July 17, 2025 • 31 mins
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The digital marketing landscape has transformed drastically, forcing photo retailers and imaging businesses to rethink their strategies. In this illuminating conversation with Max DesMarais, Director of Strategy at Vital Design, we explore how small photo businesses can effectively compete against industry giants despite limited marketing budgets.
DesMarais reveals a significant shift that's reshaping the marketing world: organic search visibility is declining as "pay-to-play is becoming more important than ever." With Google's expanded ad space and AI features consuming the search results page, there has been a dramatic drop in organic click-through rates. This doesn't mean small businesses, however, should abandon hope - quite the opposite.
Local photo retailers possess unique advantages that national companies can't match. Through Google's local customization, smaller businesses can achieve higher visibility in their specific markets. DesMarais emphasizes overlooked yet powerful tactics like optimizing Google Business Profiles and leveraging relationships with other local businesses through cross-promotion and interlinking - signals that establish legitimacy and boost organic rankings.
We dive deep into conversion optimization through A/B testing, with DesMarais suggesting approachable starting points like testing email subject lines and comparing designed emails against plain text versions. His insights on landing pages are particularly valuable: "Almost always a designated landing page is going to outperform," he explains, challenging the common retail instinct to showcase every product at once.
Perhaps most compelling is DesMarais's evidence that video content directly drives transactions. "When we include videos on pages, it's extremely rare for us not to see a bump in conversion," he reports. Beyond improving conversion rates, videos enhance organic rankings and open additional discovery channels through platforms l
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Hosted and produced by Gary Pageau
Edited by Olivia Pageau
Announcer: Erin Manning
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Erin Manning (00:02):
Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast, the
photo imaging industry'sleading news source.
Here's your host, gary Pegeau.
The Dead Pixel Society podcastis brought to you by Mediaclip,
Advertek Printing, andIndependent Photo Imagers.
Gary Pageau (00:18):
Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixels
Society podcast.
I'm your host, Gary Pageau.
Today we're joined by MaxDesMarais, who's the Director of
Strategy at Vital Design.
He's coming to us from SaltLake City, Utah.
Hi Max, how are you today?
I'm doing pretty well
Hey, Max, tell us a little bitabout Vital Design and the whole
(00:38):
marketing world.
Before we get into the actualcontent, can you just talk about
how you got into the businessand what the company does?
Max DesMarais (00:47):
Yeah for sure.
So I've been at Vital for thelast nine years or so.
We're a full service marketagency.
We basically build brands andbrand foundations and websites
and we take those websites,brands and foundations and bring
them into what we call digitalmarketing retainers, which is
basically driving more traffic,driving more leads, driving more
(01:09):
revenue through marketingactivities to capture a positive
return on investment.
And so we basically buildbrands and market those brands
and companies to drive positivereturn on investment.
I've been in digital marketingfor quite a bit of time.
I grew up in New Hampshire, wasobsessed with the outdoors,
went to the University of NewHampshire and got into digital
marketing because I felt like itwas the future of marketing,
(01:30):
where I felt like I wanted to bein the marketing field.
And as a prospective digitalmarketer trying to enter the
digital marketing space, I hadfelt that my education was
lacking on the digital marketingside of things.
So I actually started my ownwebsite, my Outdoor Base Camp,
to merge my passions withdigital marketing, to teach
(01:51):
myself digital marketing andhelp me get a job out of college
, and so since then I've hadthis small business on the side.
That's helped me use it as asandbox to learn digital
marketing, but also helped meincorporate my passions into my
everyday work.
Gary Pageau (02:06):
So if somebody goes to my outdoor base camp, what
do they find there?
Max DesMarais (02:11):
They're going to find a whole bunch of trail
guides and information onspecific adventures, so, for
example, like how to hike aspecific mountain or fly fish in
a specific river.
They're going to find tons ofgear reviews uh, both like
things like the best backpacksor individual reviews on
backpacks and things like that.
And so it's just a litany ofresources to help people get
(02:32):
outside, as well as just, youknow, tips for getting into
trail running or getting intofly fishing, whatever it may be.
Uh, and I've been, you know,writing articles for years and
driving organic traffic anddoing affiliate marketing and
selling photography, prints anddoing all these types of things
and also being a did a stint ofbeing a hiking guide and so
forth.
Gary Pageau (02:50):
So yeah, so prints, .
I mean, I mean, do you have apreferred lab for that?
Max DesMarais (02:56):
it's okay to name them if you have somebody, yeah
yeah, so I actually I did thedigital marketing thing and drop
shipped everything and used aservice called Printful.
Gary Pageau (03:05):
Okay.
Max DesMarais (03:06):
Which basically allowed me to easily spin up
tons of products on myWooCommerce site.
Basically, it allowed me totest much easier what type of
product is working, and I knowif someone purchases, it's auto
fulfilled, and so I could dolike canvas prints or specific
prints or even t-shirts andthings like that all from one
place pretty quickly, and sothat was something that was, you
(03:28):
know, not the most profitablething when you do it that way,
but allows you to do a lot ofpivoting and testing early yeah,
yeah, actually I've hadprintful on the podcast before,
so I'm very the audience is veryfamiliar with printful.
Gary Pageau (03:39):
I think it'd be exciting for them to hear
somebody, a user, actually fromtheir perspective, right.
So let's talk a little bitabout that A-B testing piece,
because I think that's somethingthat at least in our industry
there's not a lot of action onright.
Can you talk about what A-Btesting is and when you'd want
to use it, like for services orfor just appeals, or for gears
(04:01):
or for gear launches or whatsome of the things you that
would be ideal for that?
Max DesMarais (04:07):
yeah, totally so.
Uh, ab testing and inherentlyis testing two variations of one
thing against one another tosee which performs best.
You'll often hear people referto it as ab testing when they
might actually be doing what'smore called multivariate testing
, because a true ab test istesting one specific thing
against one other specific thingand in the case of small
(04:28):
businesses that's often reallyhard to do without lots of
volume Meaning.
You can run a test against oneanother, but unless you have a
substantial amount of volume orvery big differences in results,
it's hard to get statisticalsignificance and say like this
version actually outperformedthis one versus the other one.
So A-B testing is basicallytesting two things.
(04:50):
I think every small businessowner or organization should be
doing some type of A-B testing,and where I would say small
businesses should focus on isless of the A-B test and more of
the.
I'm going to test one thingagainst an entirely different
variation of a similar thing andchange a whole bunch of things
so that we can get largedifferences in performance.
(05:10):
That allows us to get morestatistical relevance, and you
can do this in tons of differentways.
So, for example, you know, onthe advertising side of things,
if you wanted to test twoentirely different products
against the same keywords onGoogle.
You could do that.
You would send them to twoentirely different landing pages
and see how one converts versusthe other, and there's millions
(05:30):
of different tests that you canrun as a small business owner
or individual.
Gary Pageau (05:34):
So when you say A-B testing I know there's a lot of
the email platforms likeMailChimp and whatnot have that
built in.
Is that okay, just to use whatthey've got, or is there a
special tool that people shouldbe considering?
Max DesMarais (05:48):
Yeah, it just depends what you're trying to do
.
So, for email, I think it's agreat tool for everyone, and
tons of people use tools likeMailChimp and you should be
using their built-in A-B testing.
So, for example, any email yousend.
A great way to leverage that ABtesting is to test subject
lines.
So, um, you don't evennecessarily have to do the what
(06:09):
MailChimp kind of pushes you todo, which is like test 20% of
your audience and then send therest to the winner.
What you can do is just totallysplit it 50, 50, and then every
single week or every singlemonth when you're sending
something, you can glean lessonsfrom that.
This performed better than thisone on this week, and this one
performed better than this oneon this week.
And you can just take kind ofanecdotal evidence out of these
(06:30):
A-B tests that you're runningand just teach yourself what's
working, what's not working.
