Evolution of Online Selling

[00:07]
Matthew: Hello and welcome. Today is June 18, 2009, and you are watching PTV Live [applause]. My name is Matthew Mamet. I’m the Director of Product Marketing at permission TV, and with me is the CEO of Permission TV, Cliff Pollan. Thanks for being here.

[00:26]
Cliff: Hey, Matthew, good to be here.

[00:28]
Matthew: Cliff, this is your first time on the show. So, tell us a little bit more about yourself for those of the loyal listening audience.

[00:34]
Cliff: Great. Well, Matthew, first of all, thanks for fitting me into the schedule. By the time I started you had everything booked out.

[00:42]
Matthew: I made a special exception for you.

[00:43]
Cliff: Thank you, thank you. Well, it’s been three months at Permission TV for me, and it’s been incredibly exciting because it’s the fit of everything I’ve sort of done over a 30 year career which is really the intersection of  content and technology. And there’s no more exciting set of content now than what we’re doing with video and the new technologies that let you do that interactively. So, for me this is sort of the next great frontier.

[01:08]
Matthew: And you know, you mentioned a long storied career in content. What were some of the companies that you have been involved with?

[01:15]
Cliff: Well, one of the ones that’s really relevant to what we are doing and we’re going to talk about today I know is a company called NewsEdge. We started NewsEdge in 1989, and we brought together live news feeds from around the world.

Now, today that may sound a little passé, but at the time, and you picture that this is just about 20 years ago, news was delivered over a set of printers that were individual to each provider. People would do a rip-and-read every hour of new news in order to keep up with what was going on throughout the world.

So, for us we then created a service to integrate at that time 400 live news feeds. It was a pretty big change with some ground breaking technologies. I’d done that in a couple of other places, rebuilding things that were on the main frame and being involved with a company and some very smart engineers who rebuilt all of that on an Apple computer before the PC came out, and that was set up by money managers in the financial area, and that was eventually acquired by Lotus Development.

So, those are a couple of the ones. They go back in time and companies that were early on, but it was some great technologists who figured out and take advantage of content and really bring it to life.

[02:30]
Matthew: Well, we’re really excited to have you as part of our team. In the time that you’ve been here, you have really led us forward, and I’m really excited to have you on the show. For those of you who are watching, let’s take advantage of Cliff and his experience and ask him a lot of questions.

You can interactive with us on Twitter. Tweet your questions at the PTV live pash tag and we’ll answer them live. I’m monitoring the Tweets here on the laptop. So, without further ado, let’s talk a little bit about what’s going on in the world of online video. The first one that is really top of mind is what’s going on in Iran right now. If you’re a person who follows any news outlet, whether it be broadcast news or the real time news on Twitter, there’s been a big upheaval with regard to the election results.

I’m not going necessarily into the political nature of the discussion, but I thought was really relevant to talk about today was how people who are feeling like their voice is not heard are using new technologies to get that voice out. We’re going to run in solidarity with the voters in Iran. We’re running our logo in green today, and that’s for those guys out there. But specifically online video is really a way that folks are getting their message out, despite the crackdowns from the government. They’re literally blocking the IP address of a lot of these sites. One of the clips that I got said from BTV.

With regard to YouTube, the crackdown has been really effective. It’s blocked about 90 percent of the normal traffic to YouTube. But people have a way of getting their voice out, and with the technology that is available today there are new sites that are springing up all over the Internet and specifically I read about some on a new TV article.

I’ll just read this quote here: The big text story to arise as a result of the unrest is the use of Twitter, so everyone is doing the green Avatar, but online videos are also key in providing an on the ground look websites like Citizentube has been tracking video clips when it came out that YouTube and other sites are being blocked. So, there’s information; you can’t stop it.

[04:52]
Cliff: You can’t. I think that’s the first piece which is we all know that despite attempts to block information at this point what the world wide web and the Internet has done is really made that impossible. So, the message gets out, and that’s, I think, from any democracy and we don’t want to get too political here, the point is and it relates back to other things that we talk about, whether it’s for businesses or consumers. This is an environment where people can get the message out.

