MODERN MARKETING WITH INTERACTIVE CONTENT - part 1

So thank you, thank you for coming out. Just a few things before we get started. I mentioned I am from DOT, which is a new interactive content marketing platform. Now, what we mean by interactive content is that it's different from passive content in the sense that people actively engage with your marketing campaigns or your content. So instead of sitting back passively and reading a blog post or watching a video, they actually answer questions, they create, they navigate, they click through, and they actively engage with your content. And our goal is to empower marketers like you to go out and create that kind of interactive content, things like quizzes, assessments, interactive videos, games, and so on, on your own, without needing any special IT skills or any other skills. So that's a little bit about us. But yeah, let's get down to business. Today, we will be talking about modern marketing with interactive content. So what I will be doing is we will be getting into how to unlock powerful customer data and how to boost conversion using interactive content. And the plan for today is something like this. So we're going to first talk about, you know, what is interactive content? You know, what is the modern marketer's role today? What does today's content consumer look like? What are his pains and what are the dynamics around that? Then we will talk a bit about, you know, what is interactive content? What is the value of using it? Then we will have a short 10-minute break where you can go out, stretch your legs, have some tea and coffee. And when we come back, we will talk about the three-step process to higher conversion. We will talk about how to improve conversion throughout the biomechanics. And then I will try and inspire you with a bunch of examples that I hope will spark some ideas for your marketing. And then after that, we will take some questions and answers, if you have any. And then at the end, Casper will give out the Apple TV media player to one lucky winner. So stick around for that. So, you know, that's the plan for today. And I think I'll get it started by talking about what I mean by the idea of interactive content. So, you know, I don't mean that all of us should turn into like geeks or nerds. That's not what we are. We are creative by nature. We are analytical by nature. So, no. But what I mean by modern marketer is somebody who really has the finger on the pulse of what's happening with customers today. Somebody who is really in touch with what's happening with channel dynamics and also what's happening with technology, technology dynamics. So, a modern marketer is somebody who knows what's happening in all of these areas, who is quick to adapt to changes, quick to adapt to shifting trends and dynamics and also to innovate as things change. So, you know, speaking of customer dynamics, this wouldn't be a surprise to you that, of course, in recent years, the way people discover things, the way people learn and the way people make decisions has changed dramatically. So much of it now. Actually, people rely on what they see online. In fact, 74% of buyers conduct more than half of their research online before making an offline purchase. And also, you know, 70% of a buyer's journey is complete before they even reach out to someone in sales. So before they reach out to a salesperson, 70% of the buyer journey is already complete. And if they're not reaching out to sales, that means, you know, it's all on us. That's it. That means that in the buyer journey, taking somebody from being, you know, an unknown out there in the sea of people to actually being a purchaser, a paying customer, you can think of that, let's call that the buyer journey or lead time from, you know, unknown to sales. Marketers are now taking more of the face time in this buyer journey than ever before. And the lead time, you know, from unknown to new customer, it depends on the company. It depends on the company how long or how short this is. For example, if you are selling cosmetics, perhaps it takes a week or a month for somebody to make a decision to purchase. Whereas if you are selling luxury cars, you know, that's not something that people make snap decisions for. That might be a lead time of something like two years. So, you know, a buyer journey really does depend on the company. But yes, it's true that, you know, marketers are taking up more of this. And if you think of the buyer journey, you know, it's not magic. People don't just hear about you and go and make a purchase. There are stages that they go through before this happens. Now, this is a typical scenario. Now, I don't mean that every company has this kind of layout or this kind of structure. But more or less, this is the kind of steps we go through. So, you know, in the beginning, you have a sea of people, right? General population. You want to attract people. You want to attract them to your brand. There onwards, you want to somehow make them a part of your community or make them a part of your subscriber base. Bring them into your universe so that you can actually touch them with your marketing messages and with your offers or whatever it is you're saying. Once you have that, you of course want to qualify the lead. You want to know what they're, you know, who they are and what their needs are. There onwards, you want to pitch the right product. Make them a paying customer. And there onwards, nurture. Become a loyal customer. And this is a typical scenario. Again, disclaimer. As I said, you know, it could be a long buyer journey. It could be a short buyer journey. And all of these steps are not the same for every company. Sometimes you jump straight from one into already qualified lead. It really depends. But by and large, I would say this is what it normally looks like. And marketing, again, you know, in the beginning, in the good old days, not the good old