Episode #168 - September 30th, 2011
Title: New Technologies for Marketers Abound Marketing Update
Intro
- How to interact on Twtter: Include #HubSpotTV in your tweet!
- On the show today is Karen Rubin (@KarenRubin) and Mike Volpe (@MVolpe)
- As always, all the old episodes are in iTunes
. If you like the show, please leave a 5-star review!
- Anyone is welcome to come by the show to watch as part of the live studio audience - 4pm Friday
Is the Tablet About To Go Mainstream?
- http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2011/09/amazon-gets-into-the-tablet-biz-with-kindle-fire.html
- Kindle Fire is just one of four new Kindle-based products Amazon is launching today.
- The big news is the Kindle Fire, a highly media-focused tablet which comes with a very reasonable price tag — only $199. For that price you get full Kindle ebook functionality with the addition of video, music and full color web browsing.
- The Kindle Fire is another step closer to putting a tablet in every home in America. It’s a name people trust with a low price tag and you can bet they’re going to be one of the hottest items for the holidays.
- For marketers, that means you can’t ignore the tablet anymore. You have to think about how you take your brand and present it in a compact, vibrant manner via ads, apps or downloads.
- Marketing Takeaway: Mobile is big, the $199 price should drive adoption. You can't avoid adapting your content to all mobile devices.
Tea Party Brings the Battle Online
- An email sent to supporters from FreedomWorks President and CEO Matt Kibbe offers a "detailed campaign plan to secure victory over Obama," which includes "taking traditional grassroots campaign techniques and updating them for the 21st century with innovative technologies."
- Aimed at raising money, the email asserts the group's dedication to matching what Obama and the Democratic National Committee famously did so well during the 2008 election.
- A state-of-the-art Voice over Internet (VoI) Phone Banking System which allows volunteers from anywhere to make calls directly to specially-targeted voting households
- GPS-directed door-to-door walks in high-density target precincts which are pre-identified by sophisticated data analysis software.
- Geo-targeted online ad campaigns in heavily Republican counties to maximize turnout
- FreedomWorksforAmerica.org – a brand-new website which will serve as our online "election nerve center"
- Targeted sign-blitzes, coordinated online between local and national distribution centers to allow for instantaneous coordination and "shock and awe" speed of deployment.
- Marketing Takeaway: Hey Tea Party, got a book for you, it's called The Inbound Marketing Book.
Where Do You Talk About Products?
- http://www.churchofcustomer.com/2011/09/where-do-most-people-talk-about-brands.html
- EMarketer Report looking at the communication methods used to discuss products and services according to US Young Adults cs. General population
- Face to Face Conversations - 77%/84%
- Email - 50%/58%
- Social Networking Communities - 56%/35%
- Product or Company Website - 18%/17%
- Product reviews or shopping websites - 18%/17%
- Marketing Takeaway: Face to face conversations are still the number one way people talk about your product, but social networks still make up 56% of young adults. Know your market.
Google+ For All
- http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2011/09/google-benefits-from-opening-doors-to-all.html
- In its invitation only period the service was able to attract around 25-30 million users.
- Last week with its new “you don’t have to be some tech connected person to use us” approach, Google+ saw its number shot up to about 40 million users after just one day!
- Marketing Takeaway: Continue watching Google+ and keep your fingers crossed they figure out business pages soon!
Google Goes Real Time
- http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/29/technology/google_real_time/
- Google announced some real time data features in Google Analytics
- They also announce a paid product, Google Analytics Premium
- Who is it good for?
- Great for media companies with breaking stories that tend to get really spike-y traffic with huge bursts of activity
- People who are obsessed by shiny new object stats which may or may not have real business implications
- What is different about HubSpot analytics?
- Marketing analytics, not website analytics
- Consolidated reports that aggregate data to make it easier to understand - like putting all social media into one category
- Closed loop marketing that shows what traffic not only became a leads
- First-touch attribution, as well as contribution reporting for different events
- Person-based analytics so you can develop personal profiles and engage with prospects based on their personal interaction with your website
- People that want the all-in-one convenience of having all their marketing tools connected and in one place
- Marketing Takeaway: Choose your tools based on your business goals.
