"Pre-Roll Facebook Video Ads, Conversational Marketing, & More:" The IMPACT Show Ep. 30 [Show Notes]

In this week's episode of The IMPACT Show, Bob and Nick talked pre-roll Facebook video ads, conversational marketing, noncompetitive competitors, managing your email, and planning vs. doing.

Just in case you missed us live (or if you want to relive the magic), you’ll find the episode’s show notes below as well as the recording.

Enjoy and make sure to share with your peers! 

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Have feedback or questions? We’d love to hear it. Comment on this blog or email us at show@impactplus.com

IMPACT Updates

1. IMPACT was also included on the list of Best Place to Work / Best Company Culture for SMBs by Comparably.
2. Our remote employees will be joining us at the office next week. And, Bob and Nick will be doing the IMPACT Show in the same room.
3. We'll be collaborating with The Sales Lion on workshops
   • Video workshop
   • HubSpot Intensive Training
   • If you're interested in a workshop, you can talk directly to us or The Sales Lion.
4. Bob also had the opportunity to present at the Chicago Hug (HubSpot User Group) this week. 
   • He presented on, how people need to see their future [at your company]

What Marketers Be Talkin' 'Bout

Where we go over what you're saying in IMPACT Elite.

IMPACT Elite is a community of passionate marketers looking to help other marketers succeed. We’d love for you to join us! Go to impactplus.com/elite or just search the IMPACT Elite Group on Facebook and request to join. 

1. HubSpot Stock Report from Citron's Andrew Left
   •  
   • John McTigue: Looks like a pretty brazen attempt to short the stock to me. He has some valid points, but completely undervalues the marketplace and HubSpot's value to customers and potential for growth. The concept that HubSpot can't gain market share upmarket or overseas is based on zero data. If anything, I would say competition is at the bottom of the market, and it's pretty clear that HubSpot isn't pushing that so much anymore.

Digital Marketing News

Where each week, Nick and I share one thing from the world of digital marketing that caught our eye and we found interesting to share.

Pre-Roll Facebook Video Ads

• Mashable: Facebook Videos May Start With Ads
  • "We don't need to do pre-roll because our model is not where you come to Facebook to watch one piece of content, you come to look at a feed," Zuckerberg said in July during the company's quarterly earnings report, AdAge noted.
  • But experimenting with pre-roll isn't surprising. Since the introduction of Watch, Facebook has been trying to become more of a hub for long-form video rather than just an endless feed of content to quickly scroll through.
  • Mid-roll ads are something that they've already experimented with.
  • Should be more like Netflix, and less like YouTube.

Conversational Marketing

• Drift: What is Conversational Marketing?
  • First of all, as content marketers, we should always be thinking about the formatting of what we read as much as the content itself, and this article from Drift is a perfect example why.
  • There's a lot of things I think they're doing right:
    • They created a "best answer on the web" style article. It's comprehensive: it goes into the history/origins, it references high authority 3rd party research, it's got a clear direction for readers to follow/take action on that's expressed with rich-visual facets and clear table of contents that make it easy to digest and easy to reference. Which makes it perfect for getting found and ranking well for a keyword they are trying to create as their own.
    • It reads like a conversation. It tells a story (including screenshots of their own experience on the topic). It takes a strong stance on what they believe. It acknowledges the reader's point of view (because they know their audience well).
    • They created supporting summary images with their branding that encourages copy/pasting/sharing to other formats. They were able to do this because the whole article seems to be based on a SlideShare presentation.
  • While I think you should read the article itself to learn more, I think for those of us who are trying to tackle this live chat/bot opportunity, I thought this framework they offered was important.
  • All you need to do is take the questions your team is already asking and turn them into a script for the bot. Here's a popular script framework we've seen companies using:
    • Question 1: What brought you here?
    • Question 2: Who are you? / What company do you represent?
    • Question 3: How are you thinking of using our product?
    • CTA: Book a demo / Talk to a human
  • Of course, not everyone who goes through this qualifying script will make it to the CTA. You get to control what the disqualifying criteria are, so when a chatbot hears a disqualifying answer, you can have it say something like, "Sorry, we don't think our product is a good fit for you at the moment."
• Let us know what questions you have about conversation marketing.

• Check out this article from Entrepreneur.
• Bob was recently at DAGS (Digital Agency Growth Summit) where they brought together 300+ agencies. 
• In Entrepreneurs article, it had Bob thinking back to the early days of starting Inbound and how leaders from each agency are able to come together and bounce ideas back and forth and support each other. That's still something we're able to do today. 

Topic 2: Managing my Inbox

• Bob recently published this article this morning in regards to the overwhelming amount of email he receives on a daily basis. 
• The article goes into detail about the new process and what you can expect:
  • Don’t expect long responses from me. I can’t speak for all CEOs here, but personally, I’m not formal. I just try to give you the best and quickest response I can.
  • Please keep emails short and to the point. Again, informal is cool with me. Feel free to treat emails to me like text messages.
  • If we’re close and you have my cell number, jet a quick text instead. (Use discretion on this one with other CEOs.)  
  • Send emails to the team instead and CC us when possible/necessary:
• Read the entire article here.

Topic 3: What's the Right Balance Between Planning vs. Doing

• There's a difference between having the right strategy and actually doing the work.
• At IMPACT, we aren't where we are today without hard work and trying any great ideas we have. We launch something and then make improvements based on data and feedback. 
• You often won't know what needs improvement or more strategy until you've implemented something and got the "car out of the garage."

Next Steps:

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We're going to IMPACT Elite to ask what you want us to talk about, so jump in on the post there.

Join Us Next Week! 

We'll be back again next Thursday, December 14th at 1:00 PM ET.

Until next time... get out there and make it happen.