Variety of task views - which can be filtered - giving your whole team, each department and even individual users their daily/weekly task lists
  • Reporting tools that measure your most/least profitable/efficient projects
  • Ability to integrate payment solutions and quickly, securely take card payments through the system 

Pricing:
Free for up to five active projects and five internal users, with paid options starting from $7 per user per month.

projectco-free-project-managementScreen Shot 2020-02-28 at 3.09.28 PM

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2. Toggl Plan

Toggl Plan is an effective project management tool to automate your task delegation process and visualize which project tasks have been completed, and which haven't. If your team often collaborates with other departments on projects, this might be a useful tool for you.

Features include:

  • Gantt-chart visualization to track important deadlines and projects
  • Integrations with Slack, Github, Evernote, and others
  • Team collaboration option through shared calendars and task notes

Pricing:
Free for an unlimited number of projects for up to five team members

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3. Freedcamp

Freedcamp is a feature-rich project management tool that's designed for personal and professional use. Each project has its own tasks, milestones, files, discussions, time, issue tracker and calendar. The dashboard gives you a clear, concise overview of what's going on in your team including activity, projects, and tasks.

Features include: 

  • Message board style discussion feed, with the ability to create and carry out discussions on any topic
  • Powerful calendar view laying out all upcoming events
  • 3rd party integrations including Google Drive, Google Calendar, Dropbox and more

Pricing:
Free forever. Paid plans are available with additional features, starting from $1.49 per user per month.

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4. Asana

Asana, one of the most popular project management solutions used by millions of people across 192 countries, has a clean and user-friendly interface. The all-in-one tool lets you create boards to visualize which stage your project is in, and use reporting to keep track of finished tasks and tasks that need your attention.

Features include:

  • The ability to create templates to automate mundane tasks
  • The ability to collaborate and share information across the team, privately and securely
  • The option to set security controls and designate admins
  • Over 100 integrations for a more efficient start-to-finish process
  • Custom project fields, share documents, and filter tasks

Pricing:
Free for unlimited projects for teams up to 15 people. Paid plans starting at $10.99 per user per month.

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5. Teamwork

Teamwork, a project management tool that specializes in bringing together remote workers, allows you to create team member status updates so your remote and flexible teams know their coworkers' schedules. It also provides customer service functions, including the option to assign tickets or view customer emails in one place. (Teamwork is a HubSpot integration partner).

Features include:

  • Customizable navigation to prioritize your team's needs
  • Gantt chart for visualizing due dates and project timelines
  • Private messaging, and option to make project details private
  • Team member status updates for remote or flexible team members

Pricing:
Free for up to five users. Paid plans start at $9 per user per month with a minimum of 5 users.

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6. Wrike

Wrike stands out as an exceptional project management tool for teams who want the option to customize workflows and edit and revise projects from within the platform itself. The tool offers the ability to color code and layer calendars, and its mobile form allows colleagues to update project information on-the-go. You can add comments to sections, videos, or documents, and create custom fields to export data most relevant to your company.

Features include:

  • Security measures to ensure only authorized personnel can access information
  • Activity Stream to allow project managers to micromanage small tasks, see activities in chronological order, and tag team members
  • The option to unfollow activities to declutter your own personal Stream
  • Email and calendar synchronization
  • Built-in editing and approval features

Pricing:
Free for five team members. Paid plans start at $9.80 per user per month with a minimum of 5 users.

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7. Paymo

Paymo's free version only allows access for one user, but if you've got a small team or you're a freelancer, this could be an efficient option for tracking billable hours and invoicing clients. Along with tracking finances, Paymo also allows you to organize project timelines, create to-do lists, and stay on top of your budgets for multiple projects at once.

Features include:

  • Kanban Boards
  • Time Tracking
  • File Sharing and Adobe CC Extension
  • Reporting
  • Three Invoices

Pricing:
Free for one user. Paid plans start at $11.95 per user per month.

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8. ClickUp

ClickUp provides a few impressive features to customize the all-in-one project management tool to suit your team members, including the option for each user to choose one of three different ways to view their projects and tasks depending on individual preference. If your marketing team overlaps with sales, design, or development, this is an effective solution, as it provides features for all of those four teams.

Features include:

  • The ability to organize your projects based on priority, and assign tasks to groups
  • The option to set goals to remind teams what they're aiming to accomplish
  • Google Calendar two-way sync
  • An easy way to filter, search, sorting, and customize options for managing specific tasks
  • Activity stream with mentions capability
  • Image mockups
  • 57 integrated apps

Pricing:
Free forever, with unlimited users limited features. Paid plans start at $5 per user per month. 

clickup-free-project-managementclickup2-free-project-management

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9. Trello

Trello is a drag-and-drop tool that lets you move projects - personal, or professional - through workflow stages, all the way to completion. 

You define what those stages are - whether it's work project statuses like ‘On Hold,' or personal project categories like ‘Things to buy!' - with tasks represented as ‘cards.' Each card can be given a name, assigned to an individual, given a due date - and have files, such as images, attached to it. 

