Archive for April, 2010
Viral Ingredients: Absurdity
The Dancing Baby – I don’t know if it is just coincidence, but two of the most successful viral marketing campaigns of all time don’t involve anything amazing or hilarious, they are just patently absurd. But before I discuss those, I’m going to rewind back to my first experience with viral media, the dancing baby. The dancing baby was an animated video clip that first landed in my inbox in 1996, and is still making the rounds today. It jumped from internet phenomenon to mainstream icon in 1998, when it made the first of several appearances on the very popular Ally McBeal show. Since then, the baby has been referenced and parodied many times, to the point where Homer parodied the parodies on an episode of the Simpsons. What drove a short, mediocre animation to such infamy? The music is certainly catchy, but most of all it is just too ridiculous to be believed. If it is not already burned in to your consciousness, see for yourself.
The “ooga chacka baby” version is the one I remember, but many variations exist.
The Subservient Chicken – It would appear that nothing evokes the “you’ve just got to see this!” response more than absurdity. Which brings us to the Subservient Chicken. The Subservient Chicken was conceived of by ad agency CP+B to promote Burger King’s TenderCrisp Sandwich. The Subservient Chicken is one of the most successful branded viral media campaigns, and possibly the most successful interactive viral media campaign ever. The Subservient Chicken appeared in television ads and in other guises, but the real catalyst to fame was the Subservient Chicken web site. On the site, you can type in commands and have a person dressed in a ridiculous chicken suit respond in some fashion. Some responses are truly subservient, such as “sit”, “spin” or “walk like an egyptian”. But the chicken does become less subservient if you tell it that you love McDonalds, and becomes positively defiant if you make any lewd suggestions. The web site launched in April of 2005, and has received over 450 million hits. It doesn’t make me hungry for chicken, but Burger King’s sales of chicken sandwiches did increase significantly after the launch of the site.
Will It Blend? – While the Subservient Chicken demonstrated to big brands and big agencies that viral media can work, this story is closer to my heart. One day, the marketing manager of high-end blender manufacturer BlendTec thought to capture his CEO’s blending experiments on video. The CEO and blender inventor, Tom Dickson, liked to test his blenders with 2X4′s and other difficult-to-blend objects. Tom’s deadpan style and the absurdity of what he puts in the blender quickly launched the small Utah-based company to internet fame. Blendtec’s YouTube channel has received over 100 million views, and Dickson has appeared on the Tonight Show, the Today show, and has been written about in just about every major news publication. The expression “will it blend?” has become a cultural meme, making it’s way in to chat rooms, plot lines and all manner of popular media. I like this campaign as an example because it didn’t have a big budget or agency behind it, but most of all I like it because the videos tell the story of Blendtec: these blenders never give up! It is also worth noting that the company attributes an increase in sales of over 500% to these videos.
In the nearly 100 ‘Will It Blend?’ videos that have been created to date, Dickson has blended everything from an iPhone to a Ford Fiesta. In a rare case where something didn’t blend, he took on a Chuck Norris figurine. Here is the episode “Skis and Global Warming” as an example of just how absurd Dickson can be:
Tom Dickson clearly has a charismatic style, but what makes his videos infectious is the fact that he’s just a regular guy using regular every day objects to do something very irregular. Think about how you can juxtapose your products or services with the unexpected to entertain and inform.
Please comment if you know of other good examples. For other posts in this series, click here.
Paid Search: Bidding with Confidence
In the previous article, Paid Search: Bidding Based on ROI, we showed how you can use ROI data to determine optimal bids. The methods we described assume that you know the conversion rate of a keyword, ad group or campaign. But in fact you can’t ever really know a conversion rate, the best you can do is to estimate using historical data. This article explains how to use confidence intervals to ensure that your estimates are reasonably accurate.
For example, let’s say that a keyword has had 100 clicks and 2 conversions. Do you know what the conversion rate is for that keyword? The obvious answer is 2%, but the correct answer is “no”. From experience, you probably know that you could get fewer or more conversions in the next 100 clicks. Given a set of sample data, the best you can say is that you expect that the conversion rate falls between X% and Y%. In statistics, this is called a “confidence interval”. A confidence interval also has a “confidence level”. The confidence level describes how sure you are that the conversion rate falls between X% and Y%. For example, an 80% confidence level means you can be 80% sure that the actual value falls between the lower and upper bound of the interval. This means that there is a 10% chance that the actual value falls below x% and a 10% chance that it falls above Y%.
