From the category archives:

Interactive marketing

Create HD screencasts for sales tools

in Interactive marketing, Sales literature & tools

Technology moves quickly. It’s time-consuming to stay on the front edge of the wave, and tricky to figure out creative ways to use it to improve corporate marketing results. I Tweet, but do I generate leads? How come the fans on my Facebook page never buy?

It can be frustrating, and it can feel like a time sink.

But sometimes an A-HA! moment can reap rewards. My moment came in May, when I finally figured out how to use YouTube to be productive (instead of wasting time watching guys drop Mentos into 2-liter bottles of Coke – laughs, yes … work, no).

We sell subscriptions to software-as-a-service that mixes a lot of marketing content (both downloadable and served up in our app) with online marketing project management and document management. Consultants and marketing teams use it for heavy-duty marketing planning and for executing marketing tasks.

But we’ve struggled to find a good way to allow prospects to view the marketing exercises in our Library before making a purchase. We have free trials, but we don’t allow users to download content – that’s reserved for paying customers.

Online demos have always been effective, but they’re time consuming and tricky to schedule with overseas prospects. We can give away a single exercise here or there, but it’s just a single piece of the puzzle and lacks context. Flashpaper worked for awhile but it’s becoming obsolete.

How about a screencast? Not bad, but the files are huge; they eat up bandwidth, slow down our site and require web redesign in order to add new ones.

YouTube to the Rescue

Enter YouTube with their recent change to allow high definition video, 10 minute videos and up to 2 GB files. In their HD view, clarity and sound are substantially improved, and videos can be presented full-screen without looking like a fuzzy mess.

YouTube is great because it’s hosted on their servers (saving bandwidth); it’s in Flash format so it’s easy to embed and anyone can grab it; and people can find it via search.

If you have the type of offering you need viewers to see before purchasing–but not download or access directly (a special database, video training, or anything behind a password)–try a screencast. You could even try it with a presentation.

I’m no video production expert (or studio voice talent), but here’s what a solid afternoon of work produced. We’ll use this in our sales process for our free Preview account users who, when visiting our marketing library, want to see how the exercises in a complete subject work before purchasing a paid subscription.

Click the full-screen icon on the right to see YouTube’s HD quality.

I was pretty happy with the full-screen view on my 24″ HP monitor. Ok, I’m a realist – this could be improved with a tighter script, a professional voice talent, a recording-quality microphone, voice-sound editing (like snipping breaths and mouse-clicks), but for what we needed to accomplish (creating an informative sales tool) - it’s great! Most of our viewers will already be interested in our offering but just need a little more information.

Here’s what I used:

Camtasia - screencast recording and editing software
A USB microphone plugged into a Windows Vista desktop
Some music to fill the dead zones and give it a little life
Some editing tricks in Camtasia

Upload to YouTube and viola!

I created both screencasts in a single afternoon – script writing, takes, editing, production and YouTube upload. And I probably wasted about 45 minutes producing at varying levels since I lack the expertise to get it right on the first try.

YouTube’s HD offering is still unpredictable and you have to wait until they review your video and decide whether it’s acceptable. For best results, produce in 1280 pixel-width with high quality settings. I used the following Camtasia production settings:

.AVI
44.1 16-bit mono
30 frames per second
1280 pixels wide by 898 high

There’s a bit of a learning curve, but it’s pretty powerful once you get it. A few years ago it would’ve cost $5,000 to $15,000 to produce a basic 10 minute business A/V demo.

Come to think of it, while I’m pretty happy about our DIY results, some creative firm out there specializing in product demos is probably nervous. But the good ones will surely survive.

When we’re ready for some killer cool viral marketing videos I’m going to contact Common Craft!