Features include:

  • Templates for a range of different types of project, from business to education through to personal productivity.
  • Ability to add attachments such as images to any card on any board.
  • Customise your workflow stages to reflect your actual process.
  • Simple drag-and-drop movement of cards through workflow stages.

Pricing:
Free forever for unlimited personal boards, cards and lists - with 10 team boards. Paid plans start at $9.99 per user per month. 

trello-free-project-management

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10. Todoist

Todoist is a simple but powerful tool that lets you create powerful, interactive to-do lists. To-do items can be assigned priority levels, assigned to people in your team and flagged - with customisable reminders (although these are a premium feature.) Actionable items can also be categorised into different projects, making a simple, easily understandable structure where each ‘list' has a title (project name) and a series of actions. This all makes it an extremely flexible, customisable tool to get work done.

Features include:

  • Template lists to inspire and guide you.
  • Recurring due dates for regularly recurring tasks.
  • Productivity visualisations and 'Karma' points for completed tasks and streaks!
  • Labels, notifications and discussion feeds to keep you organised.

Pricing:
Free, with an upgrade to premium (with extra features) available from $3 per user per month.

todoist-free-project-management

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What Are Direct Costs & How Do They Differ From Indirect Costs?

It's surprisingly inexpensive to start a business today -- as little at $5,000, reports Fortunly. However, as encouraging as that is to aspiring business owners, the costs to run that business every day are a bit more complex.

Before research and development, and before you even rent an office space, you might want to know how much money you'll need to make your product. These are your direct costs.

Direct Costs

Direct costs are what you spend specifically to develop and maintain your product or service. These costs can vary over time as the product is improved upon. Direct costs range from employee salaries to the price of the items needed to build each unit of your product.

Are direct costs different from fixed and variable costs?

Actually, direct costs are a type of fixed or variable cost. These expenses are not mutually exclusive. Whether or not a direct cost is fixed or variable simply depends on how likely (or regularly) the cost is to change as your business grows. Here are two examples:

  • Variable direct cost: A SaaS company that sells cloud-based software is responsible for storing the data their customers put on their software. That information is stored on servers. The more clients the company has, the more servers the business will need to buy to store client data so the product can continue to operate. Server costs, in this case, are a variable direct cost to the business.
  • Fixed direct cost: Consider the variable cost example, above. This company also employs an IT administrator to manage the storage of its customers' data. Barring changes to his/her compensation, the salary the company pays this administrator remains unchanged each month. IT salaries are a fixed direct cost to the business.

Direct vs. Indirect Costs

Direct costs are invested "directly" in the development of a product or service. Indirect costs may affect the business's overhead, but they do not directly contribute to the creation and quality of that service. These costs include office space rent, office security, and staff supplies.

Direct costs get their name because they have a "direct" line to the creation and management of your goods and services. You pay cost A in exchange for item B, you use item B to make product C. Cost A is a direct cost because product C can be traced back to the cost A you paid.

Indirect costs are more complicated and do not have this direct line to your product's end result. You pay cost A in exchange for facility B, you use facility B to host machine C, machine C is used by team D to make product E. Cost A is an indirect cost because product E cannot be directly traced back to the cost A you paid. There are other direct costs that took place between A and E.

 

Direct costs InDIRECT costs

The physical materials needed to make your product.

The servers needed to power your ecommerce site.

The salaries and commission you pay employees to produce and sell your product.

Transportation methods that get your product to the customer.

The rent prices and fees that come with facilitating an office.

Expenses needed to keep your team happy and motivated. (i.e. office perks or team lunches.)

Supplies needed to help your office run smoothly.

Technology and IT that doesn't directly help produce products.

 

Examples of Direct Costs

  1. Physical materials
  2. Employee salaries
  3. Sales commission
  4. Servers
  5. Data center spaces
  6. Product transportation

It's easy to attribute your direct costs to the money you spend physically making your goods and services. An automotive company, for example, might pay a steel manufacturer for the material used to create each car body. This is a direct cost to the car company.

However, there are other direct costs that can go into a product even if those costs don't pay for the material your product is made out of. Here are some common examples of direct costs you can attribute directly to your product:

Physical materials

The raw materials, ingredients, and parts needed to build your product are all direct costs to your business.

For example, if sell computers, you'll need to factor in the materials needed for the screen, the keyboard, and the hard-drive, as well as any other material needed to build the device when designating a cost for it.

Employee salaries

The individual salaries, particularly the ones you pay to those who make and sell your product, are direct costs.

If you hire any freelancers or contractors, you'll also want to factor in how much money you will need to spend on their labor.

Sales commission

This is different than salary and is usually specific to salespeople, which often work partially on commission.

Every time a salesperson sells a unit of your product, he/she is paid commission. This is a direct cost to maintaining the value or your product. Compare how many units you'd like to sell with the commissions you'll pay every time they get sold.

Servers

In 2020, almost every business needs some sort of a website. Meanwhile, every website needs a server. The servers needed to store customer data on your product, particularly if your product is in the form of software, is a direct cost to your business.

While you might be able to trim down costs buy building your website on a CMS that provides server support, you should still factor in the costs you'll need to protect and store your data.