Marketing Tip of the Week - Find a way to mobile optimize something from your company.
Episode #167 - September 23rd, 2011
Intro
- How to interact on Twtter: Include #HubSpotTV in your tweet!
- On the show today is Karen Rubin (@KarenRubin), Mike Volpe (@MVolpe) & Anne Holland (@AnneHolland55)
- As always, all the old episodes are in iTunes. If you like the show, please leave a 5-star review!
- Anyone is welcome to come by the show to watch as part of the live studio audience - 4pm Friday
Special Guest: Anne Holland
- 25-year B2B publishing executive; publishing online since 1994. Founder & Past President, MarketingSherpa Inc (sold in 2007). Currently you are working on two other sites, WhichTestWon.com and subscriptionsiteinsider.com.
- You are a long time content creator, do you have any tips for people just getting started?
- How did you become passionate about a/b testing?
- How much can A/B testing improve my results?
- Is it hard to get started with A/B testing?
- If I don’t have a lot of time, what are the most critical things I should test?
Headlines
The Benefits of Changing Your Password
- http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/22/someone-please-wake-up-markdavidson-one-of-his-twitter-ghostwriters-went-rogue/
- "A guy called Mark Davidson, a Social Marketing & Communications Strategist according to his LinkedIn profile, apparently hired three people to ghostwrite on his Twitter account."
- From the looks of it, one of them was just fired from Mark’s inexplicably large ghostwriting team, but his former employer failed to change his Twitter password …
- The result: (so far) eight messages from a “drunk, angry” rogue ghostwriter on Mark’s Twitter account, blasting him for employing a team of writers “while he is out playing golf”, not being nice, cheap and lacking understanding of what social media is (and how to type the words). Ouch.
- Responses from @MarkDavidson
- Oh. I am so not dealing with this *** today. My only responsibility on this account is to respond to *all @replies and @mentions. I quit.
- WANTED: Social Media Account Ghost Writer. We've recently had an opening at http://twitter.com/#!/markdavidson. (Serious inquiries only.)
- Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances, the previously scheduled blog post, "How To Tweet Like a Boss" will not be posted today.
- Is Mark Davidson real?
- Marketing Takeaway: Change your passwords regularly.
Facebook's f8 Conference
- http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/25764/Facebook-Announces-Timelines-and-Improvements-to-Open-Graph.aspx** Facebook will be replacing your Profile with what it's calling 'Timeline.'Timeline is based on the premise that, up until this change, a user's profile mostly consisted of recent updates. In fact, 99% of the stories you shared essentially vanished on Facebook. The new Timeline view of your profile solves this problem, enabling users to feature more stories from their past, organized by points in time.
- Facebook has also made vast improvements to its Open Graph to allow users to more easily use, share, and display applications. The improvements also allow users to better discover what their friends are up to and which apps they're using. They even enable users to instantly join in on others' activity as they see stories displayed in their News Feed or Ticker.
- Chris Penn - https://plus.google.com/u/1/117916903811396964681/posts/T3C2ofA4X7G** The way marketers are going to get to audiences through Timeline and Open Graph is pretty clearly through Apps. For everything else, you're going to be using the Ads system. All those Likes and other things? They don't appear as though they'll significantly impact this new interface except in the most peripheral of ways.
- Marketing will need to reinforce apps with other channels to ensure their success. If you're good at marketing, good at building buzz, good at aggregating crowds, you will win.
- Over time, you can bet that Timeline and Open Graph data will be made available via API. There's a huge bounty available for anyone who can crunch massive pools of data and extract insights from it.
- Marketing Takeaway: Your Facebook strategy might need to me more about engaging people on Facebook than getting them to leave it.
Google+ For Everyone!
- http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/25584/Google-Now-Available-to-Everyone-Adds-Search-Functionality.aspx
- Tuesday morning, Google announced it has officially released the ability to sign up for Google+ to everyone, with or without an invitation.
