"Marketing Industry News, Experiments, and More:" The IMPACT Show Ep. 27 [Show Notes]

What experments are you testing on your website?  

In this week's episode of The IMPACT Show, Bob and Nick talked about Google and Salesforces new partnership, WeWork buying Flatiron, why Twitter expanded tweets to 280 characters, IMPACTs popup experiment and more.

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! 

Like what you saw? Make sure to subscribe for email reminders and give us a review on iTunes.

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 shows are rocking and rolling. We have 6 episodic shows going on at once. And, each one has something different going on.
   • MarketHer > produced by Brie, Angela, and Britt
     • Check out episode 11 where they interviewed Deana Pool
   • Inbound Success > interview format and it's produced by Kathleen
   • Creator's Block > produced by Liz, Marcella, and Jessie-Lee
   • Behind the Screens > produced by Natalie and Kyle. A YouTube show that's a combination of our culture and what's happening at our office
2. Inside IMPACT Elite, we're going to be doing a lot of exclusive content for our members. This week we're interviewing Scott Brinker, the author of Hacking Marketing.
3. Next week, Marcus Sheridan and Bob will be doing a webinar with SEMrush, Thursday, Nov 16th at 12:00 PM EST. 

What Marketer's 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. Robert Wilson's post on "Getting the Most for Your Advertising Dollar" from 1993
   • Set measurable objectives
   • Define your target audience
   • Select the media most likely to reach them
   • Survey customers and prospects to decide what your offer should be
   • Execute the program
   • Measure the results
2. Photos on your website:
   • Paul Wolfer asking for a photography recommendation in CT
   • Stock photos on your website
3. MarketHer - Working in a male-dominated industry 
   • In episode 11, Brie, Britt, and Angela talked with Deana Poole.
     • Episode was around succeeding in a male-dominated industry
     • While it's targeted to female professionals, it's a great podcast for everyone

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.

Google / Salesforce Partnership

• Forbes: New Salesforce and Google Partnership Shakes Up the Cloud Race
• Announced on Monday, the first day of Dreamforce
• What does the partnership look like?
• What the deal looks like gets:
• Full integration of G Suite into the core platform.
• Blow to Microsoft
• Integration of Analytics into Marketing Cloud (aka Pardot)
• “Opening up of Google Analytics could provide a major boost to the usefulness of Salesforce’s marketing products moving forward.”
• “While Google has offered APIs for companies to build on top of Google Analytics in the past, it’s never opened up the product to such a deep integration before, says Google Cloud president Tariq Shaukat.”
• Mutual commitment to use each other’s products moving forward.
• Salesforce will use Google’s cloud infrastructure for “expansion” of its core services as part of the deal
• Instead of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure
• Right now, it looks like a win-win for both companies, which is what was said by yan Aytay, an executive vice president of business development and strategic accounts at Salesforce.
• It's another high profile alliance for Google, which announced a partnership with Cisco in October and a multi-year deal with Marketo in August.
• What does this mean for HubSpot? Other cloud competitors?
• Microsoft and Amazon also left out of the deal.

WeWork Buys Flatiron

• Forbes: By Buying Flatiron, WeWork is Putting Itself Front and Center in the Future of Work
• Getting into the content business (educational content) >> Buying access to audiences
• Part of the appeal was it was an IN-PERSON school vs. remote >> Taking coding courses at WeWork, start your start-up/job at WeWork!
• Credible coding courses like this appearing viable alternative to increasingly expensive college education...

Twitter Changes to 280 Characters

• Mashable: Why Twitter Expanded to 280 Characters
• Level playing field for expression across all languages
• With the rise of longer form publishing on Linkedin and Medium, perhaps a chance to grab some of that action?  
• TEST to see what community can do with a bit more space, but still keep it quick and punchy
• Age old debate among new users vs. power users...Perhaps a play to attract new users who aren’t as good wordsmiths as their power user/writer base?
  • At what cost??
• CEO admitted he’s still getting used to it (and users marked up his 280 character tweet to go down to 136 characters) >> more noise?

Topic 1: Popups ... the IMPACT Experiment

• We launched our new website last week, and one of the experiments we're running is the removal of popups -- especially off of our blog. 
  • Oct 22nd to October 28th (7 days)
    • 79,788 visitors     
    • 1.70% conversion rate    
    • 1,360 new contacts generated
  • November 2nd to November 8th (7 days)
    • 82,971 visitors      
    • 1.64% conversion rate      
    • 1,357 new contacts generated
  • This week since Sunday (4.5 days)
    • 59,804         
    • 1.69%           
    • 1,008
    • Highest trafficked day and 3rd highest trafficked day
• Instead of having popups, we have a CTA in our sidebar that follows you down the page. After looking at Hotjar and playback videos, once a popup is displayed people are immediately searching for the x.

Topic 2: Video on a Website

Question from Elite by Michael Hadley:

Video is huge, we all know that, but has anyone considered replacing large groups of text on their website with video?

Ownership in my office isn't keen on using blogging as a tactic to bring eyes our website, and I'm considering pitching 4-5 vlogs (we specialize in video as part of our service offerings) per month in place of written blogs.

One of my upcoming projects (hopefully) is to rework our current case study sections, and I think using video case studies, with a paragraph or two of text, maybe a different but effective way to approach a solution.

What are your thoughts, IMPACT Elite??

Ideas:

• When to say it in video vs. written word - Nick   Answer: Both.
• Written: quicker to consume, more details, searchable
• Video: more professional / differentiator, more real / credibility, creativity
• Functionality - Auto-play? Mute? Subtitles?
• How to balance what is on your website vs. what goes on social.
• Actors vs. Real People…
• Examples…
• product / service overview
• Company overview
• Case Studies
• Webinar
• Episodic content
• Wistia vs. Youtube - what should we be tracking?

Topic 3: All Hands Meetings

• How we do these at our company:
• 2 hours, once a month, scheduled 2 months in advance
•  Usually the first Friday of the month
• I open and address visionary things, address questions on the direction of the company… the Why and the What.
• Chris, COO, addresses the operational updates, and he covers the financials
• All open book… our employees see everything
• Each department stands up and gives a 5-10 minute presentation
• Inspired by HubSpot’s science fair
• Sales, marketing, Agency team, client service teams, talent and admin
• Progress towards goals, examples of work, lessons learned.
• Not just the department heads… members of the team

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, Nov 16th at 1:00 PM ET.

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