Below is a table of confidence intervals, with the column on the left indicating the number of conversions observed, and the row across the top indicating the number of clicks observed. The confidence level for these intervals has been set at 80%. The cells with white backgrounds show the confidence interval for each combination of conversions and clicks. The confidence intervals are expressed as X% – Y%, with X% being the lower bound, and Y% being the upper bound.
| 100 | 200 | 300 | 400 | 500 | |
| 0 | 0 % – 2.3% | 0% – 1.1% | 0% – 0.7% | 0% – 0.6% | 0% – 0.5% |
| 1 | 0.1% – 3.8% | 0.1% – 1.9% | 0% – 1.3% | 0% – 1% | 0% – 0.8% |
| 2 | 0.5% – 5.2% | 0.3% – 2.6% | 0.2% – 1.8% | 0.1% – 1.3% | 0.1% – 1.1% |
| 3 | 1.1% – 6.6% | 0.6% – 3.3% | 0.4% – 2.2% | 0.3% – 1.7% | 0.2% – 1.3% |
| 4 | 1.8% – 7.8% | 0.9% – 4% | 0.6% – 2.7% | 0.4% – 2% | 0.4% – 1.6% |
| 5 | 2.5% – 9.1% | 1.2% – 4.6% | 0.8% – 3.1% | 0.6% – 2.3% | 0.5% – 1.9% |
| 6 | 3.2% – 10.3% | 1.6% – 5.2% | 1.1% – 3.5% | 0.8% – 2.6% | 0.6% – 2.1% |
For example, if we observe 3 conversions over 400 clicks, the confidence interval ranges from 0.3% to 1.7% – I have shaded that cell pink in the table. Therefore, we are 80% sure that the actual conversion rate falls between these two values. Compare the ranges in the “500” column to the “100” column and you will notice an important fact about confidence intervals: the more data we have, the smaller the confidence interval. And the smaller the confidence interval, the better an idea we have of the actual value. But also note that there is always an interval – we never truly know the actual value from observed data. Here are a few scenarios demonstrating how this data might be applied:
- Jane buys 200 clicks and gets no conversions and decides that paid search is a waste of money. Lisa points out that there’s a good chance that Jane’s conversion rate is as much as 1% and that she should wait it out a bit.
- Lisa wants to bid based on a target CPA. After buying 300 clicks, she gets 5 leads. He assumes a conversion rate of 0.8%. Given that the confidence interval is 0.8%-3.1%, Lisa is being conservative by taking the lower bound of the range.
- Jane thinks her conversion rate is 10%, but she measures 4 conversions over 200 clicks for her AdWords campaign. She realizes the data is not supporting her assumption: based on the data she can be 90% confident that her conversion rate is not more than 4%.
The main takeaway from this table is that even 500 clicks is not enough to have a very accurate idea of conversion rate, which is why I say you shouldn’t be bidding on most individual keywords based on ROI goals–there generally isn’t enough keyword-level data to make good decisions.
If you want to test out some confidence intervals of your own, this site has an interactive calculator. Use the binomial confidence interval and change the confidence level at the bottom of the page if you want it to be different than 95%. The higher the confidence level, the larger the intervals you will get. The numerator (x) is the number of conversions you observe, and the denominator (N) is the number of clicks you bought.
The approach I like to take when bidding is to start with an idea of the conversion rate for the campaign as a whole, and set bids based on that, since I have the most data at the campaign level. Then I look at individual ad groups and change bids if the confidence interval tells me that the ad group conversion rate is likely more or less than the campaign conversion rate. Then I look at individual keywords, but only those that have enough data to produce a useful confidence interval.
At Two Octobers we use automated tools to manage bid setting according to these principals, but it’s important to understand the underlying concepts. And bids are just one lever in a campaign. Ad copy, keyword selection and the user experience are at least as important as tweaking bids. More on that to come.