days, but the old days, you know, we were just kind of following the trend. We were just kind of floating around somewhere here doing the promotion or the attraction part. But now with time, we have more responsibility of actually ensuring successful transition from these various stages over to purchasing. So, you know, things are changing for us and things have changed. I also talked earlier about how people make decisions by what they learn online. And that's why in recent years, this thing called content marketing has kind of come out. Content marketing has kind of exploded and really kind of taken, gained momentum. Just by a show of hands, how many of you are familiar with this term, content marketing? Wow, pretty much everyone. So, yeah, content marketing is all about, you know, providing useful and insightful information, help, advice for customers so that they learn from you, so that you educate them. Not just about your brand, but also about your area of expertise so that they kind of, they trust you and they rely on you for information. And then, you know, when it's time to actually buy something, they keep you in mind. So that's the ideology behind content marketing. And we have seen with time how content marketing itself has evolved. It's not static like any other field of expertise. It has evolved over time. And I think that's what we saw with content marketing when it really took off on the web. In the beginning, we had things like websites and blogs, which was primarily textual data, right? Textual information, articles or other content on websites and blogs. And of course, that was great for educating people. But with time, that started becoming a little bit more about SEO. And today, you know, those things are still important. You need that. But today is becoming more like what you call search content. So when somebody is searching for something, they put in their keywords and then, you know, this stuff is important to get people into your website in that way. Then onwards, we saw a shift happening when, you know, social media really took off. And then content marketing became more about rich content, you know. Things like imagery, you know, infographics, beautifully designed magazines and e-books. All of these like legal things that are meant for humans to create. For humans to consume something that's really nice for social media consumption. And of course, now also we've seen things like videos and, you know, video marketing is a big thing today. So we've seen how content marketing has evolved over the years and over time. That said, you know, it's really taken off. Almost every company today is doing some form of content marketing or the other. So, you know, whether it's e-newsletters or whether it's blogs. Or blogging or whatever. You know, almost every company has this on their agenda. So what's happening is that there's a lot of noise out there. There's a lot of, the name is called scramble. So you have some useful stuff and you also have some stuff that's just blah. It's just noise. And what's happening is, you know, we've seen this sharp exponential growth of content online. If you open your Facebook, you know, you keep scrolling. All you see nowadays. You don't see much about your friends. You see stuff about, you know, all other kinds of things. Cats and dogs and God knows what. But, you know, we've seen this explosion of content online. And, you know, if you think about it dispassionately, what's happening to the consumer is that, or to the customer, is, you know, your attention span online, the few hours or minutes that you spend online, there's only that much finite time you have. And if, you know, the available content is increasing. As sharply as it is. If you take those two numbers, you'll get a number which is the available attention span per content asset. So you can imagine the more content you have, the less attention span you have. So what's happening is that as, you know, content is increasing, the attention span that people can actually dedicate to your specific message is declining sharply. Now, of course, this is in theory. If you have content that's incredibly engaging and amazing. Then, of course, it's still there. If it sticks out. Then, of course, it's differentiated. But by and large, you know, most of our content is kind of swimming in the sea of noise. So we are dealing with some issues there. And to customers, really, back in the day, you know, banner ads were a hot thing. And people started developing ad blindness. I think there will be a point where we reach that with content as well if we're not, you know, doing something different. So to people, it might seem like a lot of white noise. So we need to do something different. We need to start engaging people. So, you know, what do stuff? And, no, I mean, I'm not saying that we should all blog or make cat videos. That's not possible. We're not selling cat food or diapers, all of us. But, you know, what people do care about is themselves. And that's what we have learned from social media is that people care about their own lives, their jobs, their friends, their mood, their feelings. What they did today, what they ate for lunch. It's about we are living in an individualistic society today. So if we can somehow, you know, tap into that thing, tap into that need for individuation and personalize our content, we might succeed with actually getting through to people. Now, let's talk a little bit about how we normally build our subscriber base online, right? There are different things we do. This is a bit of a joke. Okay. But you've seen companies do this, you know, especially in the past two or three years. Hey, you know, please just like my stuff. If you come to my Facebook and like this, please like this. Follow me, like me, follow me. And we've been seeing so much of this. So we as marketers have spent so much time and resources in getting to get people to like