Which explainer video animation style is right for your business?
There has been a boom in the use of animated video in digital marketing. When executed well-animated videos can engage audiences through high quality content, SEO benefits and give an excellent way to communicate a large amount of information to your audience in a small amount of time.
Explainer videos are an increasingly popular form of content marketing which tell a story explaining visually how a product or brand helps different personas. In this post I start by giving some tips to help create 'explainers' and then give examples of effective explainers.
9 tips for animated video planning
You can hire freelancers, a small creative agency or an animation production studio or even use some online DIY animation tools. All of them have different budget's, time scales and outcomes so when you are considering your animated video, here's some things to consider.
1. Do you want…
You will know about Brin and Page, but perhaps not Sundar Pichai and Matt Serlin...
Importance to Digital Marketers: [rating=5]
Recommended link: Official Google Blog announcement of Alphabet
Is 'Alphabet' 'for real'?!
Well, you might have thought that Google had grown so well established and large, that it had lost the capacity to surprise. Not so! It surprised me with the announcement this week of Alphabet. In fact, I had to check it wasn't one of those April fool PR efforts with the stunning, but curious new brand and domain name of Alphabet (http://abc.xyz).
So I headed straight to the ICANN WHOIS domain registration database and learnt that there is a San Francisco connection, Although Matt Serlin (the main registrant is nothing to do with Google), but he is part of Mark Monitor which is a domain management organisation, but if you take a look…
Understanding Google’s latest research on micro-moments and the implications for your marketing
It’s no secret that mobile has dramatically impacted how we do business and how consumers interact with brands online - the latest mobile adoption data indicates that mobile is still on course to overtake fixed internet access and that mobile ad spending accounts for 49% of digital ad spending.
As a result of this mobile shift, Google has conducted some interesting ethnographic research over the last year to explore how consumer behaviour is changing and gain an understanding into the needs of real people. Some of the stand out insights from the research includes:
82% of smartphone users use their phones to influence a purchase decision in a store
62% of smartphone users are more likely to take action right away to solve an unexpected problem or task because they have a smartphone
90% of smartphone users have used their phone to…
Provide a narrative and continue the story to delight your audience and have an effective video campaign
You’ve got your cup of coffee in one hand and your prop list in the other. You still need to send out a dozen tweets and find a new actor because your top choice canceled at the last moment. Your director made some scripting tweaks that require rewrites. The list goes on.
Planning and marketing your video can feel like the opposite of Hollywood glamour. But when you boil it down, digital marketing and the movies actually have a lot in common.
Whether it’s a comedy that makes your cheeks sore from laughing or a tearjerker that leaves you blubbering in your car on the way home, great movies change viewers’ lives by taking them on an emotional journey. Your video can do the exact same thing by forming a relationship with attendees, providing a narrative…
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July 20, 2015
Understand your marketing ROI and use the data to inform your data-driven marketing strategy
While the attraction of data-driven marketing isn’t in doubt, the challenge confronting businesses can be daunting.
According to the Q1 2014 Gleanster Research customer experience survey, about eight out of ten senior marketers believe their organisation could be doing a better job of using customer data to inform customer acquisition and retention strategies.
But with data-driven marketing involving so many working parts, the end goal can appear unobtainable. To create a data driven strategy, you first need to know how to establish an effective way to measure marketing ROI.
Data-driven measurement
The advent of data-driven marketing should ensure that organisations can not only identify the strategies and campaigns that are most likely to be successful, but also secure buy-in and investment for marketers by demonstrating the potential ROI of impending campaigns.
Put simply, if a marketing department is truly data-driven, the measurement of…
20-35% of teens are snapchatters
Here we're sharing some of the latest research from GlobalWebIndex. They regularly have specific reports on social platforms that aren't covered elsewhere. Globally 14% of teens are using snapchat, according to GlobalWebIndex, and in the US it's even more popular as 16-19 year olds are snapchatting. This growth is being seen across Europe; the UK and Irish Teens rank at the top for usage. It's popularity is a result of teens being able to hang out with their friends and mainly its 'fun appeal'.
Companies are realising the benefit as recently Alibaba has announced that it's planning to invest over $200 million dollars in Snapchat. So Snapchat appears here to stay as a tool for building relationships with the teens. Companies including the Co-op and Taco Bell have used it to try and engage the young audience. Last year …
It's all about the story...
It’s a jungle out there, dog eat dog, and unstructured data is proliferating at an exponential rate. As a marketer you have to be careful, you don’t want to get sucked into this digital Wild West, even the quickest out there could get stung.
Yet, there are opportunities to be had, little nuggets of 24-carat gold that can provide your business with a cutting edge worth millions. Sounds like an opportunity, right?
However, just as the prospectors found it tough trying to make a buck during the 19th century Alaskan gold rush so businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to make sense of how to make big data pay. So even at this early stage of its evolution businesses are asking, what does the future of big data look like?
Image/Copyright Source: wikimedia.org
There isn’t an easy answer but…
Skilled staff and budgets are still obstacles for many companies
With the ongoing interest in applying Big Data to marketing we thought this was a useful report to share - IDG Enterprise’s '2015 Big Data and Analytics Report' surveyed over 1,100 brands in the UK and Australia to find out which stage they are at in terms of planning or deploying 'Big Data' projects and to reveal their plans and challenges this year.
The report identified that the top 3 priorities for the majority of businesses is to invest in analytics, visual dashboards and data mining. Challenges were still prevalent for many companies who felt they were lacking in-house technical skills, so as a result are looking to hire 'Business Analysts' and 'Data Architects' to facilitate this if they can obtain the budget - yet another obstacle to overcome.
…
Struggling to generate ideas for your blog? Here are the tools you need
As an inbound marketer, you know how important your blog is for attracting people to your website, driving up your SEO rankings, and building trust with your target audience. You also know how difficult it can be to constantly come up with new and exciting content ideas that will both educate, entertain and convert your blog readers.
In a recent survey from HubSpot and Smart Insights, we found that quantity and quality of content are top challenges for marketers. However, it doesn’t need to be an obstacle that gets in your way! In this blog post we will provide you with 10 cool (and free!) tools to help you brainstorm fresh new ideas for your blog so that you never have to run dry again.
Understanding Your Customer’s Language
The first step to creating great content that attracts the right people to your…
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June 16, 2015
Examples showing how can you make pre-roll videos effective when people do not want to watch pre-roll video ads
Let’s face it. Does anyone really want to watch a YouTube advert? Probably not. In fact, ninety-four per cent of us choose to skip the rest of the pre-roll after the compulsory first five seconds. And that figure is considered fairly generous.
And who can blame you for skipping? Often the ads are irrelevant, usually they are boring and sometimes they are just simply irritating. All you want to do is watch your video, right? It’s annoying having to stare at the Skip Ad button for five seconds, waiting for what seems like an eternity (and much longer than five seconds) to just view your clip.
So you might be surprised to learn that occasionally, very, very occasionally, YouTube pre-rolls can work. However, it has to be something pretty…