This article gives a high-level overview of a very complex topic. I hope it is useful to you, but please contact us if you would like help optimizing your paid search campaigns.
Paid Search: Bidding Based on ROI
This article explains some basic concepts related to bidding on paid search keywords based on return on investment (ROI). Using ROI to make bidding decisions helps ensure that you are spending your advertising dollars in the most effective ways possible.
To explain these concepts, we will use paid search marketers Jane and Lisa as examples.
- Jane’s goal is to generate as much revenue as possible, but she doesn’t want to spend more than a dollar in advertising for every $5 in sales.
- Lisa’s goal is to drive as many leads possible at a cost per acquisition (CPA) of $10.
A few definitions to start things off:
- Click – a paid search click bought on Google, Yahoo or Bing
- Conversion – a click-to-sale conversion. A conversion is when someone clicks through to your site, then completes a purchase. This could also be a click-to-lead conversion if your goal is to drive leads
- Conversion Rate – the percentage of time clicks convert to sales. For example, a conversion rate of 5% means that 5 out of every 100 clicks result in sales.
- Average Sale – the average value of a sale
- ROAS – return on ad spend: the return in sales you are getting on your paid search investment. I will calculate this as $X in sales for every dollar spent
- CPC – cost per click: what you are paying per click in Google, Yahoo or Bing
- Target CPC – the cost per click you should be paying to achieve your target ROAS
Here’s an example scenario: Jane is paying $0.10 per click, 10% of clicks are converting to sales, and her average sale is $5. This means that on average she generates $5 in revenue for every $1 she spends to buy clicks. Therefore, her ROAS is $5.
If Jane is ok with a lower ROAS, she can generate more sales. Spending more per click will lower her ROAS, but the higher CPC will also drive more traffic. For example, if she can achieve her profit goals at a $2.50 ROAS, she can afford to pay $0.20 per click. Here is the math:
ROAS = Sales / Ad Spend
= (Average Sale X Conversion Rate X Clicks) / (Clicks X CPC)
= (Average Sale X Conversion Rate) / CPC
Solving for CPC, we get:
Target CPC = (Average Sale X Conversion Rate) / Target ROAS
Substituting Jane’s goal for ROAS, we get:
Target CPC = ($5 X 10% / $2.50) = $0.20
The process is similar for Lisa. Cost per acquisition is total cost divided by the number of acquisitions, or:
CPA = Ad Spend / Conversions
= (Clicks X CPC) / (Clicks X Conversion Rate)
= CPC / Conversion Rate
Solving for CPC, we get:
Target CPC = Target CPA X Conversion Rate
Substituting Lisa’s goal for CPA and assuming a conversion rate of 10%, we get:
Target CPC = $10 X 10% = $1.00
These calculations are pretty straightforward, and many paid search marketers use some variation of these methods. There are also a number of automated bidding systems that have formulas like these somewhere under the hood.
One assumption we’ve made is that we know Jane and Lisa’s conversion rates, but that is not necessarily a safe assumption. To learn more about the challenges of estimating conversion rates, have a look at this article: Paid Search: Bidding with Confidence.
And if you do not currently have the ability to track leads or sales to a keyword ad, Google Analytics is free and will do the job. If you would like help tracking performance or optimizing your paid search campaigns, have a look at our services, or contact us.
Viral Marketing: the Piggyback Effect
The piggyback effect occurs when a story parallels, references or out-and-out mimics a recent newsworthy event or other viral media. For example, most popular music videos that are posted on YouTube are quickly followed by spoof or cover videos that piggyback on the popularity of the original.
A good illustration of the piggyback effect is the premiere episode of the animated series the Meth Minute. This clip parodies nearly every major viral video or story to-date. But it would appear that the producer’s ability to create original content does not match his ability to piggyback on other’s success. This clip has been viewed over three million times, while episode two lags far behind with 700 thousand views, and episode three has just 400 thousand views.
Another classic example is the abudance of spoof videos that followed the train-wreck performance of Miss Teen South Carolina, which has been viewed over 40 million times on YouTube. One of many response videos was Miss Teen South Carolina Calls 911, which promotes the comedy team Quiet Library. The spoof starts with the beauty queen shouting “What’s the number? What’s the number?” when she is asked to call 911. It is a funny video, but they have the unfortunate original to thank for their nearly 7 million views. This example also illustrates part of why piggybacking works. The Quiet Library video comes up when you search “Miss Teen South Carolina” in YouTube, which means that the millions of people who search for the original also see a link to the spoof.