us or follow us to build community. But what's happening is that we forget sometimes that we actually don't own Facebook. We don't own these social media channels. It's rented space. So, you know, when Facebook decides to do something like it's called Facebook reach apocalypse, by the way, that's the term for it. You know, like this poor dog who's trying to reach his ball. That's kind of what's happening with us right now. You know, we spend so much time on getting followers. And back in the day, if we share the post, you know, we'd be pretty sure that people see it at least to some degree. What's happening now is that organic reach. Organic reach, which used to be at something like 12% is now down to something like 2% or even 1%. So let's say that you have 100,000 followers. You share, which you've spent years on developing, right? Now, if you share something, you'd be lucky if a thousand people actually see it. And you said it could also be this the same more or less people who keep seeing it over and over because of their algorithm that thinks of what they are interested or whatever. So, you know, it's becoming harder and harder for us to actually reach people in our own follower base unless, of course, we pay money for it. So now you spend a lot of time developing your Facebook follower base. And if you want to get your post to actually reach your 100,000 people or at least a part of them, you have to pay money. So what's really interesting is that this is a bit of a side note. It's not really related to this whole talk today. But I think it's funny. There's an inverse correlation between average organic page reach and Facebook stock price. So, you know, when organic page reach decreases, that means people have to pay money to get through to their followers. And when they do that, Facebook makes more money. They're happy. And their stock price increases. So, you know, maybe we should not be focusing on making Zuckerberg richer. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm not saying that social media is dead. I'm not saying that it's something we should not do. Absolutely. It's a powerful thing. But relying on social media platforms as our only means of developing a community or base, maybe we have to rethink that a little bit. Unless we have, like, loads and loads of money in the bank where we can keep paying for every post to be seen. So, you know, but one thing sometimes we underestimate is email. Email is not dead. In fact, if you think about it, 90% of emails that we send actually get delivered. And around 26 to 30% of emails are open, according to MailChimp, which is one of the world's largest email service platforms. So that means that there's a higher rate of people actually reading or consuming what you're saying with email. So it's not something to be forgotten. You know, there's research saying that email is even more effective at getting new customers than Facebook and Twitter. And it's not something for Momo anymore. You know, people still, young people still use email. In fact, millennials say 73% of them say that they prefer email because it's a part of everyday life. But, of course, the way they consume it has changed. So it's not sitting at your PC and looking at emails. Everything's on mobile. So, you know, email is not dead. And it's also a way of life. It's also something that we own. Once you get somebody's permission to receive information from you, it's something that, you know, they can't come in, of course, unless they unsubscribe. It's something that's yours. So that's something to think about. Now, let's look at some of the techniques that we have been using to actually capture those email permissions. Here I just have some snips of various ways of getting a subscriber base. This is what we call an opt-in. An opt-in is when you opt in to get updates for somebody's blog or newsletter or so on. So you've seen this classic one, Top Left, where you're reading somebody's blog. Three seconds later, there's like, boom, this thing in your face, subscribe to my blog. And you're like, hey, wait, just what are you doing? Let me finish reading instead of blasting this in my face. So and they use that because, of course, it is getting harder to get people to subscribe to your blog. So, you know, companies have started different techniques. And they think and a lot of people think that that one works. I'm not so sure about it. I'm not sure how it's a good thing to interrupt somebody's reading process and say, hey, subscribe to my blog. But there are different ways of doing it. So we have that. We also have, you know, landing pages with your basic opt-in. You also have subscribe to my newsletter and so on. And I think oftentimes, you know, people are thinking, yeah, OK, what's the value for me? Are you offering me something tangible or is it just going to be spam? So we if we're doing this kind of thing, we need to be clear as to what the value is, what we are offering in return for people to opt in to our newsletters. So, you know, when we think about we've talked a little bit about how we get options. Now, let's talk a little bit about techniques to qualify a lead. You've seen this kind of, you know, Daniel, the carrot thing before where, you know, you say, I'll give you this amazing email. If you fill out that big form and this is something you've seen with e-books or something you've seen with webinars. And, you know, again, do I have to fill out eight fields before I get the goods? Like so many people are making e-books today. Every company, every company, so many companies are making some, you know, they're thinking, yeah, there's so many out there. And even, you know, one thing I do know is that if I fill out all of this stuff, maybe I'll get value. Maybe not. But I know that there will be some marketing guy spamming me for the rest of my life. So, you know, we need to think about we're asking people for so much information. People