How to Make 720p High Definition Screencast Videos for YouTube (labnol.org)
Screencast: Free Tools to Record Your Screen (rotorblog.com)
Make The Perfect Screencast With These 6 Great Tips (makeuseof.com)

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Generate social media buzz with PitchEngine

in Interactive marketing, Publicity

Are you looking to generate some publicity from social media? Forget sending out an old school press release on the wire. While the traditional press release template is still useful for connecting with journalists and media outlets, it’s simply not an effective way for most companies to generate leads and customers and connect with their fans.

As Brian Solis, the Principal of PR and New Media Agency FutureWorks and author of the popular PR 2.0 blog, says:

Press releases are both a mechanism for refining and distributing news and now also serve as a conduit for connecting influencers and customers to information as well as the people behind the story through social networks. Upgrading the template for the development of press releases improves the foundation for the story and the transparency, authenticity, and believability required to extend it across social networks, online press outlets, and throughout the blogosphere.

The upgraded template is called the Social Media Release, or SMR. In a SMR, you can incorporate embedded video, photos, product images, presentations and pdfs into a mini-website that can easily be shared via the social web using apps like Twitter, Delicious, Facebook and Digg.

What are the benefits? The SMR engages readers by providing far more information than the canned press release template that was created over 100 years ago. SMRs are more conversational and make it easier for you to be found by bloggers, fans and potential customers and also help with SEO by adding links to your site.

The Social Media Release isn’t a replacement for a traditional wire service for important news, but a supplement to it. A number of traditional wire services (like PRWeb and Marketwire) have incorporated SMR features, but PitchEngine is a website completely dedicated to the SMR.

We use all three, but I like how I was able to add our YouTube screencasts directly to the SMR. Currently, PitchEngine’s SMR is free for the first 30 days. Check out our recent Growth Panel release to see it in action.

Better yet, try it yourself!

It's time to add online advertising to your mix

in General marketing, Interactive marketing, Marketing plans

Recently the IAB reported that internet advertising grew 10% in 2008. While search advertising dominated (with 45% of the total internet advertising market), rich media and video advertising also grew at the same rate (roughly 20% courtesy of TechCrunch.)

Internet marketing growth continues to outpace traditional media, and many SMEs (small to midsize entities) are finally realizing that inbound digital marketing can be cost-effective, easily measured and very profitable.

Everyone knows about email marketing and search marketing, but it’s time for all SMEs to familiarize themselves with online advertising.

What’s the difference?

Let’s clarify with definitions of each:

Email marketing: Sending outbound emails to your list.

Search marketing: Obtaining visitors to your website from search engines. The two forms of search marketing are organic and paid search (often referred to as PPC).

Online advertising: Placing electronic advertisements and videos on other websites and email newsletters.

Online advertising can help you accomplish a number of different business goals. Use it to

Generate new leads
Promote a special offer or program to generate leads or sales
Increase your visibility among targeted prospects
Drive a lot of traffic to your website

Your website is a critical element to any online ad campaign. Everyone clicking your online ad will land somewhere on your website, so make sure it’s as effective as possible.

Online Advertising Types

Now let’s take a look at some of the different online advertising campaigns you can run.

Banner Advertising

A banner ad is a graphical advertisement placed on another website. You can run a banner ad campaign on a specific site or collection of sites. When site visitors click your ad, they visit a landing page on your site that continues your sales message.

Rich Media & Online Video Ads

A different creative option than the standard banner program – “rich media” refers to more interactive ads that are programmed in Flash or other languages. They can incorporate motion, audio and video, float over a page and include forms and downloads right from the ad.

Advertisements on Email Newsletters

Run an ad in the body of another company’s email newsletter. The ads link to a landing page on your site. The ad could also be a simple text ad or a special email that’s dedicated to you but co-sponsored by the list owner.

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs enable other website publishers to put your ad on their sites. You create the ad, and when visitors click through to your site, the publishers earn commission for each click-through or other “success measurement” that you’ve previously agreed upon.

What’s Next?

The key to deciding which type of program to run is to pick the program to match your business goals. Then, it’s all about execution:

Define your goals;
Buy ad space;
Choose your media;
Create your ads; and
Measure your results.