Our CEO, Brandon Rosen was interviewed at LeadsCon 2012. We think he did a good Job, what do you think?
Brandon Rosen’s Interview at LeadsCon 2012
Filed Under: BMI Elite Blog, BMI Elite News, Corporate Culture, Viral Marketing
Incorporating Video in Email Marketing
by Jennifer O’Brien
More and more companies are including videos in their email marketing campaigns. Past technical obstacles are no longer a problem with the advances in technology. Studies show that people are more likely to watch a video than read a message and emails containing video are opened five times more than emails without video. There has been a prediction that by 2013, 90% of web traffic will be caused by video.
There are many benefits of having video in your email marketing campaign. Some researchers suggest that people are 85% more likely to buy a product if they watched a video describing it than if they simply read about it. There have been significant increases in conversion rates and return on investment. Some companies report click through rates increasing by over 96% from video. It provides a richer interaction between business and consumer and is becoming a common practice.
One way to place a video in your emails is to put a thumbnail image of the video in the email and clicking on the image redirects the subscriber to a landing page. It is also possible to have the whole video play in the email with no redirecting. You can also just place a link to a video in the email instead of embedding it within. If you do embed the image within the email, you should add a text link below the video describing its content because some people have an image blocker set up on their emails.
One important thing to keep in mind is that people are not likely to watch a lengthy video. You should try to keep it less than one minute long. Subscribers are busy so they need to watch videos that are short and to the point. It is important for the video to have a clear message and offer useful information. The video should clearly relate to the objectives in your campaign and portray the brand correctly.
Don’t make the video the focus of the whole email. Remember to continue giving consideration to the other elements of the email because not everyone will watch the video. There are a variety of reasons why someone might not view a video in their email so it’s important to keep meaningful text and links. For the subscribers who never want to view videos in their email, you should give them the option of opting-out of the emails that contain video. This will help ensure that your subscribers are being sent emails with the type of information they enjoy receiving.
Filed Under: BMI Elite Blog, Digital Advertising, Digital Branding, Digital Marketing, Email Marketing, Marketing Campaign, Marketing Strategy, Video Marketing, Viral Marketing, Viral Marketing Campaign Tagged With: direct marketing, email marketing, email marketing campaign, email marketing campaigns, email video, marketing campaign, marketing campaigns, video email, video marketing
Building Brand Awareness Through the Use of Viral Marketing
by Jennifer O’Brien
It is the goal of any advertising campaign to increase brand awareness especially with the introduction of new brands. Target markets being exposed to a new brand is an important step for the product life cycle. It is actually the first step because only after brand awareness can you have aided brand recall, unaided brand recall, brand recognition, and then finally, after people become repeat users, brand loyalty. One interesting and fairly new way of increasing brand awareness is through viral marketing.
Viral marketing has been around for a long time in the form of word-of-mouth marketing, but has transformed with the introduction of the internet. Now it can be defined as a technique to encourage a large amount of people to pass on a marketing message. Viral marketing comes in many forms including videos, emails, gossip, and can even be found in social media sites.
In order to make any viral marketing campaign successful, it must contain relevant information that people think is interesting enough to pass on to friends or family. Advertising companies have accomplished this by adopting techniques such as incorporating humor, using current events, using unique content, and using content that can be helpful to people. Viral marketing campaigns that include this kind of information will not only encourage people to pass it along, but will help the consumer remember the marketing message.
Because of viral marketing, I am now aware of brands such as Jack Link’s Beef Jerky, the International Music Festival (IMF), and Dove. Viral marketing not only makes people aware of your brand, it helps shape the brand’s personality and it helps people form opinions about the brand. This is important because brand loyalty can only occur after someone forms an opinion. And, a brand having a unique or highly developed personality will help it to be the prominent choice for consumers.
Viral marketing is a great tool for companies to use to get the word out about their brand and their line of products. This form of marketing helps to get people acquainted with the brand and helps people to recognize the brand in the future.
More Infamous Examples of Viral Marketing
by Jennifer O’Brien
An early example of viral marketing comes from Mystery Science Theater 3000. In the early 1990s this TV show had little distribution. They prompted their viewers at the end of the show to start recording it on video tape and pass it on to friends. This was a unique viral/word of mouth marketing technique in a time when not many people were using the internet.
Another unique example of viral marketing was created by BMW in 2001. They made a series of eight short films called The Hire and posted them on their website. These films were very expensive to make and starred actors like Don Cheadle, Clive Owen, and Madonna. In the end, the cost was worth it because it was viewed by 11 million people in a very short amount of time and prompted sales to go up 12% just in 2001!
In 2006, Jack Links Beef Jerky came up with a series of clever videos called Messin with Sasquatch which eventually became television commercials. These short films show a group of people walking around in the woods who see Sasquatch and play practical jokes on him. The videos became popular on YouTube where people were led to the company’s website.