The second piece is that video tells a story. There’s nothing like seeing pictures to get a real feel for what’s going on. That clearly complements all the journalism that’s taking place and all the commentary, but those pictures tell us a lot. I think it’s incredibly powerful.

[05:38]
Matthew: Some of the clips that I’ve watched that have really spoken to me and one that really comes to mind is a clip of a policeman in riot gear who had fallen victim to the crowd, and he was actually helped out by the protesters. You really start to see that what they’re trying to do over there is not about violence. It’s not about police versus… They’re really feeling like they had to get their collective voice heard. So, that was moving to me. I don’t know if you had seen that one.

[06:09]
Cliff: I haven’t seen that one, but it is and I think that’s the one thing about video. It really brings you there. I have a friend who is Pakistani, and a lot of his family is in Pakistan. We were talking a few weeks ago when the Taliban was getting very active there, and he was watching to understand, watching video to understand where things were, what was happening and what it felt like. It obviously was very personal, bit it really gave him a feel of what was going on in addition to the news content.

[06:42]
Matthew: We hope that the situation over there can come to a quick and peaceful resolution, but again, it’s just a great example of people getting their voices heard through a really emotional online story telling medium.

Moving on to our next article, which is not quite as serious as the unrest in the Middle East. I found this on Media Post which is an article about how online video might be helping the automotive industry. So, we’ve again all been hearing about what dire straits the folks out there in Detroit are in and some great statistics.

Recent research confirms that automakers’ investments in online video have been the right decision. A report by fellow Media Post writer reveals that 83 percent of new vehicle buyers visit video focused websites prior to purchasing a car. That’s a lot. That’s a huge amount.

[07:38]
Cliff: It’s unbelievable and I think it speaks to the obvious, and you could say trend that one, buyers are educating themselves, and the job of a car company or anybody else is how do you help them become educated about your product and offering so that they can make a very informed decision as they go forward.

The numbers are clearly spectacular, and I think the other piece in this article was a lot about the opportunity to reuse that content when you’re looking at online. Think a lot about mobile. Think a lot about form factors, and that content needs to populate across the web, not only on the company’s website but on lots of other websites.

[08:22]
Matthew: There were a few keys that were highlighted here. One was don’t skimp on production. So, if you’re buying a high priced item, you really want to make sure that your video content is as sharp and as clear and as hi def as you can make it, and two was follow the audience which is a little bit of what you spoke about. An innovative way to extend the efficiency of online videos to leverage what they call retargeting, assuming that there are companion banners and a place to drop cookies, retargeting users across the network of video or across the web.

So understanding, look this person watched this clip about safety features on this page, and then we picked them up again through our player when they were learning about our warranty a little bit later. You start to understand that user behavior model online.

[09:08]
Cliff: I think that’s so important. One of the things the article did quite get to talk about is the opportunity to think about video as we’ve all talked about, this interactive medium and how do you not only watch video and let the buyer inform themselves, but how do you start engaging them so that you can both get more information and share the appropriate information with them.

[09:34]
Matthew: I think in the comments that was picked up as well as often can be the case. Sometimes, the comments can be as insightful or even more insightful than the article and Peter Contardo from Endavo Media, I think, pointed that out that-actually, no it was a different one; I’m sorry, Manoki  Saha [sp].

[09:55]
Cliff: Manoki Saha, I think.

[09:58}
Matthew: A new growth will be in cross network where consumers can interactively engage in comparing features, a lot of what you just talked about. Some of the other comments I thought were great. This one from Gary Milner from Lenovo which was really kind of an obvious one that even I hadn't thought of and I work in online videos; that car dealers can reduce the excess amount of inventory in the lots if they use online video more. Duh, of course, think about how you buy a car.