It's a great use case for doingthat.
And then the other side ofthings is like if you want to
redesign your email template orchange the structure, there can
be lots to be gained there.
So, for example, a-b testingyour very designed, beautiful
version, your email that's gottons of images and looks
gorgeous, versus your plain textemail, which is basically a
(06:53):
block of text and maybe somelinks in it.
I think, particularly in thespace of photography, you'd be
surprised how underperformingwhat overly designed emails can
be, for various reasons, onereason being you get stuck in
spam filters with tons of imagesor the email actually loads
slower than it would like aplain text version, and the
(07:14):
other being, you know, sometimesunder designed seems more
personal like a plain text email.
So there's those types ofthings that are great AB tests
on the email side of things.
If you're running ads, I thinkthere's those types of things
that are great A-B tests on theemail side of things.
If you're running ads, I thinkthere's a huge opportunity to be
running tests via either A-Btesting platforms or just via
your ad accounts.
Like I said, test a landingpage against another landing
(07:36):
page or keywords versus otherkeywords.
There's huge opportunities tocontinuously improve through
testing.
Gary Pageau (07:43):
There's a lot of talk about funnels and things
right, where you want to drivepeople to a specific landing
page.
Should you do that witheverything or just the major
stuff, right?
If you're doing a bigpromotional let's say, for
example, for back to schoolsomething you'd want a landing
page for that, but would you useit for your everyday half price
(08:05):
print day or something likethat?
Max DesMarais (08:08):
It's a good question and I would say almost
always a designated landing pageis going to outperform.
Where you're going to sendpeople.
To the extent in which it'sgoing to outperform depends
pretty drastically on thequality of your original page
that you're going to send peopleto, on the quality of your
original page that you're goingto send people to.
So it's hard to answer thatquestion, but I would say, if
(08:29):
you have the time and you'rewilling to put in the effort, a
dedicated landing page is almostalways worth it because you can
incorporate making sure thatone it's conversion rate optimal
Optimize, meaning like you'redoing all the best practices to
get people to take the actionyou want them to take and you're
not spreading their attentionacross.
You know your main menu andlike these other four things
(08:50):
that they might do.
There's a lot of value in that.
And then also the intent Ifyou're sending people to a
general page when they searchfor something specific, you tend
to get worse performanceperformance, and so I think
almost always you should betrying to leverage a landing
page, which I would justquantify as a dedicated page to
(09:11):
whatever you're trying toadvertise or push people to, but
there's always that sort ofurge to.
Gary Pageau (09:14):
I want people to see everything and if I got them
there to see the camera bags orthe backpacks, I want them to
see the water bottles and thelenses and the filters.
How do you restrain that, Iguess?
Max DesMarais (09:30):
Yeah, I mean it's a very interesting thing
because I think, as a digitalmarketer who's seen these types
of tests over and over and overagain across lots of different
industries, it's prettyincredible how reducing choice
improves your ability to getpeople to take the action you
want them to take.
I would rather get someone totake the action I want them to
(09:50):
take, and at a higher percentage, and then teach them about all
the other awesome things that Ioffer, because you're going to
generally see better conversionrates that way.
So I'll take it as an exampleIf they're searching for a
camera bag, I want them to buythat camera bag, and if they
take action whether it be buyingthat camera bag I can use that
(10:11):
as a great opportunity to teachthem all about the other things
that I offer.
And if they don't take thataction, I can use tools like
remarketing to follow themaround and either try to get
them to make that purchase orthen educate them about all the
other great stuff that we do.
So I'm on the lines of it'salmost always better to teach
them about what they're lookingfor specifically rather than
(10:34):
show them off everything elsethat you do.
Gary Pageau (10:36):
But it is because it's funny, because I see a lot
of websites in the industry,especially the print sites, and
they literally bombard peoplewith every possible combination
of product that they havebecause they feel it's because
they've got I mean, withoutsourcing and dropshipping and
everything else, you've gotbasically a universe of products
(10:58):
you can sell.
But you do kind of.
You know, there's analysis,paralysis that happens from the
consumer side, because if youput on the consumer hat they're
inundated with messages all thetime.
Max DesMarais (11:09):
Yeah, you have to meet the consumers where
they're at too.
I think that's an importantelement of this, like there's
consumers that don't know whatthey want, and if they're in
that stage, you need to helpguide them into what is actually
going to fulfill their need,and that might be where you need
to be further expanding yourpage.
However, if you have someonethat's searching for something
specific, they've alreadyidentified their specific need.
(11:29):
You want to service thatspecific need, and I think it's
important to recognize thatwhenever you're doing marketing,
particularly digital marketing,there's always this need to
understand that your buyers aregoing to be in very different
stages all the time, and youneed to think about what stage
they're in at that specific time.
This comes into play with paidsearch advertising, as an
(11:50):
example.
All the time, the keywords thatyou're going after will either
indicate they're ready to buythis one thing right now, or
they're much higher up in thebuyer's funnel and we have to do
more education.
Or they're interested in fiveor six different products, or
they're in a comparison mode.
So, it's just really importantto think about where your buyer
is at that particular moment.
Gary Pageau (12:08):
So let's talk a little bit about paid
advertising, cause that sort ofworld is is is changing pretty
rapidly, right you got you don'tjust focus on Google, cause
they're kind of the big dog, butyou know, obviously there's
Bing and other platforms too,but and there's a lot happening
(12:32):
there in the paid ad spacebecause AI is coming in and it's
stealing a lot of traffic fromGoogle.
What do you think that's goingto?
How that's going to impact thepaid advertising piece?
Max DesMarais (12:38):
Yeah, I mean, it's been a crazy landscape the
past particular year probablythe craziest in the history of
time and what we're noticing ingeneral is that pay to play is
becoming actually more importantthan ever.
You're losing organic abilityto show up for queries.
So, for example we'll just useGoogle as the example here when
(13:00):
people are searching forsomething online, they're far
less likely to click on anorganic result than they were 24
months ago.
So if a thousand people aresearching for something specific
and it used to be 70% of thosepeople would click on an organic
search result.
It's now more like 30, 40, or50% of those people.
Gary Pageau (13:20):
And why is that?
I mean, is it because Google'spushing them, the links, the
paid links?
Yeah?
Max DesMarais (13:25):
it because Google's pushing them.
The links, the paid link.
Yeah, it's two reasons there's.
There's the paid advertising.
Real estate is continuing togrow, meaning when you search
something, you're going to seehalf the time shopping ads at
top.
Uh, then search ads and thenmaybe, uh, like a featured
snippet type thing, or also theai overview, so like the ads are
taking up almost the entire topfold.
(13:47):
Meaning you have to scroll toget to your organic listings so
that pay to play is becomingmore relevant.
And at the same time this ishappening, we're seeing those AI
overviews in Google all thetime, meaning you type anything
with the question, for example,you'll see Google's AI overview
gives you the chat GBT likeresponse, and compiles things,
and that is eating a tremendousamount of clicks on the organic
(14:09):
side of things.
And we're also in this timeperiod where I think it's pretty
clear that Google lost revenueby doing that, meaning it's
pushing their ads down.
Google says we've lost norevenue on AI overview queries
that are showing, but what we'regoing to see is that ads are
going to start to beincorporated into those AI
overviews as well, so they'renot losing the revenue and it's
(14:33):
just more reason to see.
The pay to play is prettyessential in a lot of these
spaces.
In order to get those clicks,you probably need to be running
paid search ads on Google.
Gary Pageau (14:42):
So just the good old, hey, I'm going to create
some great content and drop itout there and SEO optimize my
keywords and my description andall that stuff that's being
de-emphasized now by Google.
Max DesMarais (14:55):
It's harder to win.
