Thank you for your business, and for making 2011 one of growth and success for GrowthFocus!

Retail sales have been robust this holiday season, and new unemployment claims have been dropping, so have we seen off the worst of our five-year economic malaise? My clients seem to think so, and my own "rent-a-great-marketing-guy" value proposition is receiving a much warmer reception in the marketplace. This makes me feel upbeat about our economy in 2012. Only time will tell, but it is nice to go through this holiday season with more hopeful thoughts than in the last two Decembers. Raise a glass of your favorite beverage in a toast that this trend keeps growing over the next 12 months!

 

More people watch TV than read books, so this just makes sense!

As you head into 2012, add "we must do more video marketing" to your resolution list. It's engagement power is unparalleled, and it is increasingly easy to integrate it into your marketing creative (especially online), and still keep your production budget within reasonable bounds.

 

I wrote about how small businesses can better tame and use the video beast in a column for Forbes.com a few months back, and I find echoes of my narrative in this new research report put out by a company called MediaMind. The research found that:

 

"...users are 2.5 times more likely to engage with ads that performed in the top 25%, with a Dwell Rate of 16%, as compared to ads in the Benchmark average. The bottom 25% of ads achieves a Dwell Rate of only 1%."

"Dwell rate" is exactly what it sounds like: They measured the amount of time online viewers dwelled on particular ads, whether they clicked, etc. If you don't want to click through to the article, let me give you the nickle-tour of what the findings recommend:

• Use video and other rich creative presentation design tools
• Have your video or other action start automatically (when the page opens, or when moused over, etc.)
• Place ads next to relevant content (I very strongly echo this advice!)
• Test "Synched Ads" (Emphasis on "test"): Synched ads are multiple placements on the same page, which significantly expands the creative "canvas" in which to present your value proposition. You must measure whether the added response generated compensates for the added expense!
• If you are big enough, use snappy tools like Dynamic Creative Optimization - You load up a bunch of ads, tagged for various prospect profiles and placement parameters, and let a software algorithm find and place them across the web.

For more, head on over to the article, and find the links to the original research report from MediaMind.