You drive around from lot to lot and there's this big inventory and you want to go to the dealership that has the most inventory so that you don't have to be pushed into the car that they are trying to sell you. And this whole model with the rise of the Internet and things like interactive video can be completely blown away.

[10:44]
Cliff: Completely. One of the examples we’ve always talked about on the interactive side is the concept of: I’m looking at a car. You’ve sort of given me a good feel for that car, and then the question is: what’s the next activity?

Well, the call to action may be a test drive. Now, if I’ve done good targeting, I may want to say I’ll bring the car to your house on Saturday and drop it off, and I’ll come and pick it on Sunday. But if you think you’ve got such a great buyer, don’t make them come into the dealership and wait on line. You may want to be proactive, and that rethinks about how qualified is that buyer. They can reject it, but there’s a great opportunity there to start thinking about interacting more.

[11:27]
Matthew: You know, when the way that people are starting to… When I think about Scion, they are starting to let people customize the car which is really not to them much customization when they’re putting on different decals and face plates and steering wheels, but that again gets into that personalization of the experience. If you can think about a model where you’re interactively building your car using live action video and animations and then having that car dropped off.

[11:56]
Cliff: And you know, the other piece that we’ve kicked around is obviously the question when I come to that site, what am I? Am I seeking engineering? Am I seeking comfort? Is this all about safety for me? So, if it’s about safety, don’t show me the car driving at 80 miles and how it takes the turns. I may want to know a little bit more about the air bag system, the braking system.

[12:24]
Matthew: As my second child starts to become one years old which Luke is going to be one on Saturday.

[12:29]
Cliff: Yeah, Luke.

[12:30]
Matthew: Happy birthday, Luke. My days of looking for the superior handling are pretty much long gone. I’m looking for the air bags now.

[12:37]
Cliff: Now, you do have to do one other thing. You have to say hello to your daughter who’s your regular listener.

[12:43]
Matthew: Hi, Juliet. Juliet is my number one fan. She’s never missed an episode, and I love her to death.

So moving on, the net article is from Real SEO which is a great blog, and I read it all the time. And Grant Crowell got a chance to sit down and interview some heads of creative media agencies at a show called SEMA. He had some great questions for the folks there, and he was able to talk to folks like the VP of Strategy and Marketing for Point Roll, the Creative Director for Draft SEB and the SVP and Managing Director of Incognito Digital.

One of the questions was: what’s your opinion about the direction that online video is taking? This is a question that we ask almost every guest, and we talk about a lot. Catherine who is the VP of Point World said that there will be a continued progression from passive viewership to active engagement with more interactive in non-linear video and execution emerging.

[13:52]
Cliff: And it’s what we clearly all talk about in the industry which is we can go back, and this story has been told a hundred times so I’ll tell it the hundred and one. When radio started, what did people do? They read the newspaper on radio was the first thing and then when they did TV they broadcast the radio announcers.

The first thing on video was to put video on the Internet and forget, if you will, about the interactive experience. So, it’s great to see in everything that was in here and what Catherine was talking about that now after we’ve started to both accept and master how we get video delivered in a consistent fashion online and we’ve started to fit it into the web experience, we’re now ready for sort of phase two, if you will, which is all the interactivity pieces on the videos.

[14:42]
Matthew: I think when our audience thinks about interactivity there’s definitely things they can think about with things like overlays coming up or questions being answered. I think it was the non-linear piece that people at Permission TV like you and I are well aware of, but I wanted to talk a bit more about how that might work for folks that that may be new to them. You are right. When you think about watching video, you think about: I turn my TV on. I watch a sitcom or a program that has a beginning, a middle, and an end, but online can change that experience completely.

[15:16]
Cliff: Yeah, it’s funny but I don’t think I picked it up nearly as much, but once you’re at PTV, Permission TV. You sort of live this concept of what we think of by non-linear. As you’ve said, most of the thought was there’s sort of long play content, Lost or others, that you can watch on the Internet. Now, the question is: well, what is this non-linear experience.