- Mobile Hangouts: Users with Android 2.3+ devices and front-facing cameras can now can now launch Hangouts directly from their mobile phones.
- Hangouts on Air: Users can now create publicly broadcasted (and recorded) hangouts, which can include up to 9 video participants and made available to anyone who wants to watch the broadcast live.
- now the Search box is available to all, enabling users to search for others' posts and content within Google and on the web
- Marketing Takeaway: Who wanted to get into G+ and wasn't there yet?
PETA.XXX
- http://daveibsen.typepad.com/5_blogs_before_lunch/2011/09/petaxxx-porn-website-to-titillate-and-promote-animal-rights-and-vegan-diets.html
- PETA is planning to launch a pornographic website to promote its animal rights and vegan diet message. They plan to launch it as peta.xxx. They are currently waiting for approval of the domain name.
- The site is said to feature "tantalizing" videos and photographs, interspersed with animal rights and vegan diet messaging. The goal is to attract attention with nudity and sexually suggestive content, in order to direct people to the PETA message.
- Of course, the question with shock-value promotions, is where do you cross the line and risk the potential of alienating, rather than titillating your audience.
- Marketing Takeaway: Out of the box ideas and remarkable content attract attention.
Personalization Wins!
- http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2011/09/new-study-says-the-more-personalized-the-better.html
- Knowledge Networks surveyed 400 online users, half who saw personalized ads for travel site Kayak, and half who saw regular ads.
- The results were pretty dramatic, but lets keep in mind that the study was released by an ad company who has a stake in personalized advertising.
- Those seeing the personalization notched a 100% improvement in level of favorability toward Kayak, a 37% jump in likelihood of visiting Kayak the next time travel is being planned online and a 73% increase in likelihood of recommending Kayak to a friend, colleague or relative”
- 40% of respondents said they liked the personalized ads. 12% said they didn’t like it. 40% said that watching an ad was a “fair price to pay for being able to watch online video for free.”
- Marketing Takeaway: Personalization is good, but this data is sketchy.
The Facebook Edition of the WSJ
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/09/19/wsj-social-for-a-world-where-facebook-is-the-new-internet/
- The Wall Street Journal has what it thinks is an answer to this problem. Called WSJ Social, it filters Journal content through the so-called social graph to yield a news product that lives entirely within the walls of Facebook.
- “The fundamental idea of it is super simple,” says Alisa Bowen, general manager of the WSJ Digital Network. “It’s about making WSJ content available where people are.”
- But it’s also about reimagining newspaper reading as an inherently social experience. Users choose whose streams they want to follow — the official ones produced by the paper’s, and each other’s — and that determines what stories they see.
- As far as the money part goes, the Journal keeps all the revenue from ads that appear within the borders of the app, while Facebook sells ad positions outside it. Content that’s behind a paywall on WSJ.com is still subscriber-only here, although a one-month sponsorship by Dell temporarily makes it free to all.
- Marketing Takeaway: Your Facebook strategy might need to be based on letting people stay on Facebook.
Marketing Tip of the Week
- It's all about the users. Test different things to find something that makes them happy.
Intro
- How to interact on Twtter: Include #HubSpotTV in your tweet!
- On the show today is Karen Rubin (@KarenRubin) & Mike Volpe (@MVolpe)
- As always, all the old episodes are in iTunes. If you like the show, please leave a 5-star review!
- Anyone is welcome to come by the show to watch as part of the live studio audience - 4pm Friday! Except next week! We'll be streaming live, but from a top secret location.
Headlines
Half Life of Links
- http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/24507/Shelf-Life-of-Social-Media-Links-Only-3-Hours-Data.aspx
- By calculating what bitly is calling the link's 'half life' (the time it takes a link to receive half the clicks it will ever receive after it’s reached its peak), bitly evaluated the persistence of 1,000 popular bitly links, and found some strikingly similar results.
- The mean half life of a link on Twitter is 2.8 hours.
- The mean half life of a link on Facebook is 3.2 hours.
- The mean half life of a link via ‘direct’ sources such as email or instant messaging clients is 3.4 hours.