First of all, it's a morecompetitive space and when you
do win, generally youropportunity is a bit lower than
it was a couple of years ago,meaning you're not going to get
as many clicks as you used to.
So I think it's important formarketers to just understand
that that the opportunity maybehas dropped a little bit.
In the way that you weigh yourmarketing efforts needs to, the
(15:17):
math that you use might need tochange a little bit.
You might need to emphasizesome of these paid tactics a
little bit more than some ofthese existing organic tactics
in certain situations, becausethe pay to play has taken over
in some of those areas.
Gary Pageau (15:30):
So when you're talking about, let's say,
someone who is, you know, let'ssay, an independent camera store
, right, and they've got, youknow, don't have an infinite
budget and they're up againstthe B&Hs and the Adoramas and
the people like that who do havea much bigger budget.
And let's say, for example, theco-op from Canon and Nikon
isn't quite covering the freightright, so you have a limited
(15:52):
budget.
What do you suggest?
Or some of your tactics?
Or do you just say, listen, Imay not be able to compete there
, so I'm going to do more onanother platform.
Maybe I do Instagram, maybe Ido TikTok or something like that
?
What are some of the otheroptions?
You just kind of?
You know, I'm talking aboutpeople with a finite budget,
right?
Max DesMarais (16:10):
I will say there's a benefit to the local
store, the local owner.
That is a little bit betterthan some of these national
level organizations.
Meaning there is, as I'm sureeveryone notices, a lot of local
customization happening in theresults for Google.
So if you're in a specificlocation and you have your own
(16:31):
Google Chrome profile, whatGoogle shows you is going to be
different based off of yourlocation and your existing
habits.
Erin Manning (16:36):
Right.
Max DesMarais (16:37):
And when it comes to local stores and things like
that, there's still a lot ofopportunity probably more so
than nationally basedorganizations to show up to your
local audience, whether that'stown specific, region specific
or state specific.
Generally speaking, there's alot of opportunity there still
to make sure that you're havingthe proper pages organically to
(16:59):
drive traffic, because you canshow up and beat national
organizations on the local level.
So I would say, like, don'tlose sight of that.
As a local small business andthen on the paid advertising
side of things, there's stilltons of opportunity for the same
reason, like local basedorganizations can way now and
even if they're not local based,like they can still beat out
national level organizations bycreating really high quality
(17:22):
niche campaigns that are justgoing to beat out some of the
things that the nationalorganizations aren't going to do
, because these smalleropportunities aren't as
important to them or as relevantto them.
Gary Pageau (17:32):
So when you're talking about local now, does
that include like optimizingyour Google my Business page and
things like that?
I've talked to a few peopleover the years who have really
said that's sort of anoverlooked thing, that people
are missing out on that.
That's a way to really tellgoogle hey, I'm local, I'm
active, go for it yeah, totally.
Max DesMarais (17:53):
I like no brainer things are definitely make sure
your google my business profileis optimized, has accurate
information and has all the info.
Like fill it out as much as youpossibly can, add imagery, make
sure it's accurate and keep itupdated Right, like number one.
Like definitely do that Numbertwo on the local front, like use
your other local businessesthat are around you, maybe not
(18:16):
related to you, know yourspecific industry, but you know
hotels, restaurants, things likethat.
Leverage partnerships and useone another to interlink and
talk about one another, becausethat's going to also tell Google
oh, this company is workingwith other local organizations,
they're very clearly legitimateand they're very more connected
(18:36):
to this particular locale.
So I think two things that areoverlooked are Google my
Business page and then justleveraging other local
organizations and companies towork together.
Mention each other on yoursites, do some co-marketing.
I think there's a lot that canhappen there.
Oh sure.
Yeah.
Gary Pageau (18:53):
Well, I mean just because, when we think of like a
photography company, right, yougot either photographer they
can if it's a weddingphotographer, they can talk
about venues they go to Right orvendors they use or or caterers
that they've worked with, youknow, there's all kinds of
opportunity there and I imaginethat's a very natural thing to
do and something they should bedoing anyway, Right.
Max DesMarais (19:12):
Absolutely, and I would say like, if you're
thinking on the digital side, betactical about it, like get
them to put up a blog post or apage on their website that links
to you and mentions you, andthat's going to go a long way on
your organic ranking side ofthings Because, like Google
wants to see those things.
It's indicative that you're inthat community, you're speaking
with other businesses, and it'sgoing to help you a lot on the
(19:34):
organic side of things and thetrust building side.
Gary Pageau (19:36):
Because that's really.
I think one of the things thatpeople tend to overlook is part
of Google's promise to theirusers is we're sending you to
legit places, that these arevalid.
So you know, when people haveproblems with Google, it's
probably because they haven'tdone enough on their end to
(19:56):
appear legitimate to the Google.
Max DesMarais (19:59):
Yeah, totally appear legitimate to the google.
Yeah, totally.
I think I'll add one more thingbefore you get is just uh,
reviews and testimonials are soimportant for this type of thing
.
So, like make sure you have aprocess to go back to your happy
customers and have them leaveyou some type of review.
Google is a great place forthat.
Leave google reviews, but ifyou're using some type of
third-party review platform, dothat as well.
(20:21):
Make sure there's something inthere, because it's hugely
beneficial on multiple fronts.
Of course, the organic front,showing that trust building
Google is more likely to rankyou higher if you have lots of
reviews.
But it's also hugely importanton the conversion front, like
the more you have these reviewsfrom other happy customers, the
more likely that person that isalready on your website is going
to make a purchase or engagewith you in some way.
Gary Pageau (20:44):
So there's always a talk about you know in
marketing, you know howimportant video is coming, you
know how important that is forall that.
But you also hear differentthings also about it gets
attention but doesn'tnecessarily help with
transactions.
Is that something you're seeing?
Max DesMarais (21:00):
No, I would say gets attention but doesn't
necessarily help withtransactions.
Is that something you're seeing?
No, I would say video ishelping with transactions a lot.
When we put videos on productpages for our clients, for
example, we see conversion ratesspike pretty substantially.
So it can vary, but basicallyanytime we leverage a video on
any page, we almost always seean improvement in conversion
(21:20):
rate meaning the people that hitthat page convert into our
desired action more frequentlywhen a video is on it.
This is true for early stageleads, so think like an ebook or
a white paper or joining awebinar but it's also true for
product pages, so an e-commercepurchase or even picking up the
phone and speaking to a salesrepresentative.
When we include videos on pages, it's extremely rare for us to
(21:43):
not see a bump in conversion.
And it's the crazy thing.
It's almost becoming tablestakes to have video and a lot
of things across lots oforganizations.
So the more that you canincorporate video, the better.
And then, on top of that, we'realso seeing the increased
traffic and increased rankingson many types of pages when we
incorporate videos.
so this happens for for blogposts, meaning, like do a video
(22:05):
that covers a lot of what's inthe blog post that you're
talking about, we tend to seethat blog post improving
rankings.
This happens on product pages.
When we add videos to productpages, we tend to see those
product pages show up in searchand the result page is higher
because there's a video on there.
And then there's a thirdelement of it, which is this
depends on the topic of thevideo.
But if there's a video on thereand then there's the third
element of it, which is thisdepends on the topic of the
video.
But if it's a video that youalso publish, say on YouTube,
(22:26):
you have the opportunity to showup on YouTube for people
searching for that particulartopic.
And that same thing applies tothe social media channels where,
like, search engineoptimization is no longer just a
Google thing.
Tiktok is a search engine,instagram is a search engine,
amazon is a search engine.
Instagram is a search engine,amazon is a search engine,
youtube is a search engine.
You have to be thinking aboutyour content and multiple medias
(22:47):
because of that, and it givesyou that opportunity to not only
convert people on your websitebetter, but also you have this
other channel where people mayfind you, because they're
searching for these types ofthings in video format.
