Showing posts with label eCommerce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eCommerce. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Video is the Swiss Army Knife Of Internet Marketing - Mark Robertson, ReelSEO.com


According to ReelSEO.com's Mark Robertson, online video is the swiss army knife of online marketing, and social video can help eCommerce retailers move from conversions to conversations with their customers. I sat down with Mark following his keynote, "Welcome to the ‘REEL’ Web: Why Video Marketing has Evolved Beyond SEO" at Liveclicker’s 2011 Video Commerce Summit in San Francisco last month, to get a high level overview of how social media has changed search, the state of V-Commerce and what tactics and tools eCommerce marketers can harness to move beyond product videos.


Retailers Have Embraced Product Video

Mark says that SEO has evolved over the last 10 years, and now social media engagement enhances SEO rankings, a lot. Universal video search is becoming less effective for e-commerce transactional queries.
"I feel that eCommerce providers, for the most part, have done a fairly good job with online video, and they've embraced product video, specifically. So product videos on their landing pages, which makes sense. It's cost effective, highly measurable and they are there to sell products. But I believe as well, that online video is the swiss army knife of Internet marketing. It really can be used all over the customer life cycle. So, whether it's customer service, whether it's marketing, even recruitment, people are using video."
He included a few statistics in his presentation to illustrate his point:
• 73% of US retailers feature video on product pages in Q4 2010.  ⇑ vs. 55% 2009.
• # retailers > 1,000 videos on their websites ⇑10% from Q4 2010 to Q1 2011.
• ⇑ 37% YOY growth in video views for LiveClicker retail sites live with video >1 year.

Source: eMarketer's "Video for Ecommerce" report | Sunday Sky’s “State of Video in Ecommerce Q1 2011” | MediaPost, Justin Foster 7/2011

Mark emphasized that while product videos are great, they don't lend themselves well to social sharing or universal video search. So while they're incredibly important, he says that marketers’ must embrace social video throughout the customer life cycle and produce video that lends itself to social. He cited a number of strategies and video types that can be applied to the video marketing purchase funnel, and a key ingredient to every application is to make all videos sharable.

StrategiesVideo Types
Video Advertising, Video SEO, Live Video Events, Social Video, Video DistributionVideo Commercials, Branded Video, Instructional (How-to) Videos, UGC Videos, Lifestyle Content
Video SEO, Social Video, Video Chat
Company profiles, Product Demos, Video Case Studies, Video Testimonials, Video Comparisons,
Website Video, Video Chat
Product Videos
Website Video
Training Videos, User Generated Videos, Video FAQs, Corporate Image/Culture, Customer Support, Thank you/rewards videos
Video Sharing/Social Video/UGC 
MAKE ALL VIDEOS SHAREABLE
Product Video Reviews/Testimonials

Examples of Retailers Going Beyond the Product Video

He presented a few examples of companies that were doing some innovative work that goes beyond the product video. 

Think Thin
ThinkThin, a health and wellness bar retailer, is providing comment value with its lifestyle web series that features the company’s CEO and Founder, Lizanne Falsetto, called Lizanne Naturally. It's highly produced branded entertainment in the form of a weekly web cooking show that is simultaneous released across all channels (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter), with outreach partnerships on relevant YouTube channels and niche target sites like diet.com.  It's a good example of an eCommerce company investing in online video outside of the product page.
"In challenging socio-economic times, people are searching for authenticity, even in the brands they buy. Consumers want to be given something more than forced advertising. They want community and trust. Producing original branded video content is one way to provide value back to the community and grow brand awareness and loyalty at the same time." - Stacy Bellew, ThinkProducts, Inc.
How does it tie back into sales?
• Carefully - Viewers want value, not a sales pitch
• Indirectly – Brand awareness, Loyalty = soft ROI
• Calls to action
  - “Download the recipe” – takes viewers to product website.
  - ASK: for email information, Facebook likes, etc...
  - Incentive: 20% coupon