- The mean half life of a link on YouTube is 7.4 hours.
- Marketing Takeaway: Where you post a link matters less than what it is pointing to!
Romney Offers E-Book for Price of a Tweet
- http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2107574/romney-offers-book-price-tweet
- Mitt Romney will offer his new jobs plan book at a rock bottom price: the cost of a tweet. The candidate is making a splash on Amazon and across the web, as his just-published "Believe in America: Mitt Romney's Plan for Jobs and Economic Growth" e-book rapidly climbs the Kindle Store charts today.
- "Pay with a Tweet" option for downloading the digital book - which is also available for free on Amazon.
- The goal for the Romney campaign is to generate social buzz around the former Massachusetts Governor's e-book, published today in anticipation of tonight's debate and President Barack Obama's jobs plan speech scheduled for tomorrow.
- The tweet-for-download option will be promoted on the campaign's Facebook page, web site, and - of course - with a tweet from the @MittRomney account, according to Moffatt.
- Marketing Takeaway: Try new things, just make sure you can measure them!
Fewer Emails = More Conversion
- http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=32008
- In its existing program, the team runs 12 series of nurturing emails that are targeted to a lead's industry and product of interest. Leads receive a maximum of nine emails and two telephone calls over the course of four months.
- The team needed to identify a series that would quickly make these leads sales-ready. The emails could not be drawn out over the course of months as in the regular nurturing series. The team tested four approaches:
- 2 emails sent in 1 week
- 3 emails sent in 3 weeks
- 6 emails sent in 3 weeks
- 4 emails sent in 8 weeks
- The team's best approach was to send three emails every two weeks for six weeks and include two telephone calls after the second and third messages
- Text-based emails from an account manager generated 10-times greater response than nurturing emails that used more HTML
- Marketing Takeaway: Your prospects don't want to receive endless programmed marketing automation emails.
Doing It Right: VC's in the Shower
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKArupEBE6Y&feature=player_embedded
- Foundry Group, a venture capital firm investing in seed and early stage US-based technology companies, launched this documentary film illustrating through complex metaphors and stunning montages the secret lives of venture capitalists including information rarely seen or understood.....until now.
- Promoting their book
- Marketing Takeaway: Be comfortable making fun of yourself to be remarkable.
10 Most Used Marketing Metrics
- http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/24226/Top-10-Most-Commonly-Used-Internet-Marketing-Metrics-Data.aspx
- A recent survey by Chief Marketer revealed that, of seven typical measurements, the metric most used by U.S. marketers to evaluate interactive performance is click-throughs. Ramsey suggested that while "click-through is the most commonly used metric by online advertisers...it is still relied on too heavily and in inappropriate ways. Click-through rate (CTR) should continue to be used as a diagnostic metric for direct response initiatives; however, it should not be used as a primary metric."
- Clickthroughs = 58.7%
- Traffic to Website = 53.3%
- Lead Generation/Opt In = 53.3%
- Page Views = 38.3%
- Incremental sales - 34.1%
- ROI = 31.9%
- Customer retention/reactivation = 29.8%
- Offer response rates = 28.3%
- Requests for more information = 27.9%
- Brand lift or awareness = 24.6%
- Marketing Takeaway: Measure sales. Everything else is just a forward indicator of sales. (and use HubSpot to do it.)
Marketing Tip of the Week
- Find one thing to measure, and measure it regularly.
Episode #160 - August 5th, 2011
Intro
* How to interact on Twtter: Include #HubSpotTV in your tweet!
- On the show today is Brian Whalley (@bwhalley) and Sam Coren (@samcoren)
- As always, all the old episodes are iniTunes. If you like the show, please leave a 5-star review!
- Anyone is welcome to come by the show to watch as part of the live studio audience - 4pm Friday!
- IMS/HUGS - Get 10% off code: HSBLOG10
- We aren’t Karen and Mike! Brian won this in the HubSpot Charity Auction this past winter and is excited to be here today with you all. Joining him is @samcoren from StudentAdvisor .