Data Center Space

Just paying for your servers isn't the only thing you might have to factor in. You also might need to consider where you'll place them and how much that could cost. Data center space you rent or own to store those servers is a direct cost. 

Product transportation

Once a customer buys a product, how will it get to them? Will it come in the mail, or will a delivery tech from your company bring it? You'll need to determine which strategy you'll use and add up the costs associated with that. While mail will result in regular shipping costs, having your own company deliver it will results in costs of labor and costs related to purchasing your own modes of transit, such as trucks. 

Click here to learn more about the types of variable costs you'll encounter when growing your business.

Editor's Note: This blog post was originally published in March 2019, but has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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How HubSpot Manages a Giant Website With a Tiny Team

I can’t write a single line of code.

So, it was a big surprise to me when I was asked to lead our new global web strategy team three years ago.

If you've followed HubSpot's history, it’s also probably a big surprise to you that we had 20,000 customers and went public years before we had a team to manage our web strategy.

And, as you might expect, things were pretty complicated before my team was implemented. Prior to 2016, we referred to our giant website as “the wild, wild west.”

The brand team owned the homepage, but anyone who asked for access could make or edit any of our web pages. The web developers and designers had an endless list of requests, but no way to prioritize them. And while some individual marketers measured the success of pages that contributed to their lead goals, nobody was measuring the overall success of the website.

You may be wondering how the HubSpot marketing team could fail to recognize the need for someone to manage its websites. The truth is, it wasn’t a matter of ignorance. -- It was actually a matter of fear.

HubSpot has always had an autonomous culture. Before the team was implemented, stakeholders were afraid introducing a centralized team could hinder that autonomy. Because most of our marketers and cross-functional teams used the website for their initiatives, marketing leaders worried that one management team would slow people down or stifle innovation.

We needed a strategy for managing our websites that could accomplish our team needs: it needed to empower the many people at the company who contribute to the website and ensure a consistent user experience that delivered on measurable business goals.

As the days of the "wild, wild west" ended, my team, limited to a small group of people as we proved our worth, began creating a web management process.

The website management strategy we have today isn’t perfect, but it’s helped us grow and restored some sanity to the creators working on the site. Our team of just 17 people is able to manage our core website in six languages while providing an optimal user experience and consistent branding across our web properties.

Since developing the centralized website management team, we’ve grown the conversion rate on our core site by 76% while redesigning multiple related sites and site sections. And, thanks to the tools we’ve used, we’ve only needed to grow the team by a few people.

If you don’t have a huge budget to keep an agency on retainer or hire a full army of developers, here are five tips on how to scale your web strategy with a small team. For each tip, I’ll walk you through how we did it in our own strategy.

How to Develop a Scalable Website Strategy Like HubSpot

1. Identify your website’s purpose and goals.

Customers often touch a brand’s website at every single stage of the customer journey: From their first interaction of reading a blog post to looking for customer support documentation after they've become a customer.

This puts a lot of demand on a website and the team that manages it.

Since our strategy could go in multiple different directions, our team first needed to articulate a clear purpose. We did this by crafting mission and vision statements.

  • Our Mission: Help professionals grow their businesses better by connecting them to HubSpot's content and software on our global websites.
  • Our Vision: Oversee HubSpot's websites to ensure that they are on brand, user-friendly, global, and optimized for conversion.

We also wanted to go one step deeper in our responsibility to the business by creating some quantifiable goals.

When determining our KPIs, we debated between using click-through-rates, conversion rates, or estimated revenue. We ultimately decided to track the overall website’s performance by conversion rate.

The conversion rate was relatively easy to measure and the most isolated KPI that would relate most to the work that we’d do.

We also considered using revenue as our main measure, but we lacked direct attribution reporting. Revenue can also be impacted by many external factors such as changes in average sales prices and sales close rates. However, we still used revenue to evaluate the winner for any conversion rate optimization tests that we’d run, as they would be taken over a short period of time and less subject to changes in those external factors.

To make sure we still put the customer experience first, over quantified business metrics, we created a hierarchy of website goals.

Hierarchy of website goals

We felt this hierarchy was important to document because being too focused on increasing numbers like conversion rates can lead to bad behavior. Examples at their most extreme include the extensive use of misleading clickbait copy or interruptive pop-up CTAs. I wasn’t worried about my team getting that misguided, but we had seen pages that were off-brand or could be confusing to some users that still yielded high conversion rates.

We wanted to hold ourselves accountable for having the best of both worlds -- iterating and testing a subpar design until we could find a variant that converted well, was consistent with our brand, and could generate positive user feedback.

2. Choose a content management technology that meets your team’s needs.

To help manage a website without a full team of developers, both big and small brands often use content management systems.

CMS platforms allow those with less web experience to create or design webpages or content using a simple interface. Meanwhile, those with development or coding knowledge can still customize or make more advanced changes to a website. In short, a CMS enables most employees to contribute productively to a website without any help.

Our website has always been powered by HubSpot's CMS-- as you probably might have guessed.

As HubSpot employees, we like to use our own products to do our jobs. Aside from staying loyal to our own brand, the CMS aligns with our web management needs,

The CMS software was designed for quickly-growing companies just like our own. It’s powerful enough to handle the governance and other website management needs our development team demands, and straightforward enough that marketers who can’t code can still easily use it. It empowers web managers or editors of all levels to create or manage successful website content.