A very recent example of viral marketing is from J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books. She sent her fans on a hunt to find a hidden message. She posted geographical coordinated on her nine favorite fan sites. When her fans plugged the coordinates in Google maps, they found a letter at each location. These letters made up the word POTTERMORE and fans began to try and decode the message. People were talking about it like crazy on social media sites and wondering with anticipation what it could mean. When fans typed in pottermore.com all that popped up was a sign that said (coming soon).
It was finally announced that Pottermore.com will be an unbelievable website for Harry Potter fans to do many cool things. Fans will be able to create an account, choose which house of Hogwarts they want to be a part of, read the backstories of different characters, and do many things to interact with the story and continue on the journey. The site will be open to one million people on July 30th of this year, and be open to everybody sometime in October. This is an extremely unique and creative example of viral marketing! I suppose that should be expected from the author who brought us seven incredibly unique and creative books.
Filed Under: BMI Elite Blog, Digital Advertising, Digital Branding, Digital Marketing, Guerilla Marketing, Marketing Campaign, Marketing Consulting, Marketing Strategy, Online Marketing, Video Marketing, Viral Marketing, Viral Marketing Campaign, Word of Mouth Marketing Tagged With: BMW viral, harry potter, marketing strategy, mst3k viral campaign, mystery science theater 3000, pottermore, pottermore viral, pottermore viral campaign, video marketing, viral campaign, viral marketing, viral marketing campaign
Viral Campaigns Making An Impact On The Web
by Matt Genna
Many times you hear about something, whether it being a product or service, through all types of sources. Some of those sources could have been through the media, a newspaper ad, a TV commercial, but usually the biggest form of communication is through word of mouth. Your friends, family members, classmates and co-workers actually have the biggest impact on spreading information about something then let’s say a commercial on TV. This is due to a trust that you have already established with them.
When trusting someone, you then trust their opinions. When someone you trust tells you about a certain product or service that they have tried out, and it’s positive feedback about it, you are more than likely going to check it out. This usually happens due to a successful Viral Marketing campaign. You see, at one point the person who expressed positive feedback about the product or service that you are now looking up, at one point was subjected to some sort of advertisement.
Viral Marketing or Viral advertising is in short, a “marketing buzz”. It uses the form of “hear-say” if you would, to spread a buzz between consumers who were specifically targeted in a type of market to advertise. Many times you will find this specific form of advertising popping up throughout the internet on outlets like social networks and social media websites. This is due to the amount of consumers that can be reached out to on these specific websites. Social networks like Facebook or Twitter have been rapidly growing with the amount of people that are constantly connecting to it throughout the world. Also, it is very easy to target a specific group of consumers if needed, just by either searching or visiting the groups or forums that are linked to the social networking sites.
Another source for a successful Viral Marketing campaign is through social media websites. Examples of social media websites are sites like Youtube and Vimeo. These sites allow anyone from anywhere to upload any type of media content to the internet. With that alone being a great tool for advertising, they also allow users that have accounts with these websites to login and post comments on their thoughts of the video. Now, what some marketers will do is post up a video that is entertaining to the masses but still getting their product or service across. For example, if you look at something like the movie “Twilight” and search for it on Youtube, you will not only find cuts of the actual movie, but you will also see fan-made videos of them, like parodies. Many times this is the most popular videos due to a majority of the people on these sites enjoying funny videos, now see, you might be asking how does that have to do with anything? It’s simple. When watching these videos, you’re not only getting a good laugh but you’re now aware of the movie and will recognize the name of the movie if it’s being talked about. Also, most of the time people will check out the movies in which are being made into a parody skit to see how well the parody was actually put together.
So as you can see, Viral Marketing can be quite the successful advertising technique. It all depends on what it is that you want to advertise, I say this because it has to mesh well with peoples interests on these social networking or social media sites. The users have to respond well to it on these sites for it to create a popular buzz, and with these sites being the most used websites on the internet, you can see how Viral Marketing campaigns can make quite the impact.
Filed Under: BMI Elite Blog, Digital Advertising, Digital Branding, Digital Marketing, Marketing Campaign, Marketing Consulting, Marketing Strategy, Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Viral Marketing, Viral Marketing Campaign Tagged With: marketing buzz, marketing campaign, marketing campaigns, marketing strategy, social networks, viral advertising, viral marketing, viral marketing campaign, viral marketing campaigns, viral marketing strategy
Infamous Examples of Viral Marketing
by Jennifer O’Brien
Viral marketing is a “marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message.” It is often times referred to as word of mouth marketing. This type of marketing has seen great success with the traditional word of mouth and with the use of the internet. Many companies have seen great results in their viral marketing campaigns and will be remembered for a long time.