And, maybe, we can even go back for a second to the car example. The car example may be when I first come in, you’ve got to understand who I am. And that may be, again, is it Matthew with two young kids, do you know what I mean? Is it me with some teenage and now older than teenage drivers, you know what I mean? They’re thinking about a car for themselves.

[16:01]
Matthew: They’re thinking about it.

[16:03]
Cliff: They’re thinking about it. Exactly.

[16:04]
You’re thinking about the air bags.

[16:06]
Cliff: Exactly, exactly. But to bring that back to the user experience in a non-linear fashion, wherever I want to start. So, if I want to start with engineering, then I should be able to start there and through a conversational piece ask me a question. Are you most interested in safety? Are you most interested in engineering? Are you most interested in handling?

[16:31]
Matthew: And the way that I think is making this really important is that in core video you’d have to go to different areas of the website, so there may be ways that digital marketers can take those personas, those people who are interested in certain classifications or features or benefits and direct them.

Click here if you’re interested in air bags, but the non-linear way that a video can work is that you can press play while in that same video experience, through that conversation that you talked about. That experience changes for you as opposed to you having to find the experience that you want.

[17:07]
Cliff: Exactly. So, if all of a sudden I watched the information on handling and now I want to understand how I finance the car, then I can easily move to the finance piece. Then, by the way, if I want to come back to safety I can, but that’s a natural navigation.

I think the websites and the web marketers have mastered certain things on their websites, but these are still largely text based. It’s like walking in, for me, to a library. There’s a lot of information out there. I don’t understand how much of it is organized, and I’m asked to sort of roam through, and it’s my job to figure it out, and it feels like a library.

There’s no one around to ask, and you’re not guided in any fashion so it’s a fairly intense labor, a lot of labor from your side going in and it takes a while to figure it out. I think that people don’t have that time, and one of the pieces of this non-linear interactivity enables you to make sure those visitors to your site are getting what they need, and they may get in two or three minutes. And they can be done and highly informed.

We’ve all said what happened to that 30 minutes on that website? What did I get out of this when I was done? So, I think this non-linear piece is a very important aspect of the future.

[18:27]
Matthew: Excellent. Let’s talk a little bit about our next post which is someone who has been in sales and marketing predominantly throughout your career, I definitely want to talk a little bit about how online selling has changed the way that selling is done.

[18:44]
Cliff: Right.

[18:46]
Matthew: And one of the things that we’ve talked a little bit about on the show is this concept of Sales 2.0 which I know that you’re a big proponent of, and this article from Media Post again talks of the art of online selling and seems to smack a little bit of that.

And again, it talked a little bit about some of the points that you just picked up on. Internet marketing has for the longest time, since the dawn of the Internet, sought to identify people, understand their behavior and then take that information and hand it off to sales for them to sell in a more highly targeted way.

This particular author is saying that well, that may not be the end all and be all. There’s this other thing that you can do, which is talk to them. You can talk to people. I don’t know. Is that a problem?

[19:34]
Cliff: What an interesting concept. It’s very interesting. It’s always fun to sort of step back. One of the things we started with was what was it like? You know, for so many years selling was done face-to-face. I will go back pre-Internet. You used to try and make 10 sales calls a week, and you would meet with somebody. What would you do? You would establish trust with them, and you would start to understand their needs, and then you try and figure out how your product may fit those needs.

And then, as you said, with the web what we’ve seen is that interaction has become setting up a set of information for them to read, but we’ve lost all of that personal interaction.

[20:19]
Matthew: As people start to get more familiar with the web and as we have this new group that we call digital natives, people who have never not known the web, they know what’s going on. They know if I click here or if I fill this form out or if I download this white paper, I’m going to be put in the bucket here or put in the mailing list. It is now the opposite of building trust.

Now, how do I get what I need without having to get signed up for something that I don’t want, and some of the things that they talk about here is identify passionate site users or customers or people in your community, and regularly speak with them. We had to have someone write a blog post to tell us, to remind us to regularly speak with people.