Aside from the CMS, we also use our CRM, Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub.HubSpot products that power different aspects of our website. For example: while the Marketing Hub helps us with SEO, analytics; and automation, the Sales Hub allows us to enable chatbots and live chat on our site.

With HubSpot, we can also integrate third-party software to help us execute our strategy. Here are a few examples of helpful tools that work with HubSpot:

  • Cloudwords: For localization of our non-English websites
  • Google Analytics: For measuring web traffic, click-through rates, conversion rates.
  • Google Optimize: For running conversion rate optimization experiments. We use this to complement HubSpot’s own testing tools.

3. Plan your operating model.

When you count every single blog post or landing page in every language across all of our domains, we have nearly one million website pages. That’s a lot of content to maintain and optimize. Our team simply can’t touch every page.

To help us manage even the pages we don’t regularly touch, we needed to develop a system of ownership and prioritization that would find the right balance of empowering other marketers to manage aspects of the site, while still maintaining control over consistent user experience and business goals.

So we developed a framework to define ownership across our various websites:

Framework for website management strategy

The design and development teams also created a Web Style Guide, which made it possible to have a flexible website that empowered others and ensured a consistent user experience. This guide is a toolkit of consistent, on-brand web modules that other stakeholders can use to create and edit website pages. These modules are the building blocks for making a landing page.

With all marketers and website stakeholders pulling from the same library of modules, there’s an automatic system in place to ensure a consistent user experience across our many site pages. And if we want to make a global change to update a design element, like one of our brand colors, our developers can roll it out universally.

If you’re building out a web strategy for your site, you’ll also want to prioritize what tasks are important for your core team and which site pages can be delegated to other marketers.

For example, if you have a core website and a robust blog, you might want one marketer to oversee the website’s main pages, while a blog manager manages your blog site. This will free you up to focus on the larger branding-related tasks that we were able to take on.

4. Identify talent with different strengths for your website management team.

Odds are, your website will have many different elements to it, such as a homepage, a mobile-optimized design, a blog, or product purchasing pages. Because of this, it only makes sense that you should build a web strategy team with multiple types of marketers that can give you insight on how to maintain each aspect of your site.

One of the really unique things about our team is that it brings together people with a wide range of expertise, all working towards common goals. Our group is incredibly cross-functional, and the work we create is a testament to the power of diversity of thought.

Below are examples of people you’ll want on your web strategy team. In my case, the people in the following roles don’t all report to me. However, I still consider anyone outside my direct org a member of my team:

  • Conversion Rate Optimization strategists: Use qualitative and quantitative data to run experiments and improve the conversion rate on existing pages, or apply these principles to creating successful new pages
  • Copywriters: Write short-form copy for website pages based on the audience’s needs and business goals
  • Web developers: Develop site pages, applications, and user experiences
  • Web data analysts: Implement analytics technologies and analyzes data to identify opportunities
  • Project managers: Prioritize projects and facilitates collaboration across the team
  • International website champion: Establishes our localization strategies across our various language sites

5. Prioritize your goals and projects.

As you scale up, it can seem like there are hundreds of things to do on your website. It can be hard to identify what’s really the most important thing to be working on. Even when you do, a sudden product launch or company announcement could cause you to need to change course on a project.

Once your website strategy and your team are in place, it’s crucial that you continue to prioritize work in a way that aligns with the goals, mission, and purpose you’ve decided on.

On our team, work falls within three main categories:

  • Optimization: Conducting research to understand data and user behavior to inform website experiments intended to increase conversion rates on a page (ex: A/B testing copy headlines)
  • Business Updates: Altering copy and design on a page or multiple pages to communicate information about our product offerings, brand messaging, partner programs, etc. when there is a strategy change (ex: launching a new product)
  • Redesigns: Completely altering the site structure or making significant, multiple changes to design and copy all at once based on a complex business strategy change or insight about user behavior (ex: updating the site navigation and corresponding pages to simplify conversion paths)

Aside from picking key areas to focus on, as we’ve done, you should also consider an annual planning process or meetings designed for prioritizing upcoming tasks.

In our case, we always have more project ideas and opportunities than team bandwidth. And business changes come along all the time that we weren’t expecting. This combination has led us to create a diligent annual planning process with quarterly revisions.

At the beginning of each year, we spend time with leaders across the business to understand what business updates are coming and how they’d like the website to better support their initiatives.

We also create our own wish list where we see opportunities and create an additional bucket for ongoing maintenance, experimentation, and unforeseen projects.

Then, we determine how many people we’d need across our many disciplines to execute on every project. This helps us create a prioritization system to rank the projects.

After a series of meetings with the marketing leadership team, where we iterate on headcount and prioritization, we end up with the list of projects we’ll commit to delivering.

Every quarter, we revisit the priorities and make adjustments based on any business changes, new opportunities identified, or shifts in goals from our team or the broader business,

Through this process, we’re able to prioritize more urgent matters, while still being able to revisit or re-prioritize the less urgent matters in the future.