Gary Pageau (22:58):
I guess where I was going with that was just saying
, not necessarily video onproduct pages, but on more, like
you know, doing Instagram hitsand things like that.
Erin Manning (23:05):
But as you say, it's even better though.
Gary Pageau (23:08):
I mean there will be some benefit if you say hey,
this is our new bag, we got it,you know.
Click here for more informationthat will perform better than a
static picture.
Max DesMarais (23:16):
Yeah, almost always.
I think the the video basedstuff on social media is is
really important now, and Ithink uh, I watch a lot of
organizations get stuck in thetrap, though, of like searching
for views rather than theirideal target.
Gary Pageau (23:30):
Well, that's my point is because when I hear
from people who do you knowstores, who are like they get
into this and they get into aroutine and it's almost like
they want to be a performer, nota retailer.
Max DesMarais (23:43):
Yeah it's, it's a .
It's a difficult thing Cause,like you want to try and
maximize your like pagesexposure and get that video out
there, but when you do so,you're often like maybe
potentially even alienating yourtrue ideal customer profile
because you're not talking aboutthe things that you want to.
And I think there's animportant balance there of
creating content that is goingto hopefully get beyond your
(24:07):
ideal target audience but alsois appealing to your ideal
target audience.
And I think it's more importantto focus on video creation
that's tailored directly to yourideal customer profile than it
is to try and go viral.
Gary Pageau (24:19):
Really Okay.
So that's interesting because Ithink that's again goes back to
the idea of restraint, right?
Is that the idea that you knowyou're not going to appeal to
everybody in every way, so youmay use a different tactic to
maybe draw in new customers,right?
But you're saying video may notnecessarily be the best way to
reach first time visitors toyour platform, you know, through
(24:41):
a wacky video.
Max DesMarais (24:43):
Yeah, I don't know, maybe a wacky video.
I think there's a lot ofopportunity for growth.
I think on video based channelslike we're in a time period
where we'll take Instagram orTikTok like you don't have to
have a massive amount offollowing to grow those
audiences Like we're in a timewhere they they pay off based
off of how engaging the contentis that you create to whatever
(25:06):
audience they want to show it to.
So you, as someone who'sstarting fresh, if you produce
really high quality contentthat's meant for a specific
audience, that follows the bestpractices, like maintaining
engagement, there's a goodchance that it's going to get
pushed out to the right peopleand you're going to be able to
continue to grow.
So I I would not discount videoas a very good strategy and I
think there's a greatopportunity today where these
(25:28):
platforms are much lessconcerned about your following
and much more concerned aboutthe quality of content you're
producing.
I just don't want people to getin the trap of producing
content that truly isn't tryingto get in front of their target
audience.
Otherwise you're just not goingto get the value out of it.
Gary Pageau (25:42):
You mentioned best practices.
What would be for the benefitof the platform, the kind of
stuff they're looking for?
What would be one or two of thebest practices there, the thing
that they're looking for, thatthey want to push right?
Max DesMarais (25:56):
Yeah, I mean, they want engagement, right.
They want view time and theywant to see that people are
watching your stuff to itscompletion and they want to see
that, once they do that, they'realso interacting with it and
also sharing it with otherpeople to expand the reach.
So you have to be thinkingabout those metrics and if you
(26:17):
go into we'll take likeInstagram as an example it's
going to be like like how, whatpercentage of people watched
past your first three seconds?
If that is low, you're destinedfor failure, right.
And so it becomes this game ofkeeping attention as long as you
possibly can and then trying toget people to take specific
actions.
and, uh, best practices arereally hard to say there,
(26:38):
because there's this like wholeviral game that's going on yeah
yeah, exactly, yeah all thesepsychological things you have to
do to win yeah but b you haveto be thinking about how do we
keep people engaged, how do wehook them in and get to the
payoff at the end rather than,uh, like easing into it, because
people's attention spans aretoo short, especially on these
social media platforms.
(26:58):
If you want win, you got to bequick in getting their attention
.
I mean, it just seems to melike there's a lot.
Gary Pageau (27:03):
There's a constantly moving menu of visual
tricks people are using rightLike the whole, like right now I
think it's hot that you'restarting off camera and then
they move the camera in likesuddenly and like you're popping
in, like you're coming off thething you know there's like are
they going to classes for this?
Or who's teaching them thisstuff?
I mean it's, it's kind of crazywhen you look at this stuff
(27:24):
yeah, you can watch people.
Max DesMarais (27:25):
Like if you go through famous pages, you'll see
the formula that they figuredout at some point, like when
everyone else does it.
Gary Pageau (27:32):
They got to come up with something new yeah,
exactly that's.
Max DesMarais (27:35):
That's.
It's a whole constantlychanging game, because what
keeps people attentioneventually gets saturated and
switches, and then you have tofind a new way to hook people in
and the people thatcontinuously win.
You'll see them adapt.
You'll see their video-basedstrategies adapt and how they
produce that content and it's Iwill say it's like a really
creative based game and it'sreally hard to win and something
(27:55):
that our agency is trying tofigure out right now how to win
in those it's not nearly as easyas a lot of other things are oh
, absolutely.
Gary Pageau (28:04):
I mean because you're dealing with moods and
perception and trends and thingslike that, as opposed to hey,
this is a dashboard, we're goingto run some ab tests and things
like.
Max DesMarais (28:12):
If you take the most famous people, they've
clearly figured it out, like mrbeast, as an example yeah
exactly.
Yeah, like they've figured outthis way to keep people's
attention, and I don't.
Gary Pageau (28:21):
There's a lot of influences I've seen have fallen
off too, so Well, that's mypoint is you've got this sort of
you know, rise and fall, almostlike you know the fad life
cycle thing, right, where it'slike hot for a few seconds peaks
and then drops off, right.
And you know I don't think myaudience you know they're
running their day-to-daybusiness, right.
(28:42):
The payoff isn't there for themto invest in spending three
hours a day analyzing trends.
Maybe that's what they hiresomeone like you guys for right,
but the reality is you know theday-to-day business, somebody
who's not doing a Mr Beast orsomething you know it's a
challenge, right.
Max DesMarais (28:59):
Yeah, it's really a challenge, challenging.
I think a lot of smallbusinesses are lacking the
basics.
First, right, they shouldreally be focusing on make sure
your website explains what youdo clearly.
Make sure there's clear call toactions on it.
Make sure you have the pagesthat highlight your products and
all of your services right in aclear way and gets in the
convert.
Make sure your google mybusiness is updated.
Make sure you're gettingreviews and then make sure that
(29:20):
you're producing content that'sgoing to help push them through
the funnel and like those basicthings 80% of organizations
aren't doing consistently Reallyand yeah, I don't think so.
No, I would definitely stand bythat Most organizations are not
doing that stuff well, and thebasic foundation things are
where you should start doingthat stuff.
Gary Pageau (29:42):
Well, and those, the basic foundation things, are
where you should start.
So have that down before youeven think about going viral,
probably, because I mean,actually the worst thing that
could happen probably would beif you do come up with something
and one of your you knowbackpacking videos goes viral
and you don't have a clear callto action on your website, you
don't have a clear funnel, youdon't and you, you miss all that
(30:04):
opportunity.
Max DesMarais (30:05):
That's.
That's exactly right.
That's why we call it like thefoundation building in our
agency of of.
Like.
We don't want to spend all thismoney to drive traffic to a
poor foundation because we'renot going to generate the
revenue return investment.
So like it's more important forus to make sure the foundation
is solid first, before we spendthat time to bring all the
eyeballs there.
Gary Pageau (30:24):
Some would say that's a vital design.
Max DesMarais (30:27):
Yes, they would.
Gary Pageau (30:30):
So where can people go to learn more about Vital
Design and the things you guysoffer?