- Twitter #WWKS -- what humorous/inappropriate things would Karen say. We will read in her honor!
StudentAdvisor/Top 100 Social Media Colleges
* BW: So Sam, tell us more about StudentAdvisor and what you do there
- SC: talk about SA. New Ultimate Dorm Guide, Top 100 SM colleges rankings, move to Cambridge
- BW: What’s good about the Top 100 Social Media colleges rankings for marketers in higher ed?
SC:
- For people involved in SM at these colleges it validated their hard work
- SM is becoming increasingly more important for schools and students.
- This list is chockful of examples of amazing things school’s are doing with social media:
- BW: What was the goal of publishing this list? How did you make sure that you maximized the value and accomplished that?
SC:
- Top 100 as way of honoring the schools doing the best job communicating in a space that today’s college students are most familiar with
- Social media the data is out there for everyone to see, but it’s all very scattered.
- Tracked over 2,000 schools actively involved in social media with over 100,000 data points to finally give a college ranking grounded in science.
- Had a bit of help from HubSpot when it came to calculating the Twitter grades.
- BW: Did you get any negative feedback from schools or marketers? How did you handle that?
- SC:
- Our first line of defense was being transparent about our methodology.
- Invited all colleges to contact us directly if their school didn’t appear in the top 100.
- Most people weren’t angry - just curious to see were they ranked.
- BW: Good to know. Why the move to Cambridge?
SC:
- StudentAdvisor is dedicating the next 6 months to intense R&D work
- Proximity to all the colleges makes it easier to get students and higher ed professionals more involved.
- Marketing Takeaway: Create great editorial content about your industry and promote it to get attention. In lists, have winners and losers - Both sides will respond and react to the post.
Newt Gingrich Announces Run For President* http://twitter.com/#!/newtgingrich/status/68409986501455872http://technology.inc.com/2011/07/27/facebook-upstages-google-yet-again/
- Newt buys followers, gets poked fun at.
- “About 80 percent of those accounts are inactive or are dummy accounts created by various "follow agencies”.
- What does he think the value of those fake followers are? Are they useful to him at all?
- Gingrich denies having bought any followers.
- Buying followers is like (INSERT CONTROVERSIAL SUBJECT). If I was Karen, I’d say sex. But I’m not Karen. Everyone’s doing it. Nobody’s talking about it. Gingrich is getting caught because it was really obvious and he’s a very high-profile target.
- Marketing Takeaway 1: Before “buying” followers consider what’s best practice for your industry first.
- Marketing Takeaway 2: Be careful when doing things that might not sound great as the headline of a newspaper. At HubSpot I call it the Mike Volpe rule. Imagine Mike’s reaction when you tell him what you did. Good barometer.
Obama Loses 33,000+ Followers In One Day
* Twitter spam isn’t cool. Ever. Even if you’re Barack Obama.
- Tweeting various states and asking them to contact their congresspeople to talk about the debt issue. Hundreds of tweets an hour. Show “OBAMA FOR ANGELA”http://technology.inc.com/2011/07/27/facebook-upstages-google-yet-again/
- What’s 33000 followers out of 9.4 million?
- Show GRAPH FOR ANGELA
- Maybe he’s willing to lose some followers to flood the message out to everyone.
- First his actual news was the conversation, but now it’s a meta-conversation about how his conversation. He’s losing control of the topic and creating a bad distraction.
- In the end he’s gaining followers again and it’s moved on. Americans have a short memory.
- Marketing Takeaway 1: Don’t spam your followers incessantly. They’ll unfollow you.
- Marketing Takeaway 2: Sometimes, to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. Don’t be afraid.
Google to Revive Realtime Search Because of Google+
* Google pulled the plus on real time search in July after it failed to reach an agreement with Twitter
- Google doesn’t believe it needs Twitter data to deliver a compelling real-time search offering because they now have Google+
- +1s may have some influence on organic search. The exact value is unclear but it’s likely, and so you should work on getting that button in there. Really there are four buttons that you should have on your site: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, +1.
- 8 Sites have social media impact in Google: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, +1, Quora, Yelp, Flickr, Yahoo Pulse.