6. Recognize potential challenges and make goals to work through them.

Even if you have a winning team and an army of developers, you still will run into challenges as your site grows and your brand evolves. When running a web strategy, it's helpful to acknowledge those challenges and how you'll combat them.

Our team has come a long way in establishing an effective and scalable website model, but we still have a lot of room for improvement.

One of the main things we struggle with, which is common to any growing company, is finding the right balance of executing against short term goals with building scalable systems for the future. Trying to do both can feel like already driving a car while you’re still trying to build the car.

We’re trying to get to the point where we never have to do a classic redesign to any of our sites or site sections ever again; instead, we want to continually optimize, update, and evolve our web properties through testing and ongoing improvements.

Start Building Your Website Strategy

Even after three years of directing global web strategy, I still can’t write a line of code.

But, as long as I have a great tech stack and a team that's committed to empowering marketers, I don’t intend to learn.

If you're a marketer at a growing business, you don't necessarily need to be a development expert to lead its website strategy. If you can envision what a smooth website experience looks like for your customers, navigate a CMS, and pick the right mix of development and marketing talent for your team, you can build a successful process.

To learn more about how to build an effective website or scale up your strategy, check out this step-by-step guide to creating a website, or this post on redesign strategies. If you’re interested in testing out our CMS, click here for a free trial.

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Features vs. Benefits: A Crash Course on Proper Messaging

Earlier, I was scrolling on LinkedIn and came across this ad.

Instantly, I was impressed with the effectiveness of the language.

The language, concise and clear, offers up the benefit of the product being marketed in a way that stops scrollers in their tracks, including me.

Qordoba marketing messaging benefits example

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Qordoba is an IT company that helps companies stay consistent with communication through AI technology.

The company's ad caught my eye by communicating the benefits reading the report will have when it comes to customer-facing content, which does interest me.

'How are tech companies managing their voice, tone, & writing style guides across their various types of customer-facing content?'

After reading this caption, I knew exactly what I would gain from this product, and why it was worth my time.

The beauty of proper messaging is that by communicating either the benefits or features of your product or service, you can tell customers what they need to know in a clever, concise way.

As a marketer, you're likely wondering when you should use benefits versus features in your content. We've got an answer, and we're going to dive into that in the next couple of sections.

Features vs. Benefits

What exactly is a "feature" or "benefit," anyway?

Both methods are useful and give customers important information they'll need during their buyer's journey, such as design, price, and real-world relevance. Ultimately, however, the benefits of having a product or service are what make consumers purchase. If you do decide to highlight features, you'll want to make sure consumers understand how they'll benefit from those features.

Let's look at another example of features and benefits at work. This is a marketing email I got this morning from Marriott hotels:

Marriott messaging exampleThis ad starts with the benefits of becoming a Marriott member — 'yes to vacation views' — while the rest of it explains the features of the program, including 'no annual fees' and '3X points per $1 spent at more than 7,000 Marriott locations.

Emphasizing that Marriott members enjoy free perks, then expanding on how this is done (by earning rewards points), is a really effective way to explain the benefits and features of the rewards membership.

Which is relatively straightforward — but what if you have multiple products being sold at once?

If you're working with more than one campaign at once, remember the "Features or benefits?" the answer can change depending on the product.

If you're unsure whether you should list features or benefits for a given product, consider this — features are an optimal choice in a saturated market. For instance, a small business making a meal-delivery kit would have some competition (such as HelloFresh or Home Chef), so they would have to communicate their service's competitive advantage by naming one-of-a-kind features. This would include price, dietary restrictions, menu configuration, etc.

Benefits, on the other hand, are the way to go if your brand exists within a niche market or a "drier" topic. You'll want to answer the following questions with your benefits: How does it work? How does it make a consumer's life easier?

To resonate well with an audience who perhaps haven't heard of your product or service before, try to include benefits in your demos, ebooks, and other marketing content..

Now that we're more clear on features vs. benefits, let's explore some examples to see both in-action.

Features and benefits: Examples

For the visual learners like myself, below are some real-world examples of how to work features or benefits into ads, product pages, email, or any other marketing materials:

1. Calm

This email about an exclusive deal made me excited, which is another way highlighting features in your marketing material can be beneficial — to build excitement. Here's how sleep meditation company Calm did it:

Calm messaging exampleFraming singer/songwriter Lindsey Stirling's work as an exclusive feature improves customer relationships and makes them feel special. Opening this email made me think about how glad I am to be an email subscriber (especially since I grew up watching Stirling on YouTube) because of cool offers like this.

If you're running a promotion or want to improve customer relationships, consider sending them an offer that reminds customers of your product or service's unique features.

2. HubSpot Academy

In this product page for HubSpot Academy's social media course, three benefits are listed at the bottom, so prospects can see how completing this course will be worth their time:

hubspot academy messaging example

Source

Benefits don't always have to be short phrases – in fact, on product pages, more is often better. On web pages, it's critical you give your customers the helpful information they need — including cost, structure, time required to complete, and a description on how your products or services' benefits outweigh the benefits of competitors'.

3. Arcadia

Can you spot the benefits energy company Arcadia used in this promoted tweet?