Two: create advisory boards comprised of those people and regularly get their input. And finally, survey users as to why they are there and what they are seeking to accomplish.

[21:13]
Cliff: You know, a lot of this article which I think is great really centered around media sites where you’re expecting regular visitors to come in, and you’re trying to help them with that experience. And I think it relates to that most companies today are content companies. They have to create content to sit on that website to help inform users.

[21:37]
Matthew: So, that’s an interesting thing that you just said that most companies are content companies. Are you saying that if you are a company, you have to produce content, regardless of whether or not that’s germane to what you do?

[21:49]
Cliff: I think…

[21:50]
Matthew: Where software companies have to produce content.

[21:51]
Cliff: Right. So, yes, I think if you think about it, everybody has a website. What are we doing there? We’re trying to help inform that buyer on our company, on the industry, on different solutions as to whether that’s in the B2B area or B2C area we’re trying to help inform. And so, you’ve got to create great content that helps to inform and engage.

[22:14]
Matthew: I think that’s a lot of what’s happening with this rise of social media. People are trying to create content, community. Find the most passionate people, reach out to them. We’ve talked a lot about this previously. Video’s the best way to do that. You can see us. You can talk to us, although nobody is talking to us today. I don’t know why, PTV Live pash tag, ask us a question. You get to know us, and you start to develop that trust.  

[22:43]
Cliff. It is. It’s all about trust. I think developing the trust and as we know the big change that we see is text is anonymous. When somebody goes to your site, text is not personal. This is a personal medium. They know after 24 shows, Matthew, who you are, you know what I mean? It gives permission to see your face.

[23:02]
Matthew: Maybe, that’s why we don’t have anybody talking to us today. I finally figured out why [laughs]. Tune to off.

[23:10]
Cliff: It’s interesting to think about the fact that we’re all going to be carrying HD cameras in the next 12 to 18 months in our phones.

[23:20]
Matthew: Absolutely.

[23:21]
Cliff: And the new iPhone is probably another great example of that. We’re all going to be really comfortable being on camera, and video is going to be a way to communicate and create that personal experience.

So, I do think a lot about in the selling environment I believe the marketers have it all backwards completely. Asking somebody for their email address and challenging them on the first visit to the site, what you want to know is how to call them. They don’t want to give you that information.

What they want to do is get some information. I would argue, the better you help to inform them. Then if they’re interested, they’ll come back and they’ll start to service themselves. But it’s kind of crazy to go there and say I need an email address. What I need to do is actually, like I used to do with a sales call, tell me a little bit about your business. Tell me a little bit about your issue. Tell me about what’s keeping you up at night so I can help to think about how my product may be able to help you.

That’s the conversation you want to have, and at some point if you give me the email that’s OK. If we establish that and we start educating you, you’ll come back.

[24:28]
Matthew: Trust is more valuable than email.

[24:29]
Cliff: Exactly, exactly. You say it well.

[24:30]
Matthew: You made me say it. I have some questions if no one is going to ask questions. I’d like to learn a little bit more about you. Let our listeners know more about you.

[24:41]
Cliff: So America doesn’t have any questions.

[24:43]
Matthew: Yeah, I don’t know. What’s up with that? There we go, Drew Smith. Hi Cliff and Matt. Thanks, Drew.

First question: why did you choose to join in this online video, software service company? In your career, you had options. Why did you settle on this one? What was the primary drive? Was it the show? It was the show.

[25:08]
Cliff: If I could get on TV, I couldn’t get on a major network, so I figured this was my shortest way to talent.

[25:18]
Matthew: More seriously, was it the video? Was it success? Was it all of that? What was the appealing thing? What did you see is the value here?

[25:27]
Cliff: It reminded me of all the excitement in the intersections that I’ve done. At NewsEdge Corporation, we created a phenomenally successful company. We just had a phenomenal customer base and a phenomenal employee base.

What was that? The intersection of some of the newest, brand new technology with unbelievable content that people didn’t readily have access to, and that created a tremendous and huge market.