Max DesMarais (30:34):
If you want to find Vital Design, simply do a
Google search for Vital Designand you'll find our website
right there, which has links toall of our socials, and then,
right below our website, you'llfind a bunch of links to all of
our socials as well, and you'llsee that we offer digital
marketing services, websitedesign and development and a
whole litany of other digitalmarketing tactics.
Gary Pageau (30:52):
Awesome.
Well, listen, Max, it's beengreat talking to you.
I'm sorry that I took you awayfrom hiking the trails to come
talk to me, but I'm sure myaudience will appreciate it, and
thank you so much.
Max DesMarais (31:02):
Thank you so much for having me.
It was very fun.
Erin Manning (31:04):
Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixels
Society podcast.
Read more great stories andsign up for the newsletter at
wwwthedeadpixelssocietycom.
Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast, the
photo imaging industry'sleading news source.
Here's your host, gary Pegeau.
The Dead Pixel Society podcastis brought to you by Mediaclip,
Advertek Printing, andIndependent Photo Imagers.
Gary Pageau (00:18):
Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixels
Society podcast.
I'm your host, Gary Pageau.
Today we're joined by MaxDesMarais, who's the Director of
Strategy at Vital Design.
He's coming to us from SaltLake City, Utah.
Hi Max, how are you today?
I'm doing pretty well
Hey, Max, tell us a little bitabout Vital Design and the whole
(00:38):
marketing world.
Before we get into the actualcontent, can you just talk about
how you got into the businessand what the company does?
Max DesMarais (00:47):
Yeah for sure.
So I've been at Vital for thelast nine years or so.
We're a full service marketagency.
We basically build brands andbrand foundations and websites
and we take those websites,brands and foundations and bring
them into what we call digitalmarketing retainers, which is
basically driving more traffic,driving more leads, driving more
(01:09):
revenue through marketingactivities to capture a positive
return on investment.
And so we basically buildbrands and market those brands
and companies to drive positivereturn on investment.
I've been in digital marketingfor quite a bit of time.
I grew up in New Hampshire, wasobsessed with the outdoors,
went to the University of NewHampshire and got into digital
marketing because I felt like itwas the future of marketing,
(01:30):
where I felt like I wanted to bein the marketing field.
And as a prospective digitalmarketer trying to enter the
digital marketing space, I hadfelt that my education was
lacking on the digital marketingside of things.
So I actually started my ownwebsite, my Outdoor Base Camp,
to merge my passions withdigital marketing, to teach
(01:51):
myself digital marketing andhelp me get a job out of college
, and so since then I've hadthis small business on the side.
That's helped me use it as asandbox to learn digital
marketing, but also helped meincorporate my passions into my
everyday work.
Gary Pageau (02:06):
So if somebody goes to my outdoor base camp, what
do they find there?
Max DesMarais (02:11):
They're going to find a whole bunch of trail
guides and information onspecific adventures, so, for
example, like how to hike aspecific mountain or fly fish in
a specific river.
They're going to find tons ofgear reviews uh, both like
things like the best backpacksor individual reviews on
backpacks and things like that.
And so it's just a litany ofresources to help people get
(02:32):
outside, as well as just, youknow, tips for getting into
trail running or getting intofly fishing, whatever it may be.
Uh, and I've been, you know,writing articles for years and
driving organic traffic anddoing affiliate marketing and
selling photography, prints anddoing all these types of things
and also being a did a stint ofbeing a hiking guide and so
forth.
Gary Pageau (02:50):
So yeah, so prints, .
I mean, I mean, do you have apreferred lab for that?
Max DesMarais (02:56):
it's okay to name them if you have somebody, yeah
yeah, so I actually I did thedigital marketing thing and drop
shipped everything and used aservice called Printful.
Gary Pageau (03:05):
Okay.
Max DesMarais (03:06):
Which basically allowed me to easily spin up
tons of products on myWooCommerce site.
Basically, it allowed me totest much easier what type of
product is working, and I knowif someone purchases, it's auto
fulfilled, and so I could dolike canvas prints or specific
prints or even t-shirts andthings like that all from one
place pretty quickly, and sothat was something that was, you
(03:28):
know, not the most profitablething when you do it that way,
but allows you to do a lot ofpivoting and testing early yeah,
yeah, actually I've hadprintful on the podcast before,
so I'm very the audience is veryfamiliar with printful.
Gary Pageau (03:39):
I think it'd be exciting for them to hear
somebody, a user, actually fromtheir perspective, right.
So let's talk a little bitabout that A-B testing piece,
because I think that's somethingthat at least in our industry
there's not a lot of action onright.
Can you talk about what A-Btesting is and when you'd want
to use it, like for services orfor just appeals, or for gears
(04:01):
or for gear launches or whatsome of the things you that
would be ideal for that?
Max DesMarais (04:07):
yeah, totally so.
Uh, ab testing and inherentlyis testing two variations of one
thing against one another tosee which performs best.
You'll often hear people referto it as ab testing when they
might actually be doing what'smore called multivariate testing
, because a true ab test istesting one specific thing
against one other specific thingand in the case of small
(04:28):
businesses that's often reallyhard to do without lots of
volume Meaning.
You can run a test against oneanother, but unless you have a
substantial amount of volume orvery big differences in results,
it's hard to get statisticalsignificance and say like this
version actually outperformedthis one versus the other one.
So A-B testing is basicallytesting two things.
(04:50):
I think every small businessowner or organization should be
doing some type of A-B testing,and where I would say small
businesses should focus on isless of the A-B test and more of
the.
I'm going to test one thingagainst an entirely different
variation of a similar thing andchange a whole bunch of things
so that we can get largedifferences in performance.
(05:10):
That allows us to get morestatistical relevance, and you
can do this in tons of differentways.
So, for example, you know, onthe advertising side of things,
if you wanted to test twoentirely different products
against the same keywords onGoogle.
You could do that.
You would send them to twoentirely different landing pages
and see how one converts versusthe other, and there's millions
(05:30):
of different tests that you canrun as a small business owner
or individual.
Gary Pageau (05:34):
So when you say A-B testing I know there's a lot of
the email platforms likeMailChimp and whatnot have that
built in.
Is that okay, just to use whatthey've got, or is there a
special tool that people shouldbe considering?
Max DesMarais (05:48):
Yeah, it just depends what you're trying to do
.
So, for email, I think it's agreat tool for everyone, and
tons of people use tools likeMailChimp and you should be
using their built-in A-B testing.
So, for example, any email yousend.
A great way to leverage that ABtesting is to test subject
lines.
So, um, you don't evennecessarily have to do the what
(06:09):
MailChimp kind of pushes you todo, which is like test 20% of
your audience and then send therest to the winner.
What you can do is just totallysplit it 50, 50, and then every
single week or every singlemonth when you're sending
something, you can glean lessonsfrom that.
This performed better than thisone on this week, and this one
performed better than this oneon this week.
And you can just take kind ofanecdotal evidence out of these
(06:30):
A-B tests that you're runningand just teach yourself what's
working, what's not working.
It's a great use case for doingthat.
And then the other side ofthings is like if you want to
redesign your email template orchange the structure, there can
be lots to be gained there.
So, for example, a-b testingyour very designed, beautiful
version, your email that's gottons of images and looks
gorgeous, versus your plain textemail, which is basically a
(06:53):
block of text and maybe somelinks in it.
I think, particularly in thespace of photography, you'd be
surprised how underperformingwhat overly designed emails can
be, for various reasons, onereason being you get stuck in
spam filters with tons of imagesor the email actually loads
slower than it would like aplain text version, and the
(07:14):
other being, you know, sometimesunder designed seems more
personal like a plain text email.
So there's those types ofthings that are great AB tests
on the email side of things.