Here's the easiest way to save on your utility bill and get clean energy.

— Arcadia (@arcadia) February 18, 2020

If you chose the entire tweet, you're right!

Almost every word helps describe to the reader why they should open the linked website. As a consumer, I would think, "Well, what is the easiest way to save on my energy bill at no cost? That thing is sky high!"

Words that help the consumer are going to resonate with those who are just mindlessly scrolling and not necessarily looking to buy anything. To build interest in their promotion, Arcadia's use of benefits to entice prospective customers was a good choice on Twitter.

Impress a scroller by using benefits in marketing messages. You have a few seconds to leave a mark.

4. Airtable

Beautiful, descriptive features in this Facebook ad told me exactly what Airtable is and what their software does, despite having no previous knowledge. In less than thirty words, I know that Airtable must be a product or service that makes dull spreadsheets a thing of the past — for free.

airtable messaging example

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Marketing teams that don't have the budget to spend on a full suite of fancy products might come across this ad, see the features, and think "Flexible, beautiful, and fun? Spreadsheets? For free? I should look into this," and immediately hit that CTA.

Many of us use spreadsheets that are mostly text and less colorful, so Airtable does a good job detailing how they're different from Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, and helps them seem like a game-changer to consumers.

5. KeVita

Kombucha is a fermented tea drink with probiotics, which aid in helping digestion and improving energy levels. So, when marketing their kombucha on Instagram, the KeVita brand wanted to show that kombucha isn't just a summer drink, contrary to popular belief.

Aesthetically pleasing, benefit-enforcing GIFs like this make visual platforms like Instagram a perfect canvas for an ad that displays benefits.

Animation often stops scrollers — especially animation paired with bright pink text. The backdrop, a ski lift covered in fresh snow, ("powder" to skiers), shows the accessibility of the drink, while the caption alludes to kombucha-fueled energy to get through a long ski trip.

Two benefits that instantly stuck out to me about this post are accessibility and energy. On snowy mountains, those two functions are going to be essential when thinking about snacks. Consider a scenario-based ad if your product is like KeVita, commonly perceived as a summer drink.

From phones to shampoo, , the features/benefits marketing method can be applied to almost anything. As we saw, it's important to know the distinction so audience members can deliver a clear marketing message.

Asking yourself, "Does this ad convey features or benefits?" and structuring accordingly is a simple thought to consider when creating copy that could improve the interpretation of product pages or ads by the public. What do you want to say, and which messaging method will be best for that?

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Thursday, February 27, 2020

How to Leverage YouTube Advertising for Your Direct Response Campaign

While brand advertising on YouTube has been around for a while now, adopting the platform for direct response B2B advertising is relatively new.

Unlike branding, direct response focuses on compelling people to take immediate action after watching an ad. This action can be a site visit, sign-up, download, or purchase, which an advertiser can then track and measure.

Google has recently shown an increasing interest in expanding YouTube's offerings for performance advertisers with TrueView for Action — a powerful campaign type that helps drive leads and conversions.

So it's an ideal time to capitalize on a social platform that's currently less competitive, slightly more affordable, and has a goldmine of nearly 2 billion monthly engaged users ready to take action. Here, let's explore how to leverage YouTube for your next direct response campaign.

How to Create Effective Video Ad Creatives

Many advertisers perceive the video production process to be both intimidating and costly. And it can be, but it certainly doesn't have to be.

Yes, YouTube requires specifically tailored video creatives, and that does require some money, time, and effort. But, for direct response, having an effective video ad is less about making sure you have polished video creatives. Instead, it's more about having the right messaging strategy that will make people want to watch your ad and take action.

You only have a few seconds to grab the viewer's attention before they have the option to skip your video ad — that's it. Investing in an overly expensive production crew to produce perfectly polished videos isn't going to be enough to captivate your audience.

That's why you should focus on developing and testing the right messaging to help you with your KPIs, rather than worry about fixing bad white balance or low-quality audio.

Develop the Right Messaging

What exactly is the right messaging, though? It really depends on your audience. Before you start trying to write the perfect script, it's important to determine who your target audience is and how to tailor your message to them.

Relevant messaging is incredibly important because a viewer's first instinct is to skip an ad so they can continue to the video they intended to watch. You need to grab the viewer's attention in the first few seconds while also making sure that they're a relevant audience for your product.

This means, don't use clickbait tactics. Why? Because it's expensive. You pay when someone watches your ad beyond 30 seconds, watches until the end of the ad if it happens to be shorter than 30 seconds, or clicks the ad. So if you get a lot of people watching the full ad without any interest in your product, it could end up costing you a lot while offering you very little in return.

At the same time, you also don't want to "leave the best for last." It's not a TV commercial with a build-up to an eventual climax that ends with a big reveal. YouTube ads are different.

As soon as the skip button appears, viewers begin skipping, and the number of people "dropping off" continues to increase the longer the ad runs. You want to make sure the relevant ones stick around, so it's critical to lead with a captivating message so they keep watching.

A good approach is to lead with a specific problem or pain point that your product or service solves. Then, follow that up with why your product or service is the solution, and show them how it solves that problem or pain point.