We did the same thing on the Apple PC when we did our work at ISIS Corporation, and I see here the same opportunity which is video is the greatest set of content that’s going to be created. The Sysco piece that 95 percent of all network traffic in 2012 or 13 is going to be video.

How do you harness that capability with a set of unbelievable technology? In our case, to bring value to our clients who want to basically harness those two coming together. You couldn’t have a bigger market opportunity, and they were a great group of people here so that was the other.

[26:43]
Matthew: A lot of the same reasons why I came on. Understanding this phenomenal growth that is going to happen in video, I want to be part of it.

Next question: how do you see interactivity playing into video for B2B marketing? Some of the examples we talked about today was cars and something like. It was a bit more B2C focus, but what we’re trying to do here is enable online video marketing for B2B companies. And I asked that question to a lot of our guests and folks on webinars, and I wanted to ask you as well.

[27:10]
Cliff: Yeah, I think, having spent most of my career in the B2B space and that the interactivity is the foundation for all that. Everybody who has been a marketer is about persona based marketing and one-to-one marketing.

So, the goal here is to make that user experience-when somebody comes to your website and you’ve done your SEO and SEM and you brought them in, how do you help to educate them so that they will help create what I think of as a dossier on them that you can help in the marketing sense to then meet their needs and to bring them through the selling and close process.

So, it is the interactivity that’s the critical piece. It’s not just playing your linear video, but having that interaction.

[27:58]
Matthew: So we do have a question. from Drew. Hello again, Drew. What’s one of the biggest challenges for PTV in allowing the platform to be self-serviced? Video production is daunting.

[28:10]
Cliff: Yeah, I think that’s a great question, Drew, and I see two things. One is that we have got to set a standard in terms of what does it take to produce video. For many B2B companies they’re struggling. They love the concept, but most people haven’t done video.

Now, I think what we’re going to see is it’s actually relatively easy to do. We’ve created a handbook to sort of make that happen to help guide people on how do you not only do video, but importantly how do you do interactive video? And behind that is shooting small, snackable segments that can be reused.

So, there’s a whole set of things when you think of interactive video that is very different, and it’s bringing those things together to make it enable our customers to do that as well as enable them to put interactivity in.

[29:03]
Matthew: A couple of pieces that I heard you say there, one was make it standard. I think when people think of creating video they think it’s a creative process where they have to re-invent this whole wheel the whole time. But for B2B there are ways that it can be standardized. You can cut it into smaller chunks and make it a little bit more predictable and repeatable for our clients, and that’s what I think.

My version of that answer is that there’s ways that B2B marketers like to use online, and there’s ways that they will want to use online video, and we can bring those two things together.

[29:41]
Cliff: Definitely, and I think you brought out a lot of important points there. One is just the cost of producing business video is that everybody can do it at this point. The cost has come down so much.

[29:51]
Matthew: Absolutely. Well, that’s all the time we have for now, but I’d like everyone to keep the conversation going after the show. You can do that in a number of ways. You can subscribe in iTunes at permissiontv.com/itunes. Feel free to leave us a five star rating and a good review, if you’re so inclined.

You can also find us on LinkedIn and on Facebook. We have groups set up there, and we’re interested in getting some responses. For those of you who watched the Scott Kirsner webinar or rather were unable to watch the webinar we had with Scott Kirsner, the recording is now available online. John is going to tweet out the link to that.

We had a webinar Tuesday with Jean from Marketing Sherpa. We’re going to put that available online as well. If you haven’t already registered, John will tweet the link out to get to that as well.

A final thought is that next week we do have another special guest, Frank Days, a CMO and blogger at TangySlice on Twitter. He’s going to be on the show, and he’s going to share with us his thoughts about online video as well.

[30:54]
Cliff: Great. Well, thanks again for having me on the show.

[30:56]
Matthew: Thanks a lot.

[30:57]
Cliff: Great show.

[30:58]
Matthew: Take care, everybody.