If you're running ads, I thinkthere's those types of things
that are great A-B tests on theemail side of things.
If you're running ads, I thinkthere's a huge opportunity to be
running tests via either A-Btesting platforms or just via
your ad accounts.
Like I said, test a landingpage against another landing
(07:36):
page or keywords versus otherkeywords.
There's huge opportunities tocontinuously improve through
testing.
Gary Pageau (07:43):
There's a lot of talk about funnels and things
right, where you want to drivepeople to a specific landing
page.
Should you do that witheverything or just the major
stuff, right?
If you're doing a bigpromotional let's say, for
example, for back to schoolsomething you'd want a landing
page for that, but would you useit for your everyday half price
(08:05):
print day or something likethat?
Max DesMarais (08:08):
It's a good question and I would say almost
always a designated landing pageis going to outperform.
Where you're going to sendpeople.
To the extent in which it'sgoing to outperform depends
pretty drastically on thequality of your original page
that you're going to send peopleto, on the quality of your
original page that you're goingto send people to.
So it's hard to answer thatquestion, but I would say, if
(08:29):
you have the time and you'rewilling to put in the effort, a
dedicated landing page is almostalways worth it because you can
incorporate making sure thatone it's conversion rate optimal
Optimize, meaning like you'redoing all the best practices to
get people to take the actionyou want them to take and you're
not spreading their attentionacross.
You know your main menu andlike these other four things
(08:50):
that they might do.
There's a lot of value in that.
And then also the intent Ifyou're sending people to a
general page when they searchfor something specific, you tend
to get worse performanceperformance, and so I think
almost always you should betrying to leverage a landing
page, which I would justquantify as a dedicated page to
(09:11):
whatever you're trying toadvertise or push people to, but
there's always that sort ofurge to.
Gary Pageau (09:14):
I want people to see everything and if I got them
there to see the camera bags orthe backpacks, I want them to
see the water bottles and thelenses and the filters.
How do you restrain that, Iguess?
Max DesMarais (09:30):
Yeah, I mean it's a very interesting thing
because I think, as a digitalmarketer who's seen these types
of tests over and over and overagain across lots of different
industries, it's prettyincredible how reducing choice
improves your ability to getpeople to take the action you
want them to take.
I would rather get someone totake the action I want them to
(09:50):
take, and at a higher percentage, and then teach them about all
the other awesome things that Ioffer, because you're going to
generally see better conversionrates that way.
So I'll take it as an exampleIf they're searching for a
camera bag, I want them to buythat camera bag, and if they
take action whether it be buyingthat camera bag I can use that
(10:11):
as a great opportunity to teachthem all about the other things
that I offer.
And if they don't take thataction, I can use tools like
remarketing to follow themaround and either try to get
them to make that purchase orthen educate them about all the
other great stuff that we do.
So I'm on the lines of it'salmost always better to teach
them about what they're lookingfor specifically rather than
(10:34):
show them off everything elsethat you do.
Gary Pageau (10:36):
But it is because it's funny, because I see a lot
of websites in the industry,especially the print sites, and
they literally bombard peoplewith every possible combination
of product that they havebecause they feel it's because
they've got I mean, withoutsourcing and dropshipping and
everything else, you've gotbasically a universe of products
(10:58):
you can sell.
But you do kind of.
You know, there's analysis,paralysis that happens from the
consumer side, because if youput on the consumer hat they're
inundated with messages all thetime.
Max DesMarais (11:09):
Yeah, you have to meet the consumers where
they're at too.
I think that's an importantelement of this, like there's
consumers that don't know whatthey want, and if they're in
that stage, you need to helpguide them into what is actually
going to fulfill their need,and that might be where you need
to be further expanding yourpage.
However, if you have someonethat's searching for something
specific, they've alreadyidentified their specific need.
(11:29):
You want to service thatspecific need, and I think it's
important to recognize thatwhenever you're doing marketing,
particularly digital marketing,there's always this need to
understand that your buyers aregoing to be in very different
stages all the time, and youneed to think about what stage
they're in at that specific time.
This comes into play with paidsearch advertising, as an
(11:50):
example.
All the time, the keywords thatyou're going after will either
indicate they're ready to buythis one thing right now, or
they're much higher up in thebuyer's funnel and we have to do
more education.
Or they're interested in fiveor six different products, or
they're in a comparison mode.
So, it's just really importantto think about where your buyer
is at that particular moment.
Gary Pageau (12:08):
So let's talk a little bit about paid
advertising, cause that sort ofworld is is is changing pretty
rapidly, right you got you don'tjust focus on Google, cause
they're kind of the big dog, butyou know, obviously there's
Bing and other platforms too,but and there's a lot happening
(12:32):
there in the paid ad spacebecause AI is coming in and it's
stealing a lot of traffic fromGoogle.
What do you think that's goingto?
How that's going to impact thepaid advertising piece?
Max DesMarais (12:38):
Yeah, I mean, it's been a crazy landscape the
past particular year probablythe craziest in the history of
time and what we're noticing ingeneral is that pay to play is
becoming actually more importantthan ever.
You're losing organic abilityto show up for queries.
So, for example we'll just useGoogle as the example here when
(13:00):
people are searching forsomething online, they're far
less likely to click on anorganic result than they were 24
months ago.
So if a thousand people aresearching for something specific
and it used to be 70% of thosepeople would click on an organic
search result.
It's now more like 30, 40, or50% of those people.
Gary Pageau (13:20):
And why is that?
I mean, is it because Google'spushing them, the links, the
paid links?
Yeah?
Max DesMarais (13:25):
it because Google's pushing them.
The links, the paid link.
Yeah, it's two reasons there's.
There's the paid advertising.
Real estate is continuing togrow, meaning when you search
something, you're going to seehalf the time shopping ads at
top.
Uh, then search ads and thenmaybe, uh, like a featured
snippet type thing, or also theai overview, so like the ads are
taking up almost the entire topfold.
(13:47):
Meaning you have to scroll toget to your organic listings so
that pay to play is becomingmore relevant.
And at the same time this ishappening, we're seeing those AI
overviews in Google all thetime, meaning you type anything
with the question, for example,you'll see Google's AI overview
gives you the chat GBT likeresponse, and compiles things,
and that is eating a tremendousamount of clicks on the organic
(14:09):
side of things.
And we're also in this timeperiod where I think it's pretty
clear that Google lost revenueby doing that, meaning it's
pushing their ads down.
Google says we've lost norevenue on AI overview queries
that are showing, but what we'regoing to see is that ads are
going to start to beincorporated into those AI
overviews as well, so they'renot losing the revenue and it's
(14:33):
just more reason to see.
The pay to play is prettyessential in a lot of these
spaces.
In order to get those clicks,you probably need to be running
paid search ads on Google.
Gary Pageau (14:42):
So just the good old, hey, I'm going to create
some great content and drop itout there and SEO optimize my
keywords and my description andall that stuff that's being
de-emphasized now by Google.
Max DesMarais (14:55):
It's harder to win.
First of all, it's a morecompetitive space and when you
do win, generally youropportunity is a bit lower than
it was a couple of years ago,meaning you're not going to get
as many clicks as you used to.
So I think it's important formarketers to just understand
that that the opportunity maybehas dropped a little bit.
In the way that you weigh yourmarketing efforts needs to, the
(15:17):
math that you use might need tochange a little bit.
You might need to emphasizesome of these paid tactics a
little bit more than some ofthese existing organic tactics
in certain situations, becausethe pay to play has taken over
in some of those areas.
Gary Pageau (15:30):
So when you're talking about, let's say,
someone who is, you know, let'ssay, an independent camera store
, right, and they've got, youknow, don't have an infinite
budget and they're up againstthe B&Hs and the Adoramas and
the people like that who do havea much bigger budget.