I find this effect particularly interesting when it is inadvertent. For example, a coffee shop in Aurora Colorado recently got a lot of attention because it was forced to take down a banner that featured the bikini-clad servers that work in the shop. Nearly every reference to this story also mentioned a story the week before involving a billboard that was taken down in Colorado Springs because it featured puppet cleavage. Two Colorado cleavage stories just a week apart was too much for the media to resist, even though the second event was pretty unremarkable.
Another good example is a video produced by the company Bullet Blocker, promoting a bulletproof backpack for children. This video doesn’t spoof other stories, but includes somber reminders of some of the tragedies that have happened in our schools. The tragedies it references are some of the most searched-for news content on the internet. The owner of the company says the video accounted for a dramatic increase in sales.
Please comment if you know of other good examples. For other posts in this series, click here.
Viral Ingredient: Is It Real?
“Do you think his hair is real?”
“Did she really just do that?”
“Scientists at so-and-so university examined the photo and say it hasn’t been doctored.”
People love musing over things that may or may not be fake, and this is usually a very social activity. The is-it-real effect occurs when some form of content gets forwarded or posted with the question: is it real? Debate over such content is a very popular activity online. As I write this, countless online forums and comment threads are ablaze with discussion over some stunt or oddity.
Perhaps the greatest example of this phenomena as a marketing stunt was the remarkable saga of lonelygirl15. The ‘Catcher In the Rye’ of our time, for the summer of 2006 lonelygirl15 captured the hearts and minds of teens and sympathetic adults around the world with her brutally honest video journal. Or was it brutally honest? As the summer progressed, people started to suspect that this girl was just too perfect, and the events she described a little too engaging. But she just seemed so real! lonelygirl15 was outed in September of 2006 as a promotional stunt, and that’s when the publicity really began.
It turned out that lonelygirl15 was an actress, and her journal was the beginning of a series created by a then-unknown production company. Many people were upset by the deception, but the debate and subsequent outing created the publicity the producers were after. This points out a danger of using is-it-real as an ingredient. Assuming it isn’t real (it usually isn’t), people will eventually figure it out, which can create a negative backlash. This may be fine for a movie or other form of fictional entertainment, but most businesses don’t want customers feeling like they’ve been tricked. Nonetheless, it can be a quick way to get a lot of attention.
A somewhat tongue-in-cheek variant on this phenomenon is evidenced by the following clip promoting Microsoft in Germany. I don’t know if this is real or fake, but I do know the question has been widely discussed. Either way, Microsoft is pretty safe because it really has nothing to do with their products. This clip also demonstrates an key element of the is-it-real phenomenon: if you own a tripod, leave it at home. We continue to fall for the idea that people who don’t own tripods must be honest. One would have thought that the Blair Witch Project would have done away with this illusion, but low-fi production equipment continues to be a staple of internet fakery.
Another great example of is-it-real is the following Nike ad featuring soccer star Ronaldihno. After an unbearably long build-up watching him lace on his new Nike’s, he remarkably kicks the ball across the field and bounces it off the crossbar time after time. The clip generated a huge amount of debate, and seemed pretty much designed to get people asking the question. In one of many forums, bigsoccer.com members voted for or against. So far, 1,327 people say it’s real, while 1,602 disagree.
The best local-to-Colorado example of this effect was the unfortunate story of the boy and the weather balloon. Last fall the world turned their eyes on Colorado as news broke that a boy had accidentally drifted away on an experimental weather balloon. Water-cooler conversation quickly turned to the veracity of the story, given that the parents are known attention seekers. The boy was later found hiding in the garage, but not until after the National Guard had been called out and Denver International Airport had been shut down. It did later turn out that the boy was told to hide by his parents, and that the whole thing was a disgusting publicity stunt. Marketing doesn’t get any more abhorrent than that.
Please comment if you know of other good examples. For other posts in this series, click here.
