Hasta La Creative!

Smart marketers understand the many benefits of video — increased engagement, increased time on site, increased click-through, increased conversion rate to name a few. As smartphone adoption increases placing a video camera in everyone’s hands and services like Vine and Instagram make video sharing seamless, the amount of user-generated video has soared.

But how does a marketer crowdsource, capture, curate and leverage all this content? In this SparkReel whitepaper entitled How to Be Successful With User Generated Video, you will learn 10 ways your brand can encourage fans to create video and how to use those videos to support your brand’s marketing goals.

Download this whitepaper now and ensure your brand is capitalizing on user-generated video.

Here’s a quick bit of help for you on a Friday. As part of our Adrants whitepaper series, we have for you a two page tip sheet from Spredfast entitled 10 Tip to Rock the Twittersphere. Even if you dub yourself a Twitter rock star, it can never hurt to brush up on your skills.

Download this tip sheet now to ensure every 140 character message resonates with your audience and impacts your brand in a positive way.

Ever wonder which behaviors and practices define a successful SEO? With this latest research study, part of the Adrants whitepaper series, Conductor and Search Engine Land analyze responses to a survey of almost 400 SEO professionals to determine common practices that best-in-class organizations utilize to drive natural search success and why SEO is integral to content marketing.

Key takeaways of this research include:

• Discover a meaningful and standardized way of defining best-in-class SEOs versus laggards
• 66% of best-in-class organizations involve SEOs with content creation from the start
• Best-in-class are 2X more likely to recognize executive buy-in as critical to their SEO success

Download the study now to ensure your search marketing efforts are properly paying off.

So everyone’s talking about big data, right? We all agree it can be very valuable in delivering the insight you need to craft marketing programs and creative campaigns that rock. But how do you use all that big data to optimize and personalize your customer’s digital experiences in a way that supercharges your marketing and creative efforts?

Why you sign up to attend a webinar on the topic this Thursday, that’s how! Big data personalization company Monetate is hosting a webinar Thursday, October 24 at 2PM EST. During the webinar you learn how Brooks Brothers partnered with Monetate and conversion expert Brooks Bell to dramatically improve their online marketing efforts.

Sign up for the Webinar now to ensure your brand is properly leveraging data to improve your online marketing efforts.

Recently, blinkx released the results of survey of online video viewing habits conducted on its behalf by Harris Interactive. The survey was designed to reveal viewing and social media sharing habits of U.S. consumers and uncovered some not-so-surprising trends.

In total, 2 out of 4 people watch online video.

– 57% watch 1 to 5 hours each week
– 26% watch more than 5 hours each week
– 17% watch less than one hour each week

– 867% watch videos on their computers
– 35% watch videos on their smartphones
– 23% watch videos on their tablets
– 14% watch videos on their smart TV

Smartphone users watch more viral videos with 61% viewing virals on their smartphones. Tablet users watch more entertainment with 48% viewing entertainment on their tablets.

Of smartphone users:

– 61% watch viral videos
– 48% watch entertainment
– 41% watch news
– 24% watch how-to videos
– 17% watch TV shows
– 14% watch movies

Of tablet users:

– 48% watch entertainment
– 45% watch news
– 44% watch viral videos
– 40% watch TV shows
– 34% watch movies
– 29% watch how-to videos

Of course, for Smart TV users, most (72%) watch movies and TV shows (64%)

In terms of video length, in general, shorter videos are viewed in smaller screen and longer videos are viewed on larger screens.

In terms of the most memorable advertising videos, entertainment category videos (movie trailers, etc.) are most remembered at 37%. This is followed by consumer goods at 17%, financial services at 17% and cars at 15%.

Every time your audience goes online, they get hit with a tidal wave of digital noise. As a marketer, how do you get your message noticed? How do you persuade a jaded online audience to ditch the noise-cancelling earplugs and listen to your story? The answer: Video.

Video works, and the stats prove it. Online video can help you to:

• Increase web visitations by 560% when you expose your audience to a banner that contains video
• Boost viewer engagement by 400% using online video as compared to static content such as text and graphics
• Attract 200% – 300% more visitors by regularly posting video on your site, with time on the page rising from 1.5 minutes without video to 3 minutes with video
• Skyrocket brand recall by an 900% when using video on multiple screens, such as online, mobile, and connected TV

But not all video is created equal, and not all companies that use video achieve such outstanding success. The difference between success and failure is the steps that marketing takes to produce relevant content that tells a good story, is delivered consistently to any device anywhere, and is backed by solid analytics.