And let's say, for example, theco-op from Canon and Nikon
isn't quite covering the freightright, so you have a limited
(15:52):
budget.
What do you suggest?
Or some of your tactics?
Or do you just say, listen, Imay not be able to compete there
, so I'm going to do more onanother platform.
Maybe I do Instagram, maybe Ido TikTok or something like that
?
What are some of the otheroptions?
You just kind of?
You know, I'm talking aboutpeople with a finite budget,
right?
Max DesMarais (16:10):
I will say there's a benefit to the local
store, the local owner.
That is a little bit betterthan some of these national
level organizations.
Meaning there is, as I'm sureeveryone notices, a lot of local
customization happening in theresults for Google.
So if you're in a specificlocation and you have your own
(16:31):
Google Chrome profile, whatGoogle shows you is going to be
different based off of yourlocation and your existing
habits.
Erin Manning (16:36):
Right.
Max DesMarais (16:37):
And when it comes to local stores and things like
that, there's still a lot ofopportunity probably more so
than nationally basedorganizations to show up to your
local audience, whether that'stown specific, region specific
or state specific.
Generally speaking, there's alot of opportunity there still
to make sure that you're havingthe proper pages organically to
(16:59):
drive traffic, because you canshow up and beat national
organizations on the local level.
So I would say, like, don'tlose sight of that.
As a local small business andthen on the paid advertising
side of things, there's stilltons of opportunity for the same
reason, like local basedorganizations can way now and
even if they're not local based,like they can still beat out
national level organizations bycreating really high quality
(17:22):
niche campaigns that are justgoing to beat out some of the
things that the nationalorganizations aren't going to do
, because these smalleropportunities aren't as
important to them or as relevantto them.
Gary Pageau (17:32):
So when you're talking about local now, does
that include like optimizingyour Google my Business page and
things like that?
I've talked to a few peopleover the years who have really
said that's sort of anoverlooked thing, that people
are missing out on that.
That's a way to really tellgoogle hey, I'm local, I'm
active, go for it yeah, totally.
Max DesMarais (17:53):
I like no brainer things are definitely make sure
your google my business profileis optimized, has accurate
information and has all the info.
Like fill it out as much as youpossibly can, add imagery, make
sure it's accurate and keep itupdated Right, like number one.
Like definitely do that Numbertwo on the local front, like use
your other local businessesthat are around you, maybe not
(18:16):
related to you, know yourspecific industry, but you know
hotels, restaurants, things likethat.
Leverage partnerships and useone another to interlink and
talk about one another, becausethat's going to also tell Google
oh, this company is workingwith other local organizations,
they're very clearly legitimateand they're very more connected
(18:36):
to this particular locale.
So I think two things that areoverlooked are Google my
Business page and then justleveraging other local
organizations and companies towork together.
Mention each other on yoursites, do some co-marketing.
I think there's a lot that canhappen there.
Oh sure.
Yeah.
Gary Pageau (18:53):
Well, I mean just because, when we think of like a
photography company, right, yougot either photographer they
can if it's a weddingphotographer, they can talk
about venues they go to Right orvendors they use or or caterers
that they've worked with, youknow, there's all kinds of
opportunity there and I imaginethat's a very natural thing to
do and something they should bedoing anyway, Right.
Max DesMarais (19:12):
Absolutely, and I would say like, if you're
thinking on the digital side, betactical about it, like get
them to put up a blog post or apage on their website that links
to you and mentions you, andthat's going to go a long way on
your organic ranking side ofthings Because, like Google
wants to see those things.
It's indicative that you're inthat community, you're speaking
with other businesses, and it'sgoing to help you a lot on the
(19:34):
organic side of things and thetrust building side.
Gary Pageau (19:36):
Because that's really.
I think one of the things thatpeople tend to overlook is part
of Google's promise to theirusers is we're sending you to
legit places, that these arevalid.
So you know, when people haveproblems with Google, it's
probably because they haven'tdone enough on their end to
(19:56):
appear legitimate to the Google.
Max DesMarais (19:59):
Yeah, totally appear legitimate to the google.
Yeah, totally.
I think I'll add one more thingbefore you get is just uh,
reviews and testimonials are soimportant for this type of thing
.
So, like make sure you have aprocess to go back to your happy
customers and have them leaveyou some type of review.
Google is a great place forthat.
Leave google reviews, but ifyou're using some type of
third-party review platform, dothat as well.
(20:21):
Make sure there's something inthere, because it's hugely
beneficial on multiple fronts.
Of course, the organic front,showing that trust building
Google is more likely to rankyou higher if you have lots of
reviews.
But it's also hugely importanton the conversion front, like
the more you have these reviewsfrom other happy customers, the
more likely that person that isalready on your website is going
to make a purchase or engagewith you in some way.
Gary Pageau (20:44):
So there's always a talk about you know in
marketing, you know howimportant video is coming, you
know how important that is forall that.
But you also hear differentthings also about it gets
attention but doesn'tnecessarily help with
transactions.
Is that something you're seeing?
Max DesMarais (21:00):
No, I would say gets attention but doesn't
necessarily help withtransactions.
Is that something you're seeing?
No, I would say video ishelping with transactions a lot.
When we put videos on productpages for our clients, for
example, we see conversion ratesspike pretty substantially.
So it can vary, but basicallyanytime we leverage a video on
any page, we almost always seean improvement in conversion
(21:20):
rate meaning the people that hitthat page convert into our
desired action more frequentlywhen a video is on it.
This is true for early stageleads, so think like an ebook or
a white paper or joining awebinar but it's also true for
product pages, so an e-commercepurchase or even picking up the
phone and speaking to a salesrepresentative.
When we include videos on pages, it's extremely rare for us to
(21:43):
not see a bump in conversion.
And it's the crazy thing.
It's almost becoming tablestakes to have video and a lot
of things across lots oforganizations.
So the more that you canincorporate video, the better.
And then, on top of that, we'realso seeing the increased
traffic and increased rankingson many types of pages when we
incorporate videos.
so this happens for for blogposts, meaning, like do a video
(22:05):
that covers a lot of what's inthe blog post that you're
talking about, we tend to seethat blog post improving
rankings.
This happens on product pages.
When we add videos to productpages, we tend to see those
product pages show up in searchand the result page is higher
because there's a video on there.
And then there's a thirdelement of it, which is this
depends on the topic of thevideo.
But if there's a video on thereand then there's the third
element of it, which is thisdepends on the topic of the
video.
But if it's a video that youalso publish, say on YouTube,
(22:26):
you have the opportunity to showup on YouTube for people
searching for that particulartopic.
And that same thing applies tothe social media channels where,
like, search engineoptimization is no longer just a
Google thing.
Tiktok is a search engine,instagram is a search engine,
amazon is a search engine.
Instagram is a search engine,amazon is a search engine,
youtube is a search engine.
You have to be thinking aboutyour content and multiple medias
(22:47):
because of that, and it givesyou that opportunity to not only
convert people on your websitebetter, but also you have this
other channel where people mayfind you, because they're
searching for these types ofthings in video format.
Gary Pageau (22:58):
I guess where I was going with that was just saying
, not necessarily video onproduct pages, but on more, like
you know, doing Instagram hitsand things like that.
Erin Manning (23:05):
But as you say, it's even better though.
Gary Pageau (23:08):
I mean there will be some benefit if you say hey,
this is our new bag, we got it,you know.
Click here for more informationthat will perform better than a
static picture.
Max DesMarais (23:16):
Yeah, almost always.
I think the the video basedstuff on social media is is
really important now, and Ithink uh, I watch a lot of
organizations get stuck in thetrap, though, of like searching
for views rather than theirideal target.
Gary Pageau (23:30):
Well, that's my point is because when I hear
from people who do you knowstores, who are like they get
into this and they get into aroutine and it's almost like
they want to be a performer, nota retailer.