Zappos.com
Zappos is embracing video like it's going out of style. The eCommerce retail giant sells over 300,000 different products, and began producing product videos in 2009 and soon found that the company could sell anywhere from 6-30% more merchandise when accompanied by videos. In its first year, Zappos exceeded its goal producing over 50,000 videos and is looking to double that in 2011. Zappos also has a YouTube it uses to expose its brand to the public and interact with the community. The channel offers fun behind the scenes looks at Zappos and has a number of blooper reels in its YouTube page. Zappos is a great example of a eCommerce retailer getting it right with video and has developed a broad and comprehensive video retail strategy. 

Zappos Video Strategy
• Product videos
• How-to videos
• Brand marketing
• Internal communications
• Corporate culture
• User-generated product reviews (planned)
• Video reviews
• Customer service videos
“What works the best is the fact that our videos are very real. There is value in being candid. There's an emotional connection that can’t be captured via photograph or text” – Laurie Williams, Zappos.com Video Product Manager
The results have been powerful with an increase in product page conversions and customer satisfaction and a decrease in product returns. Its success can be attributed to an honest, personal, informative approach to its video strategy and a diffusion to all its channels (Zappos website, YouTube, Facebook).

This video is from Zappos' insidezappos YouTube channel and explains how to properly package a return.



Moving from Conversions to Conversations
Mark concluded that eCommerce retailers must embrace social video as part of their overall marketing strategy throughout customer life cycle.
"I really think that product videos are a no brainer, and I honestly believe that every eCommerce retailer should be doing them. I can't think of any logical reasons now why they shouldn't. That being said, I think that there's many other opportunities around that and I think that if eCommerce retailers really want to embrace online video and really excel, they'll be doing video across the customer life cycle and that will lend itself better to social, that will lend itself better to search and helpfully we'll some interesting innovation there."

About Mark Robertson 
Mark Robertson is the Founder and Publisher of ReelSEO, an online information resource dedicated to the fusion of video, technology, social media, search, and internet marketing. In addition to running Reel SEO, Mark is a popular web video consultant and has worked on digital-video initiatives with several major brands, including, Zappos.com. He is considered a leading expert within the digital video and search marketing industries and has had the pleasure of speaking at many conferences including Search Engine Strategies, Streaming Media, SMX,  PubCon, Video Commerce Summit, Online Video Platform Summit, Online Video Summit, and more…
Twitter @markrrobertson | Google Plus | Facebook | Linkedin | YouTube


Related

Posted by at 12 comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Getting Online Video to Measure Up - Dan Piech, comScore


2010 was massive year of growth for online video, throughout the industry and the way consumers accessed video content. Analysts are seeing a sharp rise in online video viewing compared to traditional television, which has huge implications for online video advertising and marketing. Digital media measurement firm comScore noted in its “The 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review” that eCommerce spending in 2010 grew 9% to $227 billion in sales. Social networking site continue to drive views as audiences build, share and engage on sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Tumblr. For businesses, there's no other tool more important than online video analytics to capture how your video content is consumed on the web.

Dan Piech, Senior Product Management Analyst with comScore says, the best way online video publishers and marketers create and sustain value is through differentiation, and the way you do that is through your data.
"It's not just about understanding your audience," Piech says, "but then putting together a pitch that sells that audience to advertisers."


Piech says that online publishers will not have the reach of a television audience, and for small publishers it will be even harder. So he suggests that publishers find that niche audience, develop it and sell that niche based on what you've learned about it from your metrics, because the agencies are not going to do that for you. He says that digital market intelligence services like comScore help you better understand your audience.

comScore believes that they have the most accurate methodology for measuring digital media. Each month, the digital media measurement firm comScore releases its Online Video Rankings from its Video Metrix service, with the most recent comScore May 2011 U.S. Online Video Rankings, that showed 83.3 percent of the U.S. Internet audience (176 million) watched online video content in May for an average of 15.9 hours per viewer. Video ads accounted for 12.6 percent of all videos viewed and 1.2 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.