Download this eGuide now to learn 8 proven techniques for:

• Cutting through the digital noise to capture your audience’s attention – and keep it
• Reducing the complexity of video publishing and live streaming
• Dramatically boosting conversion rates
• Gaining greater insights into audience behavior

Altimeter Group has just released a new report entitled, Defining and Mapping the Native Advertising Landscape. Authored by Altimeter Group advertising analyst Rebecca Lieb, the report attempts to define native advertising and examines what it dubs the “advertising triumvirate” or publishers, technology vendors and social media platforms.

The report defines native advertising as follows: Native advertising is a form of converged media that combines paid and owned media into a form of commercial messaging that is fully integrated into, and often unique to, a specific delivery platform.

The report also points out the varied benefits of native advertising to various participants in the industry:

– For publishers, new forms of premium inventory
– For social platforms, new advertising products
– For brands, new opportunities for attention, engagement and message syndication
– For agencies, benefits from creative and media opportunities
– For technology, new solutions facilitate and scale creative and delivery

The report also outlines the critical elements of a successful native advertising campaign:

There must be transparency, disclosure and trust. Without these elements in place, native advertising is a recipe for disaster. The placement must be disclosed as commercial in nature. There should be links to policies that govern the native advertising placement and there should be a channel for inquiry should any questions or confusion arise

There must be a content strategy. Content is the bread and butter of native advertising. Brands need to set a goal for the content to achieve. There must be an agreed upon tone and voice and their must be editorial and copy guidelines. Otherwise, it’s like creating an ad without a creative brief.

There must be collaboration. Like any other well-crafted marketing program, everyone has to be in the same ballpark when it comes to creating an effective native advertising campaign. Affected departments other than the marketing department must be in the loop at the outset of the effort. Outside partners should be considered if it is determined they can add consultative value. Native advertising efforts must be integrated with other marketing efforts and converged across multiple media channels.

There must be an earned media component. Native advertising is converged media (various combinations of paid, earned and owned) and methods by which native advertising efforts can be amplified through these channels must be considered.

There must be content portability. Creating content is central to native advertising efforts. That content must be given legs. It has to be portable and able to “travel” to other platforms so the message can be amplified. Native content must be shareable and trackable. A library of content should be created and content within that library should be broken down into discrete units (headlines, teaser copy, body copy, images, infographics, video) to that it can be deployed quickly in part or in whole.

There must be training. As with anything new, those involved must be educated so as to fully benefit from native advertising. Everyone from the sales team to content creators to the creative team to analytics teams has to have a clear understanding of native and how it relates to their specific function.

There must be an ability to scale. The biggest drawback to native advertising at present is scale. While native as defined by Altimeter is content that is unique to a specific delivery platform, new technology platforms such as OneSpot and imPowered are making it possible to transform created content and give it scale on par with a large ad network buy.

There must be measurement. As with any good marketing practice, measurement and ROI are key to continued success. Key performance indicators should be created and native advertising efforts should be mapped against those KPIs. Brands should rely solely on publisher-provided metrics to gauge campaign success. While it’s great to know how many people saw and engaged with your content, it’s a whole lot more important to know if that content contributed to a key KPI such as sales.

The report is free and can be viewed and downloaded here.

What if when you went to a website to buy or read something you only saw exactly what you came to see? What if websites were specifically customized to your every need? What if every brand’s website was a personalized experience designed just for you? Wouldn’t you love that! Wouldn’t your brand’s customers love that! Of course they would. So how do you personalize your brand’s online experience for your customers?

You download and read this IBM whitepaper, Marketing in the 4th Dimension: Four Keys to Personalizing the Web Experience. In this whitepaper, you will learn how to use data (both online and off) to personalize web experiences, develop customer profiles that will allow you to deliver those customized experiences and learn how some big brands accomplished this task.

Does marketing automation sound like something Honda does when it whips out its ASIMO robot at trade shows? While that certainly might be some form of marketing automation, it’s not the kind or marketing automation we’re talking about. Today’s fastest growing brands are using marketing automation-fueled, repeatable marketing and sales 2.0 techniques to grow revenue predictably and reliably.

This whitepaper from Marketo will teach you why companies that implement a marketing automation system to support their marketing and sales efforts are better equipped to manage lead flow and process leads more efficiently. This paper outlines how marketing automation optimizes marketing programs and can help companies:

• Create a faster and more predictable revenue cycle
• Increase profitablility with tactics that result in higher conversion rates
• Align the efforts of marketing and sales teams to substantially increase top-line revenue growth

Download the whitepaper now to learn how marketing automation can improve your brand’s performance.

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No, we mean right this second! Download these awesome marketing charts now.