The primary goal of all advertising, including website content is to be remembered. No matter what other marketing goal you want to achieve, if your audience doesn't remember your presentation, it is a wasted effort and lost opportunity. All the money spent on attracting people to your website goes right down the drain if your content is instantly forgettable. With that in mind it is hard to believe how little thought is put into creating content that people will remember.
Anyone in business who has any interest in using the Web to further his
or her business is well aware of "search engine optimization." Not a
day goes by that my email in-box isn't loaded with information on how
to get the best search engine results, and not a week goes by that a
client or potential client doesn't request that their website be not
just search friendly but search engine fanatical.
For some time we have been preaching the importance of delivering the
marketing message and that your message should not be corrupted or
distorted by techniques aimed at attracting search engine robots well
driving away real people who may actually be potential customers.
Now I realize that in many circles this attitude is considered outright
heresy, but hopefully there are a few marketing types around that
understand websites have to deliver more than miscellaneous random
eyeballs; websites have to deliver a message that is memorable,
understandable, useable, and if you're really good at your job,
information that can be incorporated into your audiences' belief system.
With that in mind we were pleasantly surprised when Google the primary
target of this SEO obsessive compulsive frenzy of technical
slight-of-hand announced that they were instituting Google Video Ads
and to add a little icing on the cake, they purchased YouTube adding to
their already considerable investment in Google Video. Somebody at the
big "G" thinks video is a viable Web-medium even if the purveyors of
search engine fool's gold would have you believe otherwise.
The list of companies, including Forbes, Amazon, Wyeth, and Ford,
delivering Web-audio and Web-video grows daily and we are not just
talking about major corporations. Small companies are using multimedia
to get the edge on their larger competitors who still have their heads
buried in the search engine optimization sand.
Acknowledging All The Issues
In developing our campaign to promote the use of Web-audio and
Web-video as an effective method of delivering marketing messages over
the Web, we identified four key issues that would have to be addressed:
(a) We had to demonstrate that website design was about delivering the
marketing message and not just search engine optimization.
(b) We had to demonstrate that even small and medium-sized companies
could afford professional Web-audio and Web-video and that it wasn't
cost prohibitive.
(c) We had to demonstrate that professional Web-audio and Web-video
required more than just the ability to use a video camera and that
professional multimedia story-telling required a unique set of creative
skills and technical ability not often found in-house in most
businesses.
(d) We had to demonstrate that the development and production of
creative multimedia marketing and professional webmedia content had to
do with talent and experience, not size.
These were the challenges that informed all our subsequent decisions.
The Concept
In order to make people pay attention to what we had to say we needed a
concept that was both familiar and edgy. Sure we were sticking a finger
in the eye of all the search engine optimizers but you can't be afraid
to make a strong statement if you want people to sit-up and take
notice, especially if you are fighting a tidal wave of misconception.
The fact that we were telling people that delivering your marketing
message on the Web using multimedia was more important than search
engine optimization was enough to make what we were doing
controversial, but we also needed a vehicle that allowed us to present
the opposing point of view. What we needed was a recognizable style
that demonstrated our ability to deliver a memorable, comprehensible,
useable, belief-altering message in the medium we were promoting.
Since we primarily use Macintosh computers for all our work and only
use PCs to check for compatibility, we thought we would pay homage to
the brilliant Mac commercials running on television. The format worked
for us because it allowed us to create two characters of our own that
would present opposing points of view over a series of videos that
would comprise the campaign. We knew that some people would react
unfavorably to our using such a familiar format but we figured it would
demonstrate how even small but talented production companies can
deliver high quality multimedia Web-based marketing on tight budgets.
A Market Primed and Ready
Our efforts in advocating the power of using the human voice and image
to deliver marketing stories over the Web was finally getting through
to companies who were fed-up with the cost and ineffectiveness of
continually chasing the holy grail of search engine optimization.
Company presidents and marketing managers were starting to listen,
starting to realize there was another way. This campaign was aimed at
pushing these business executives to act on what they already knew:
good marketing is about delivering the message, not keyword density.