How comScore gets at the data is a secret sauce merged from two sources. The first source is a panel of two million Internet users worldwide that they track their behavior. One aspect of that behavior is watching videos. So they're able to understand where they are watching videos, how long they're watching videos, get a good sense of unique viewers , and project that to the total populations. The second source is census-level data collection method, commonly referred to as unified digital measurement, and comScore works with all the top publishers in the video and media space to get that data. In the method, publishers send data every time a video is viewed.
"By that we're able to get a very census-level, total population look at the video activity on that site," Piech says. "and furthermore, break that video activity down to very granular levels."

As an example, for clients like NBC, CBS or MTV, comScore is able to break down how people are engaging with those shows on a a census level from that unified digital measurement, as well as on the panel. Like Nielsen, comScore tracks that activity across all screens and as Piech notes
"Obviously we're paying close attention to the cross-media space and the three screen developments that are taking place. Because at the end of the day, content is king, as you always hear and to the extent that that's the case, we have to follow that content wherever it goes."
Piech says, currently that's mostly online but we're at a turning point in the space where mobile and OTT are growing very fast. So comScore is working on developing the indicators to know where the space will be in five years, mostly through surveys that help forecast audience perceptions. In a recent survey, comScore was working to understand the level of ad loads that users would be willing to watch, or rather willing to endure. What they found was that online viewers are perfectly willing to watch twice as many ads for their content. Piech says that when it comes down to it, the numbers are people, and by putting a face to the numbers puts an emphasis not just on numbers, but attitudinal changes happening in the space which helps publishers better understand how their content is consumed so they can best monetize it moving forward.




As the current trends in online video continue to show massive growth, so does the opportunities for online video publishers and marketers. Many analysts say that for the last several years we've reached a tipping point for online video.
"We've reached a state in the online video space now where almost everyone online is watching video at some point in the month," says Piech, "so we've now got that reach. But what's interesting that we're finding out is that now that everyone is watching online video, people are starting to watch a lot more."
He says it's more than doubled in the last year and is fascinated by the trend, because online video is still a small part of the overall activity of any individual day as compared to television, but what's happening is that's growing incredibly fast. Engagement levels are up, number of videos views are up and that's across all demographics and all across the board, and it's happening at a very high rate.
"So if you do a simple extrapolation that, in the very near future where online video is a major, major player out there," Piech notes, "and that's what makes me really excited about the space. We're not a dying industry, we're in our birth and really high growth state which makes this a very exciting space and a space that changes quickly."
This interview in this post was conducted at the Online Video Platform Summit where Piech was a panelist on the session, Online Video by the Numbers: Analytics, Reporting, and Metrics. He was joined by an all-star panel that examined what type of important data you should be collecting and how to use that data to improve the effectiveness of your video and increase your ROI.

Piech also spoke earlier this year at OMMA Video on, The State of Online Video, where he provided a picture of today’s online video consumer which can be viewed in the video below.



Video streaming by Ustream
"Who is watching, how engaged are they and what has changed over time? Where are we seeing the biggest shifts – long-form or short-form videos? What impact is online video having on traditional TV viewing, and when it comes to online advertising how are consumers’ preferences shaping the market?"

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital business analytics. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo. Follow comScore, Inc. (comscore) on Twitter

About Dan Piech

Dan is a Senior Product Management Analyst at comScore, Inc. and President and Founder at evoxio. At comScore, Dan manages comScore’s online video measurement products and is responsible for ensuring that measurement insights support the growth and development of the online video industry. Previously, he was anInteractive Strategy Intern at McKinney, Project Manager at HG Media, Inc and Advertising Intern at Success Communications Group. comScore is a marketing research company that provides marketing data and services to many of the Internet's largest businesses. Follow Dan Piech (danpiech) on Twitter

Related:
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)