Hotmail is regarded by many as being the first to use viral marketing. Their strategy was simple, but yielded great results. It started in 1996 when everybody who had a Hotmail email address would send a tag at the bottom of the message saying, “Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com.” So everyone with a Hotmail email address would inadvertently pass along the advertisement with every message. It was only a matter of time before millions of people signed up for a Hotmail email account.
The center of many viral marketing campaigns is a video uploaded to the internet. Some of these videos are a hit and people pass them along to friends. In 2000, John Salmon had great success with their “Bear Fight” ad. It is a seemingly authentic video of bears in the wild. The video becomes shocking when a man comes running up to a bear and starts fighting with him over a salmon. However, it is obvious that the bear is just a man in a costume when he starts using karate moves on the fisherman. It is a very funny video and the message is clear: John Salmon employees will go the extra mile for quality.
Dove released a video clip on the internet called “Dove Revolution” and it has seen been very successful. It is an ad that has to do with self-esteem, portraying a normal looking woman being transformed into a supermodel. The slogan reads, “No wonder our perception of real beauty is distorted.” This sends a powerful message to the world and encompasses Dove’s ongoing message for women to “love the skin you’re in.” This video was viewed by over 12 million people on the internet within the first year and was featured on shows such as The View and The Ellen DeGeneres Show. It is estimated that this viral marketing campaign has brought Dove $150 million worth of free advertising.
There are many great examples of viral marketing campaigns and it is clearly a good technique to use. It brings a lot of traffic to a company’s brand resulting in increased brand awareness and increased sales. Implementing the right viral marketing campaign is obviously a good idea and can achieve great success.
Filed Under: BMI Elite Blog, Digital Advertising, Digital Branding, Digital Marketing, Email Marketing, Integrated Marketing, Marketing Campaign, Marketing Strategy, Mobile Marketing, Online Marketing, Viral Marketing Tagged With: brand awareness, guerilla marketing, marketing campaign, video marketing, viral branding, viral email, viral email marketing, viral marketing, viral marketing campaign, viral media, viral video, viral videos, what is viral marketing, word of mouth marketing
Viral Marketing: Using Social Media To Get Your Product Exposed
by Matt Genna
If you own a computer or smart phone, chances are you’re familiar with websites like YouTube, Vimeo, etc., as they are popular ways for people to view various types of online media. On these websites anyone can login and upload endless types of content, whether it’s a video cut of your home videos or pictures in which you could create a slideshow to show everyone on the web. Regardless of whatever you choose to put on, it’s almost guaranteed that a wide array of people from all parts of the world will be able to access it. With that being said, as a marketer, you can only imagine the possibilities of the endless types of markets you can tap into.
Marketers recognized this and it is the reason why they use these social media outlets to advertise various products and services. However, most people today are also savvy to the ways in which marketers use social media to advertise; this is why marketers have to come up with creative techniques to catch a random person’s eye on the web. People don’t like to be bothered when browsing the web, which is why there are things like pop-up blockers, spam filters and so on, so it’s quite the challenge for marketers to actually get their advertising efforts across to the masses through any form of internet marketing. One of the routes many marketers choose to go in this case, however, is viral marketing.
Viral marketing often uses pre-existing social networks to create a “buzz” about a company or product through a self-replicating viral process. In other words, viral marketing can take advantage of an already established social network, creating hype about a company or product through the mouths of the people in the social network. In this case, marketers use video clips as a way to create the buzz around the people. Most of the time when referring to these types of videos, marketers will create humorous video content, seeing as most people seem to enjoy watching funny videos when browsing these types of websites.
The trick is to provide the user watching the video with something they enjoy watching enough to spread the word to their friends and family while still advertising whatever it is they need. But, not only does the viral campaign need to be well put together to work, but so does the product or service as well. You can only advertise something so far before it will have to hold up to the hype created around it. Let’s take the movie trailer for “Snakes on a Plane” for example – as soon as this trailer hit the web and found its way onto YouTube, there was an immediate reaction from the people. When searching the name on YouTube after being released, you could easily find trailers that people made mocking the film, parodies of it, etc. – everyone was talking about this film. And although there was so much hype surrounded around the film, the film itself ended up showing a mediocre box office.
So, if you are considering marketing through social media, you should also consider if the product or service in which you are advertising is right for this type of marketing technique. It’s all about the timing for any type of marketing, so be sure to take that into consideration also when advertising. But when advertising through viral social media, know that it works when executed properly.