Preproduction, Production, and Post Production
We wanted to make sure we had a distinctive sound by composing our own
signature theme music and creating our own cast of characters with a
distinctive message promoting the concept of multimedia. In fact these
planned web-commercials really don't sell anything, all they do is make
people aware that search engine optimization is not the only thing they
should be thinking about when they are developing a website or webmedia
campaign. In short, the medium was the message.
The use of Web-audio and Web-video is the best way to implement this
kind of marketing presentation. We sat down and started to write and
before we know it we had eighteen scripts each featuring a different
issue in the search engine optimization versus multimedia controversy.
The next step was finding the right actors to play the part.
Whereas Web-audio allows us to draw upon a vast number of voice talents
across North American, video is much more limiting, especially if were
wanted to keep the cost down to a reasonable amount. Even if we were
prepared to blow the budget on actors, we knew our clients wouldn't, so
it was important to demonstrate that we could get the job cast at a
sensible cost. The casting proved to be an interesting exercise of
frustration and humor. We had all types of applicants ranging from the
sublime to the ridiculous to the outright bizarre, but ultimately we
were able to find two fine young actors who understood exactly what we
were doing and who took to the parts as if they were written
specifically for them.
One of our greatest assets as a firm is that we do everything from
concept to implementation, including writing, videoing, editing,
graphic, motion, and website design; but if you want to produce a
campaign at a sensible price you still have to be careful you don't
write overly elaborate scripts that require multiple sets, locations or
hard to acquire props. That said we still had to find a cute dog we
could trust on set, links of various kinds of sausages, a hard to put
together toy, and best of all a real straightjacket from an interesting
website that specialized in rather strange items of clothing.
The shoot itself went extremely smoothly and we ended up shooting all
eighteen videos in less than two days. We assumed some of the videos
that looked good on paper just wouldn't translate to the screen, but to
our surprise every one of the scripts worked. We knew what we wanted to
say and weren't afraid to say it, even though we were flying in the
face of conventional wisdom.
While Josh Bader our Director of Photography was digitizing, color
correcting and editing the raw footage, Simon Bader our Director of
Audio composed a number of theme music compositions to choose from for
our signature sound. Once all the pieces were put together into a
series of finished videos, we were ready to implement the campaign.
Implementation
The first set of six videos were uploaded to Google Video and YouTube
as well as onto a webpage (http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads/) that was
created to house the full campaign of eventually eighteen videos, each
presenting a different issue in the search engine optimization versus
multimedia controversy. Versions of the videos were also used to create
a Google Video Ad campaign.
Credits
Produced by MRPwebmedia
Executive Producer: Jerry Bader
Written By: Jerry and Josh Bader
Director of Photography and Visual Design: Josh Bader
Director of Audio and Music Composer: Simon Bader
SEO Guy: Sean Kaufmann
Multimedia Guy: Erez Bowers
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm
that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit
http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com
http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or
telephone (905) 764-1246.
More money is wasted on advertising than other business function. Small and mid-sized businesses in particular throw money at advertising in a vain attempt to establish themselves in the marketplace. However, there is hope that the democratizing nature of the Web environment can even the playing field and allow smaller companies to deliver their marketing messages effectively. But before that can happen, the potential advertiser must understand what the big boys have spent a considerable amount of time and effort to find out: how to create an advertising campaign that motivates and persuades customers to do business with you.
Marketing your business is of high
importance in increasing your customer base and product/service sales. There
are many ways you can market your business and receive results. Keep in mind
that the average return on your efforts is 1%-3% return for the contacts made.
Therefore, the more contacts the more responses you'll receive.
Targeting your key demographic online is getting harder and harder. While
new portals that offer information to niche markets spring up like summer weeds,
it is hard to decipher the legitimacy of not only their readership, but the
depth and significance of their content, the source of their traffic, and the
accuracy of their traffic reporting. The reasons for this lie in not only the
increasing popularity of the internet for all ages, but the costs and low
expected results now associated with "targeted" marketing campaigns.
Internet Marketing
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