Marketing Tip of the Week: Consider adding that Google+ button next to the Tweet button if you haven’t already done so. I don’t recommend you have every button in the world, but this one I definitely do.
A Page Out of The David Meerman Scott Real-Time PR and Marketing Playbook* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5HjkkJfrKg
- Recently a few Marines have asked “A-List Celebrities” to the Marine Corps Ball using YouTube videos. After "Friends with Benefits" star, Mila Kunis said yes toSgt Scott Moore Molly Maid created a response video offering Sgt Moore a freehouse cleaningbefore he goes to the ball with Ms. Kunis.
- Initially the video accumulated 1000 views over ten days, not a bad return for a video that took about five minutes to shoot.
- The story surfaced in the news a few days ago when a Marine asked Scarlett Johansson to the ball and the video quickly picked-up another 2000 views.
- Marketing Takeaway: Pay attention to current events and create content that associates your company with trending topics or popular stories.
What are you doing this weekend?
Episode #159 - July 29, 2011
Intro
- How to interact on Twtter: Include #HubSpotTV in your tweet!
- On the show today is Rebecca Corliss (@repcor) and Kipp Bodnar (@kbodnar32)
- As always, all the old episodes are in iTunes. If you like the show, please leave a 5-star review!
- Anyone is welcome to come by the show to watch as part of the live studio audience - 4pm Friday! Except next week! We'll be streaming live, but from a top secret location.
- IMS/HUGS - Get 10% off code: HSBLOG10
- Karen's out! Where is she?!
- Twitter #WWKS -- what humorous/inappropriate things would Karen say. We will read in her honor!
Facebook launched Facebook.com/Business
- http://technology.inc.com/2011/07/27/facebook-upstages-google-yet-again/
- “Facebook for Business,” an “online education center” that provides step-by-step guides for small businesses to set up ...
- Profile pages, Ads, sponsored stories, platform
- Using content as a means to get more businesses and involved, and perhaps lead more people to using ads.
- Differentiator from Google+ -- remind people the VALUE of Facebook for business.
- Marketing Takeaway 1: Use content and education to defeat competition.
- Marketing Takeaway 2: Go to facebook.com/business and check it out!
Angry Birds Make Happy People
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzIBZQkj6SY
- A human-scaled mockup of the Angry Birds world was created in a square in Barcelona, with lucky participants using the game on a smartphone to launch birds on their castle-smashing journey. - Is it 'supposed' to look real?
- Good example of co-marketing, as well as using something trendy!
- Marketing Takeaway: By tying in items of popular culture into your marketing, you can increase the chances of your content 'going viral.'
NFL Lockout Alienates Fans
Whitehouse Rickroll
Is Google Plus Timestamping URLS to Dermine Popularity
- Story submitted by Steve Wade and written by Chris Penn.
- http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/07/google-and-search-signals-tinfoil-hat-edition/
- Recently examining Google+ and how it transparently redirects through plus.google.com as it sends readers to your website.
- URL has USG and a string of text and numbers, which looks like a unique identifiers and a timestand
- Apparently, Google Plus is tracking the time stamps of clicks from links shared in its social network – not just when somebody posted those links. I went ahead and ran some independent and unscientific tests and found this to be true. I suspect the reason is that Google is measuring acceleration and momentum of shared content in an effort to better shape the quality of its search results (more relevant, more timely).
- Marketing Takeaway: Social media impacts search, and this is further proof. Get get your Google+ items shared NOW!
Marketing Tip of the Week: Know what your audience wants and needs, and give it to them. Give it to them good.
What are you doing this weekend?
For the shows first birthday, we made a trailer video to encourage people to come out and celebrate with us. It still shows some of the best.
Mike and Karen have fun with the Charlie Sheen craze that has swept the nation.
Guest host Yoav Shapira gets Karen to rap on the show for the first and only time.
Chances are you haven't heard of Marcus Sheridan before. However he rocks the HubSpot house and delivers one of the best performances of any guest all while giving great information for small busiess owners.