might think, was it even worth it? Oftentimes also what happens with e -books is that we spend so much time, especially those of us who do a good job at making e-books. We spend so much time on writing up a 200 page book. And so. Yeah. There are things there as well to think about. So we need to offer value to people. One more thing is that if you think of all of these forms of content that I am talking about here, things that have happened in the past and things that are still trending right now is that they are passive. That means that people are either passively reading a blog post or they are watching a video or they are reading an e-book, but they are not doing anything. So you actually don't know. What they're thinking. You don't know what their needs are and you don't know what their preference are because you don't really have that data. Of course, you can use the good old e-book again to try and get as much information as you want. But again, that gives you contact information, demographic information, but it doesn't tell you what the person's actual needs are, what their pains are, what they prefer, what their habits are, so on and so forth. And that's really important for us as marketers, because if we don't do that. We can't really target our messages. Now, you know, speaking of targeting messages, let's talk a bit about pitching. Of course, as marketers, online marketers especially, we are limited in terms of how to pitch, right? So the classical ways are email newsletters or SMS. And these are different examples of emails. But normally, you know, somebody signs up. We get an opt-in. We get a lead there onwards. We start sending offers to people. We start saying, hey, we have a discount or we have this new product and so on and so forth. And the thing is, if we do the same one-size-fits-all pitching for everyone, the less success we'll have. Because if, let's say, for example, I signed up to this company newsletter. They sell sunglasses. And, you know, I signed up. And there onwards, every week I get an email from them with their new sunglasses and so on. And my interest is just in, you know, a daily pair of sunglasses that suits my face and my face shape is, let's say, round. And I know specifically what kind of sunglasses suit me. But these guys will keep sending me emails with all different kinds of heart-shaped sunglasses and little tiny round sunglasses. Things that don't look good on me that I don't think really make sense. So, you know, it doesn't suit me. So what will happen is that either I'll start avoiding or I'll just go and unsubscribe. And I don't know how you guys feel. But every time somebody unsubscribes to my email list, I kind of feel like one-one, you know, getting these multiple arrows right in my heart. It really hurts. It's like you work so hard to get these opt-ins and then people go and unsubscribe. And that happens precisely if they feel like this doesn't talk to me. This is not what I need. This is not, this doesn't target it then we are doing right now. So there are a few things that we need to work with here. And of course, some of you in the room might be thinking, yeah, okay, you know what, but I already do that. That's great. But some of you might not. And I hope that at least some of this is making sense to you. And some of this, yeah, you think, yeah, maybe this is something I could work on. So we have a few challenges. You know, we need to engage. We need to personalize. We need to learn about people. We need to offer them value. And our pitching should be targeted. And one way of actually dealing with all of these things is by using interactive content. I'll explain why. So as I mentioned earlier, interactive content is things like quizzes, assessments, interactive videos where you choose your own journey through the video. You answer questions while you're watching the video or you play games. Gamification is a big thing right now, by the way. So all of these different formats that engage people. And because, you know, it gets people to actively do something, it's more engaging. And, you know, another great thing about interactive content is that it has custom logic to it. So let's say you answer five questions. I could give you a personalized response, a personalized feedback based specifically on your answers. So you can do it so that the pitches that you're making or the things that you're saying could be personalized to suit that person's needs. Also in terms of learning, you know, every time somebody interacts with your content, you will know what they are clicking on. You will know what they are answering. So all of that information is something you could learn from. And those are things that you cannot ask for in a lead gen form. You cannot ask for it in an opt-in form. And also, you know, because it's personalized, it offers more value. And because you get all of that data out there, you can do pitching that is far more targeted. So there are a lot of things that you can actually do. And that's not something that, you know, we just kind of sat in a room and thought of. Companies around the globe are using interactive content to do different things like quizzes, interactive videos, interactive microsites, interactive e-books, assessment games, and so on. And, you know, what's common with all of these, I've given some of these examples. What's common with these companies is that they are, of course, huge. So they have, you know, resources at hand to help them. They have developers do this kind of work. They have plenty of time and money resources so they can afford this kind of custom development of interactive content. So it's been kind of like an exclusive thing for those who have deep pockets to make interactive content. So we thought, what if we take those things away? What if we take those barriers away and kind of make it easy for anyone to do that, anyone to go out and make interactive content? So