You need to do it in such a way that's either interesting or entertaining, and aligned with your brand personality — that's where your team's talent comes in.

Let's take a look at examples of brands that get it right.

For instance, this monday.com video ad begins with a woman in an office talking about a major pain point for managers, which is "managing a team." Then she shares that even though managing a team is hard, monday.com makes it easy.

If the viewer is interested in learning more, the ad continues on with what monday.com is and how the work OS solves this major pain point for managers.

Nectar mattress is another brand that uses a similar strategy in its direct response ads. It begins with a voice-over, "Hello there, are you sleeping on a Nectar mattress, or are you sleeping on a piece of garbage?"

In this case, the ad immediately follows this statement with what happens to your brain when you don't get enough sleep, supported by scientific facts. If the viewer sticks around to watch the ad long enough, they're told they can try the mattress out before they make a purchase, and so on.

Once you're ready to start putting your ad's script together, think about what you want the viewer to take away. Make sure you don't over-do it. If you have a lot to communicate, don't try to fit it all in the first few seconds, or even in a single video ad. If you push too much information out all at once, you risk drowning the main message and confusing the viewer. And that's something you don't want.

Starting with TrueView for Action

There are a few campaign types offered on YouTube, but for someone just getting started with direct response, TrueView for Action is a good place to start.

TrueView for Action pre-selects the ad type format to skippable in-stream. This means the ad is unskippable for five seconds before a "skip" button appears, allowing the viewer to continue to the video they were about to watch.

There is no maximum length for your ad, so it's totally up to you, but there's a minimum length of 12 seconds. The goal is to create a video ad that's captivating enough to keep the viewer interested in watching beyond the first five seconds.

The big advantage of using TrueView for Action is the clickable assets and the smart bidding strategies that help support your ad creative. Let's dive into those features next.

Clickable Assets

The clickable assets consist of a CTA overlay, companion banner, and an end screen that each has a customizable headline and customizable CTA button. These assets are designed to drive clicks, making them great for direct response.

CTA Overlay

The CTA overlay appears as an interactive asset over your ad for 15 seconds at the bottom left-hand corner before it collapses into a thumbnail image of your company logo.

Companion Banner

The companion banner is available with other in-stream ad formats, but the difference here is that it sticks around even after your video ad ends. It accompanies the viewer as they continue onto the video they intended to watch and will remain visible until another companion banner takes its place.

These banners work best when you can tie it back to your video ad through similar visuals or messaging. That way, if the viewer happens to notice it two videos later, they'll easily recognize it's connected to your video ad.

End Screen

The end screen is a single screen that appears when a viewer reaches the end of the video ad with a headline and CTA. It also includes your company logo, which is taken directly from your YouTube channel.

Later on, you might want to consider using other campaign types. For example, if your initial campaign has been running for a while and you want to remarket to viewers who've already seen the ads, you can add bumper ads. These ads are only six seconds, non-skippable, and use cost-per-mille (CPM) bidding rather than CPV or Target CPA.

Smart Bidding Options

With TrueView for Action, two smart bidding options use machine learning and conversion data to optimize results to your KPIs. They are Maximize Conversions and Target CPA.

Deciding between these two options depends on timing, advertising needs, and business goals.

Maximize Conversions Bidding

Maximize Conversions bidding strategy focuses on helping you get as many conversions as possible using the entire daily budget you've set for the campaign.

Google Ads recently expanded this bidding strategy to TrueView for Action, so you may be familiar with it from Google Search and Google Display.

Maximize Conversions is a great way to help ramp-up new campaigns and drive action. It optimizes ads for the most relevant audience based on how likely they are to convert without limiting delivery until its accumulated enough data.

After running with this bidding strategy from anywhere between a few days to one week, you should see the cost-per-action (CPA) stabilizing. This means the machine learning algorithm has already implemented the learning it acquired from those initial conversions.

It's at this stage where you can decide if you want to switch to Target CPA.

Target CPA Bidding

This bidding strategy focuses on helping you get as many conversions as possible, at or below the Target CPA you've set. In most cases, it makes sense to use this as your long-term bidding strategy since it spends your budget more efficiently than Maximize Conversion.

A case where you may want to start with Target CPA from the beginning is when traffic from the new campaigns is expected to be similar to campaigns in the account that are already using this bidding strategy.

Targeting Relevant Audiences

One of the greatest benefits of using YouTube for direct response is its advanced and wide-ranged targeting capabilities. Some may be familiar to you from other channels, while others will be completely new and unique to YouTube.

As with bidding options, choosing the right target audiences will depend on your product, your funnel, and your goals.

Targeting Based on Viewer Interests and Characteristics

YouTube campaigns tap into Google's wealth of search and browsing history data. This is primarily the reason why YouTube's targeting capabilities are so strong.

If you've been advertising on other channels, you're likely familiar with a lot of the targeting options available within YouTube, such as demographics, similar audiences, and in-market audiences.

What's worth mentioning are the audience categories you may not necessarily be familiar with that can boost your targeting strategy.