Viral Ingredient: Pass-It-On
I am using “pass-it-on” to describe what happens when we find a message powerful or heartwarming and want to share it with our friends. A classic example of this effect was a quote attributed to Kurt Vonnegut that got forwarded millions of times by email in 1998:
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’98: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded…more
It turned out that the text was actually based on a column by a Chicago Tribune writer and not Kurt Vonnegut, but the words went on to be the basis of a popular song and have been quoted many times since. I remember when I received it as an email, because it was forwarded to me several times in the course of a few short days. It is a well-written speech with a good message that people wanted to share.
Another great example is this video by Dove exposing the artificial representation of beauty in popular media. When it came out, I wanted my children to watch it so they could understand how much of what they see is engineered and not natural. Many millions of people felt the same way. The message creates a positive association with Dove’s brand, and is a direct affront to more style-focused health and beauty products.
These examples involve big companies or famous people, but the pass-it-on effect works very well for small organizations and companies too. A recent blog post by a Colorado writer celebrated the first birthday of a McDonald’s Happy Meal that had been sitting open on the shelf for the past year. Her post was written about on Consumerist.com, Fark, BoingBoing, the HuffingtonPost and many other blogs and news sites. The publicity drove over 75 thousand people to her site, as well as all the exposure she received on other sites. Given that her site is focused on selling her books about children’s nutrition, that’s a lot of qualified leads.
Sometimes the pass-it-on effect is made explicit, as when the Dictionary.com page defining the word “cult” was posted on the link sharing site Digg.com. The link was posted with the title: Digg this if you are sick of $cientologists burying articles – and is the 5th most dugg article on Digg and has been commented on over one thousand times. Another explicit example happened this January, when women began posting their bra color on Facebook. Like many, I was stumped by the status updates: “black”, “beige”, “blue”, etc. The original source of the phenomenon is not known, but one story that got passed on was that it was to raise awareness for breast cancer. Whether or not this was the original cause, the Susan G. Komen Foundation was shocked to find their Facebook following go from 135 on the morning of January 8th to over 135,000 by the end of the day. They insist they didn’t have anything to do with the campaign, but they were a significant beneficiary.
I’ll end with the bizarre story of the inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines. Byron Garcia, the manager of the jail, organized and choreographed the prisoners in to doing a performance of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. This is just one of many things he’s done along these lines, but the video of this particular event has had over 40 million views on YouTube. In his words, “Rehabilitation has to be anchored on bringing out the best in men instead of the worst in men.” Pass it on.
Please comment if you know of other good examples. For other posts in this series, click here.
Viral Marketing Ingredients
What gets me most excited is when I find a small company that has created a successful viral marketing campaign without big celebrities or a hefty marketing budget. For example, have a look at this video on the home page of Biota Spring Water. The video tells the story of how their bottles bio-degrade, and has been viewed many thousands of times. It is not shocking or hilarious, but it does communicate what is special about Biota Spring Water and has captured the interest of a lot of viewers. I believe that most small businesses have a compelling story to tell. If you can get at the heart of your story with a clever video, web site or email, you have a shot at going viral.
Here is my list of viral marketing ingredients. As I do example posts, I will link to them here:
- Pass-it-on – the desire to help someone spread a message because the reader agrees with its point of view. Click here for examples.
- Is It Real? – when something seems too freaky or amazing to be real. Click here for examples.
- The Piggyback Effect – an event that resembles or mimics another well-publicized event. Click here for examples.
- Absurdity – CEO’s with blenders, subservient chickens and other unlikely characters. Click here for examples.
- Ohmygod! – the sense of ‘I can’t believe I’m really seeing what I’m seeing’.
- Make-believe – we all like to play make-believe, we’re just not supposed to do it as grownups.
- Virtuosity – watching sheer talent in action. Click here for examples.
- Misdirection – the surprise ending. Click here for examples.
- Play – having fun with people, people having fun.
I haven’t called humor out as an ingredient, but it has to be said that most successful viral media makes us smile or laugh – the desire to share laughter is a universal and wonderful human trait. I am also not including celebrities, news events, sporting events and cute baby animals as ingredients. I don’t mean to downplay their effectiveness in viral media, I’m just not as interested in researching those topics.