what we did was we looked at the market. We looked at the hottest trends and the hottest things that are happening in interactive content. And we mainstreamed them in the form of marketing apps. And basically a marketing app is not something that you download on your smartphone. It's a web app. So it runs on the browser. That means that people don't have to download it. Again, with native apps, they are really, really expensive to develop. And also it requires people to download it. I'm not sure how many apps you have on your phone, but I have pretty much the same 10 or 15 apps that I use on an ongoing basis. And pretty much none of them are anything to do with the brand. It's just functional apps. So in this way, by using web-based apps, you're not forcing people to download anything. But you can still offer them that kind of logic and interactive experiences with the same lightweight functionality. So before, I asked you all to take a quiz. And Casper also reminded you about it. Just by a show of hands, how many of you have actually taken it? Great. A lot of you. So you know what I'm talking about. For those of you who don't, it's a quiz. It's called, What is your marketing superpower? So you answer six questions. And then it tells you what one of four marketing superpowers you possess. So you can be either creative, analytical, social media pro, or lead gen expert. And I thought it's a fun way to kind of get a bit of engagement going. But I must admit, I got the inspiration for this quiz based on a blog post that I read a while ago. And this blog post also is what kind of, you know, different types of marketer types. So all of these types are explained in a lot of text. And I think if I try and compare these two, right? If I think of what is the value for the user. Now I'm not saying that blogging is dead. I'm not saying blogging is not important. It is because it's really important for search. But for a human to actually consume it, it takes about eight minutes to consume that long blog post. Whereas my quiz there, it might take something like a minute. The blog post is the same for everyone. Whereas the quiz, it gives you personalized results. So you are either one of those four things. And it's not super duper accurate. But still, it's something that puts a smile on your face. It's something funny. It's something engaging. So that's the value for the marketer. Sorry, for the user. Now of course, we have to think more importantly. We all have goals and we all have KPIs. And if we think about the value for us as marketers. First and foremost, as I mentioned before, there's like an avalanche of blog posts out there. And I know you have seen quizzes online. You have seen Buzzfeed and so on. But still, something like that might pop out a little bit more on social media or on the web than to see your blog posts. Secondly, with a blog post, you might know things like how many hits you got, location and source and so on. With interactive content, you know all of that. Plus, you know what people are interacting with. You know where they're clicking. And you get all the rich data associated with their answers and with their interactions. And if you think of conversion techniques with blogs, you have things like subscribe to my blog and so on. Which I'm not sure how effective that is unless you have a super-duper amazing blog which is really popular. Whereas with a quiz, there are different kinds of conversion mechanisms you can use. You can gape the results. You can put the opt-in before the quiz even starts. You can put it afterwards. There are many, many options. We'll discuss that later. But if you compare the two. There is more value for the marketer, I believe, in the quiz. And from my own experience and from my clients' experiences, it is more effective. In fact, with this quiz alone, I had 73% conversion on the quiz that I sent out to you. That means that of all of you who landed on the page, 73% of you actually completed the quiz, wrote your name and email and said submit. Which is, I think, pretty good. Also, it told me something about you. It told me that most of you in the room today are creative. Followed by the analytical ones. Followed by social media pros. And followed by lead gen experts. I also know exactly what you were clicking on. And I know all the rich data associated with it. So now, in a way, I feel like I kind of know you on a personal level. In fact, this is the funny one. I don't know if you guys remember this question. There was a question. The building is on fire. What do you do? And one answer is, I take a selfie and tweet about it. And I know seven of you actually answered that. So, good on you. You know who you are. But yeah, I mean, that tells me that firstly, you're really passionate about social media. That also tells me that you have a sense of humor. And I feel like I know you a little bit more. Steenelaasen. If you're here today. So, you know, and all of that information I have about you, I can actually now use that to my advantage. I'm not going to spam you. Don't panic. But, you know, I know all of these things about you now. So what I did was I could actually put you into boxes. So I said, okay, the creative ones go in segment A. The analytical ones go in segment B. The social media guys go in segment C. And the lead gen guys go in segment D. And I actually put you into these segments. And then I integrated it with MailChimp, which is what I use for email. So that all of you now sit in one of my MailChimp email lists. And now that we go for a break, you will actually, each one of you, get an email from me, which is specific to your personality type. With a pitch. So I have actually tweaked my pitch based on who you are. Now, again, it's not super accurate. But I think it's an interesting way to actually tweak my message to actually suit who you are. So, you know, with that, I would like to say let's take a short break.