Filed Under: BMI Elite Blog, Digital Marketing, Integrated Marketing, Marketing Campaign, Marketing Consulting, Marketing Strategy, Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Viral Marketing Tagged With: marketing digital, social media marketing, social media viral, video sharing, vimeo, vimeo viral marketing, viral marketing, viral marketing campaign, viral social media, viral video production, viral videos, what is viral marketing, youtube, youtube viral marketing
How Social Media has Increased the Use of Viral Marketing
by Jennifer O’Brien
Using social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace has become a way of life for many people. People are always logged on looking at pages, checking the newsfeed, changing their status, etc. This massive use of social media has left a big opening for viral marketing to flourish. And, in a way, viral marketing and social media sites have become indistinguishable with viral marketing being the concept and social media being the tool or medium.
The basic premise of viral marketing is word of mouth which goes great with social media sites where people communicate and share things. The newsfeed is where most of the viral marketing takes place. Every time you like a page, post a comment, “check in” somewhere, RSVP to an event, etc., it is loaded onto the newsfeed. Then all of your friends are able to view your activity on the newsfeed. As you can imagine, this is a great opportunity for marketers and there are many ways to market virally on social media sites.
One way is by the use of applications via social media sites. For example, foursquare, an application which enables you to “check in” at certain places via your smartphone and gives you the option of posting on Facebook and Twitter. Every time you “check in”, it is loaded on to your newsfeed for all of your friends to view. This is a great way for foursquare and the locations that people checked in to market virally.
It is now possible for a company to have its own page. When a social media user likes or follows a company’s page, it is posted on the newsfeed; thereafter, users are exposed to the updates of the company. This is a great opportunity for businesses because they have the possibility of being seen by all of the users’ friends and followers.
Social media sites have increased viral marketing through YouTube as well. People are able to post videos from YouTube to their newsfeed. There are many companies who use YouTube to do viral marketing and people posting videos on their Facebook or Twitter accounts has helped bring viral to a higher level of social.
Social media sites are a great channel for viral marketing to occur and it is certain that this has caused a drastic increase in viral marketing.
Filed Under: BMI Elite Blog, Digital Branding, Digital Marketing, Integrated Marketing, Marketing Campaign, Marketing Consulting, Marketing Strategy, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Viral Marketing Tagged With: marketing campaign, marketing management, online marketing, smm, social media, social media blogs, social media campaign, social media marketing, social media marketing tips, social media networking, social media sites, social media today, top social media sites, viral marketing, viral media
Viral Marketing: Marketing By Numbers
by Matt Genna
Social networks today are some of the most visited websites by millions of people around the world. They help keep everyone in contact with relatives and friends no matter where they are located; it keeps them up to date with events and lists the birthdays of all your friends so one doesn’t miss an important day. It has become a crutch in a sense, because many people rely on these sites for each of these things.
It is because of this daily high demand of the people that not only the social networks profit but the marketers as well. Marketers who indulge into the social networks with their advertisements benefit because of all the people that are subjected to the advertisements when visiting the social networks, a chain reaction you could say happens. But sometimes it isn’t just about having a flashy banner, or pop up.
In marketing, when advertising ones service or product it is good to evaluate who would use that product or service the most, as in let’s say age range. The age range of most people that use social networks are between 14 and 35. Knowing this, it could make or break marketer’s advertisement efforts if the product or service doesn’t benefit them in anyway, thus causing them to ignore and possibly creating a negative gossip surrounding the product or service, depending on how the marketer went about advertising it to the people in the social network. For example, people tend to not react in a positive matter when being spammed with all different sorts of un-needed advertisements.
But when advertising successfully, the outcome could be highly beneficial. In order to successfully advertise on a social network you would first need to analyze your campaign and if it’s the best form of advertising for the product or service to attract your targeted audience. The second thing you would need to do is select the best social networks for the product or service you are providing. The third thing you would need to do is target groups or forums on the social network that in which relate to your product or service. Once doing that, the fourth step would be to now spread the word of your product or service throughout the groups and forums, not by posting as the owner or employee of the company, but as a normal person. Doing this, people will react and listen better at times, this is because they will end up trusting someone who comes off as a consumer that has tried the product or service and are providing them with informative feedback.
Once the people on the forums or groups see the feedback from others that are a part of the same group or forum, they then will generate their opinions on the product or service. Thus, causing a viral word about the product through word of mouth, this is an example of Viral Marketing. In order to have a successful Viral Marketing campaign, or any form of marketing campaign, you need the masses to back you up and help spread the word of your product or service in a positive way. “Marketing by Numbers” for short.
Filed Under: BMI Elite Blog, Digital Advertising, Digital Branding, Digital Marketing, Marketing Campaign, Marketing Consulting, Marketing Strategy, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Viral Marketing, Viral Marketing Campaign Tagged With: facebook, marketing campaign, marketing campaigns, social media, social network, social networks, twitter, viral marketing, viral marketing campaign, viral marketing campaigns
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