If you know of other ingredients or examples, I’d love to hear about them in the comments below.
Credit where credit is due – these are some particularly good resources for tracking viral media:
- http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/viral-marketing-examples/
- http://www.marketingsherpa.com/ – Marketing Sherpa publishes an annual viral media hall of fame
- http://www.visiblemeasures.com/
Seeing What a Search Engine Sees
Make sure you can be found: seeing site content and navigation from the point of view of a search engine.
I’ve mentioned a few times on this blog how compelling content and links from other sites are the most important factors if you want to show up in search engines. That’s true, but they matter little if a search engine can’t even find the pages on your site. This may sound obvious, but all too often I look at a web site and find that the navigation is actually hindering or preventing search engines from getting around. I could go into a long-winded explanation of how search engines crawl sites at this point, but thankfully there is a much easier way to demonstrate. There are a number of tools available that give you a view of how a search engine sees your site. Once you’ve seen a site the way a search engine sees it, it all becomes pretty clear. The simplest, most accessible tool is provided by Google itself. To use this tool, search for a page in Google. As an example, I will search for one of my recent posts by copying its URL into the Google search bar: http://twooctobers.com/2010/03/rocky-mountain-viral-3282010/
Here is the result in Google. The next step is to click on the “Cached” link to the right of the URL in the listing.
Once there, click on the “Text only version” link in the grey bar at the top. Voilá! You are now seeing the page pretty much the way Google sees it. Here is the text only version of my post:
Search engines have a pretty boring view of the world, huh? Overall, this page looks good in terms of how the content is laid out. Things to consider when evaluating the search engine’s view:
- Does the page include links to other important pages on your site? The links on the page are like signs telling search engines where to go. Just as highway signs list major landmarks, your navigation should point to the pages you most want found.
- Is it obvious what the page is about? All too often, sites include boilerplate content at the top of pages, or try to tackle too many things at once. Pages that have a clear focus tend to rank better. If you have to scroll down to find unique content, you have a problem.
- Is anything important missing? Page elements such as forms, Flash, JavaScript and iframes can hide content from search engines. You don’t need to know what all of this means, but if there is important content missing from the search engine view, you need to talk to a developer.
If you find yourself wanting to see a search-engine-view of a lot of pages, using the method described above can get kind of tedious. I use the Foxy SEO Tool Add-on for Firefox instead. It is free and has a lot of great functionality. In particular, it has a “Search Engine Spider Simulator” that enables you to quickly switch to a search engine view of any page.
More on Navigation
To the right is a sign that sits outside of the Rock Rest Lounge in Golden, Colorado. Can you imagine having to find your way around if all signs looked like that? At the opposite extreme would be a post with no sign at all. The first would be so confusing as to be useless. The second would be just plain useless.
This is what we often put search engines through. Search engines use links to find content, and as an indication of what is important. Too many links and a search engine can’t tell what matters. Too few and it can’t get around.
Also, search engines look at the text used in a link as an indication of what a page is about. Imagine if road signs just said “city” or “big city”, instead of “Colorado Springs” or “Denver”. You’d have a hard time finding your way around. Or imagine if you were crossing the border into Utah and saw a sign that said “Sigurd 200 Miles”. Sigurd is about 200 miles from the border, but you probably don’t know or care what Sigurd is unless you are one of the 400 people that live there. From far away, it is much better to signpost major landmarks that everyone will know. Conversely, what if you are in Denver and trying to get to the Rock Rest Lounge in Golden, and you see a sign for “Salt Lake City 535 Miles”? Maybe you know that Golden and Salt Lake City are in the same direction, but still not a very useful sign. When smaller towns and cities are close by, it’s good to include them on signs.
Think about navigation on your site like road signs for search engines. Link to your most important pages from all over, and make sure the links clearly describe the content they are pointing to. Link to more specific content from close by, again using descriptive text. And don’t put too many links on a page. There is no hard-and-fast rule for how many is too many, but more than one hundred is definitely too much. For most kinds of content you should try to keep it well below that.
Lastly, look at your pages the way a search engine does: a colorless world where text is all that matters. It may be a bleak view, but the view is even bleaker if you can’t be found.