Custom Intent Audiences

Custom Intent audiences on YouTube are not the same as in Display. With custom intent on YouTube, you can target viewers based on their recent search activity on Google. If you already have active Search campaigns, you can leverage your existing keyword knowledge to create custom intent audiences using those keywords.

One of the biggest advantages with Custom Intent on YouTube is that you can use it as a workaround for highly competitive keywords or keywords with low-quality scores in Search. This allows you to reach your target audience on YouTube without the high CPCs in Search. So if, for example, you know what your target audience is searching for but your product is not the direct answer to it, you're still able to reach a very relevant audience.

Keep in mind that, unlike Search, you are unable to define match types or exclude keywords or phrases, so you should choose keywords that could work in broad match type, or without exclusions.

Life Events

Life Events is relatively new and allows you to target viewers based on key milestones in a person's life, including graduation, marriage, first home purchase, and so on. All of these major life events can be related to purchasing decisions.

The targeting criteria is segmented into two: before, and after, the specific life event — so "getting married soon" and "recently got married" would be examples of these two segments. With this segmentation, you are able to specify your targeting according to what is relevant to your product.

If you can tie your product to a key milestone, Life Events is a more comprehensive targeting option that goes beyond just targeting the specific keywords that people are likely searching for around that time.

Video Re-marketing

As the name suggests, this type of re-marketing is specific to Youtube and allows you to target viewers based on their past interactions with your videos or YouTube channel.

For example, if you have a lot of channel subscribers, you can use this option to target them with your ad. Since they've already shown interest in your product or content, they make a high-potential target audience.

Targeting Based on Video Content

Rather than targeting based on personal characteristics or interests, you can target viewers based on the content of the video they intended to watch. That means you decide on the placement of your ad.

If you're not targeting based on the video content, then your ads will appear on various videos automatically, regardless of whether the video content relates to your ad.

Keep in mind that you can use both types of targeting, but you may find yourself with a tiny audience since those with specific characteristics or interests who also happen to be watching a particular video is extremely accurate.

There are two ways you can approach placements: Managed and Automatic.

Managed Placements

This is a more manual placement option, meaning you need to research and handpick specific monetized YouTube videos or channels you want your ad to appear on.

While finding managed placements can be a tedious process, the placements are likely extremely accurate and therefore more likely to bring better results.

There are also external tools out there to help make this process a bit less manual, so it's definitely worth testing.

Topics

Targeting by Topics is similar to Google Display campaigns since the category options are the same. YouTube videos are assigned a specific topic based on what the video is about, making it easier for you as an advertiser to target.

It is a much more scalable option compared to managed placements since you select topics rather than specific videos, and there are many sub-categories that help you narrow down the selection to get a more accurate result.

Understanding Your Campaign's Impact Beyond Clicks

There are several ways to determine if your video campaigns are effective.

Viewers interested in your product or service will see your video ad and then typically take action through the clickable assets to reach your website, and hopefully continue through the funnel and eventually convert. For those who track campaigns on other channels, tracking click-through is standard and straightforward.

But there's actually another way viewers can and do take action, and it's not necessary during or directly after they've watched your ad.

If your ad left an impression, these viewers may type your brand name into their browser, click the paid brand ad or an organic search result, visit your website, and start moving through the funnel — all of which can be attributed to the YouTube ad they watched.

They may not even remember your brand name, but decide to search for the relevant product or service in hopes of finding you.

These impression-based viewers are critical to track and measure because they went the extra mile to get to your site, which is a good indication that they're higher quality than someone who clicked on your ad.

The problem is, while important, they can be challenging to track.

One of the best ways to measure is to invest in an impression tracker like DoubleClick Campaign Manager and integrate it with your business intelligence software. If you're able to do this, you can identify at the user-level those viewers who got to your site after seeing your YouTube ad.

If you're not ready to invest in an impression tracker or if it isn't relevant right now, you should consider using proxies to understand the full impact of your video ads.

Proxies

Proxies indicate a noticeable change in metrics from other data segments that exist in your BI software.

There are, of course, many proxies you can explore, but two easy ones to start with are geographic splitting and testing and brand searches.

Geographic Splitting and Testing

If you don't have many user acquisition traffic sources and your traffic is relatively stable, then you should be able to see a lift in site visits that are unattributed to paid sources or attributed to paid brand campaigns. These additional site visits could then be attributed to your YouTube direct response campaign.

If you have multiple user acquisition sources, a simple way to isolate the impact of direct response on YouTube would be to target your ads to specific geographic locations. Then you can compare any lift in traffic there to other geographic areas where you didn't run YouTube direct response, and attribute the gap to your YouTube campaigns.

For example, if your traffic from New York and Chicago typically behave the same and, after launching a campaign only targeting New York, you see a clear lift in site visits compared to Chicago, then you can attribute those extra site visits to your direct response campaign.

Increase in brand searches

Similarly, you might see an increase in brand term searches parallel to running direct response YouTube campaigns, either through your paid brand Search campaigns or other traffic sources. You can also then attribute that lift in site visits to your YouTube direct response campaign.

What To Expect Down The Road

YouTube is regularly coming out with new features and targeting capabilities. It's important to stay in the loop so you don't miss out on any changes that may affect your campaigns or new opportunities these features can open.

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