Max DesMarais (23:43):
Yeah it's, it's a .
It's a difficult thing Cause,like you want to try and
maximize your like pagesexposure and get that video out
there, but when you do so,you're often like maybe
potentially even alienating yourtrue ideal customer profile
because you're not talking aboutthe things that you want to.
And I think there's animportant balance there of
creating content that is goingto hopefully get beyond your
(24:07):
ideal target audience but alsois appealing to your ideal
target audience.
And I think it's more importantto focus on video creation
that's tailored directly to yourideal customer profile than it
is to try and go viral.
Gary Pageau (24:19):
Really Okay.
So that's interesting because Ithink that's again goes back to
the idea of restraint, right?
Is that the idea that you knowyou're not going to appeal to
everybody in every way, so youmay use a different tactic to
maybe draw in new customers,right?
But you're saying video may notnecessarily be the best way to
reach first time visitors toyour platform, you know, through
(24:41):
a wacky video.
Max DesMarais (24:43):
Yeah, I don't know, maybe a wacky video.
I think there's a lot ofopportunity for growth.
I think on video based channelslike we're in a time period
where we'll take Instagram orTikTok like you don't have to
have a massive amount offollowing to grow those
audiences Like we're in a timewhere they they pay off based
off of how engaging the contentis that you create to whatever
(25:06):
audience they want to show it to.
So you, as someone who'sstarting fresh, if you produce
really high quality contentthat's meant for a specific
audience, that follows the bestpractices, like maintaining
engagement, there's a goodchance that it's going to get
pushed out to the right peopleand you're going to be able to
continue to grow.
So I I would not discount videoas a very good strategy and I
think there's a greatopportunity today where these
(25:28):
platforms are much lessconcerned about your following
and much more concerned aboutthe quality of content you're
producing.
I just don't want people to getin the trap of producing
content that truly isn't tryingto get in front of their target
audience.
Otherwise you're just not goingto get the value out of it.
Gary Pageau (25:42):
You mentioned best practices.
What would be for the benefitof the platform, the kind of
stuff they're looking for?
What would be one or two of thebest practices there, the thing
that they're looking for, thatthey want to push right?
Max DesMarais (25:56):
Yeah, I mean, they want engagement, right.
They want view time and theywant to see that people are
watching your stuff to itscompletion and they want to see
that, once they do that, they'realso interacting with it and
also sharing it with otherpeople to expand the reach.
So you have to be thinkingabout those metrics and if you
(26:17):
go into we'll take likeInstagram as an example it's
going to be like like how, whatpercentage of people watched
past your first three seconds?
If that is low, you're destinedfor failure, right.
And so it becomes this game ofkeeping attention as long as you
possibly can and then trying toget people to take specific
actions.
and, uh, best practices arereally hard to say there,
(26:38):
because there's this like wholeviral game that's going on yeah
yeah, exactly, yeah all thesepsychological things you have to
do to win yeah but b you haveto be thinking about how do we
keep people engaged, how do wehook them in and get to the
payoff at the end rather than,uh, like easing into it, because
people's attention spans aretoo short, especially on these
social media platforms.
(26:58):
If you want win, you got to bequick in getting their attention
.
I mean, it just seems to melike there's a lot.
Gary Pageau (27:03):
There's a constantly moving menu of visual
tricks people are using rightLike the whole, like right now I
think it's hot that you'restarting off camera and then
they move the camera in likesuddenly and like you're popping
in, like you're coming off thething you know there's like are
they going to classes for this?
Or who's teaching them thisstuff?
I mean it's, it's kind of crazywhen you look at this stuff
(27:24):
yeah, you can watch people.
Max DesMarais (27:25):
Like if you go through famous pages, you'll see
the formula that they figuredout at some point, like when
everyone else does it.
Gary Pageau (27:32):
They got to come up with something new yeah,
exactly that's.
Max DesMarais (27:35):
That's.
It's a whole constantlychanging game, because what
keeps people attentioneventually gets saturated and
switches, and then you have tofind a new way to hook people in
and the people thatcontinuously win.
You'll see them adapt.
You'll see their video-basedstrategies adapt and how they
produce that content and it's Iwill say it's like a really
creative based game and it'sreally hard to win and something
(27:55):
that our agency is trying tofigure out right now how to win
in those it's not nearly as easyas a lot of other things are oh
, absolutely.
Gary Pageau (28:04):
I mean because you're dealing with moods and
perception and trends and thingslike that, as opposed to hey,
this is a dashboard, we're goingto run some ab tests and things
like.
Max DesMarais (28:12):
If you take the most famous people, they've
clearly figured it out, like mrbeast, as an example yeah
exactly.
Yeah, like they've figured outthis way to keep people's
attention, and I don't.
Gary Pageau (28:21):
There's a lot of influences I've seen have fallen
off too, so Well, that's mypoint is you've got this sort of
you know, rise and fall, almostlike you know the fad life
cycle thing, right, where it'slike hot for a few seconds peaks
and then drops off, right.
And you know I don't think myaudience you know they're
running their day-to-daybusiness, right.
(28:42):
The payoff isn't there for themto invest in spending three
hours a day analyzing trends.
Maybe that's what they hiresomeone like you guys for right,
but the reality is you know theday-to-day business, somebody
who's not doing a Mr Beast orsomething you know it's a
challenge, right.
Max DesMarais (28:59):
Yeah, it's really a challenge, challenging.
I think a lot of smallbusinesses are lacking the
basics.
First, right, they shouldreally be focusing on make sure
your website explains what youdo clearly.
Make sure there's clear call toactions on it.
Make sure you have the pagesthat highlight your products and
all of your services right in aclear way and gets in the
convert.
Make sure your google mybusiness is updated.
Make sure you're gettingreviews and then make sure that
(29:20):
you're producing content that'sgoing to help push them through
the funnel and like those basicthings 80% of organizations
aren't doing consistently Reallyand yeah, I don't think so.
No, I would definitely stand bythat Most organizations are not
doing that stuff well, and thebasic foundation things are
where you should start doingthat stuff.
Gary Pageau (29:42):
Well, and those, the basic foundation things, are
where you should start.
So have that down before youeven think about going viral,
probably, because I mean,actually the worst thing that
could happen probably would beif you do come up with something
and one of your you knowbackpacking videos goes viral
and you don't have a clear callto action on your website, you
don't have a clear funnel, youdon't and you, you miss all that
(30:04):
opportunity.
Max DesMarais (30:05):
That's.
That's exactly right.
That's why we call it like thefoundation building in our
agency of of.
Like.
We don't want to spend all thismoney to drive traffic to a
poor foundation because we'renot going to generate the
revenue return investment.
So like it's more important forus to make sure the foundation
is solid first, before we spendthat time to bring all the
eyeballs there.
Gary Pageau (30:24):
Some would say that's a vital design.
Max DesMarais (30:27):
Yes, they would.
Gary Pageau (30:30):
So where can people go to learn more about Vital
Design and the things you guysoffer?
Max DesMarais (30:34):
If you want to find Vital Design, simply do a
Google search for Vital Designand you'll find our website
right there, which has links toall of our socials, and then,
right below our website, you'llfind a bunch of links to all of
our socials as well, and you'llsee that we offer digital
marketing services, websitedesign and development and a
whole litany of other digitalmarketing tactics.
Gary Pageau (30:52):
Awesome.
Well, listen, Max, it's beengreat talking to you.
I'm sorry that I took you awayfrom hiking the trails to come
talk to me, but I'm sure myaudience will appreciate it, and
thank you so much.
Max DesMarais (31:02):
Thank you so much for having me.
It was very fun.
Erin Manning (31:04):
Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixels
Society podcast.
Read more great stories andsign up for the newsletter at
wwwthedeadpixelssocietycom.
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