Category: Video Marketing

Last week, I explained that videos and email marketing messages go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Click-through rates for marketing emails increase two or three times with the inclusion of video! This is in part because increasingly larger numbers of consumers (we’re talking trillions!) want to spend time watching online video, and also because it’s becoming easier for them to watch videos sent via email.

Today, I’ll offer some tips on how marketers can create videos that consumers will want to receive via email and watch online. I’ll aso explain explain how marketers can analyze the results of their video email marketing campaigns with mobileStorm’s technology.

Because some companies might not have tried their hand at creating videos, here are some things we at mobileStorm learned while making our online commercials and comedy shows.

• Online video is not the same as a feature-length movie or network TV show. Its purpose is to quickly pique interest in a brand. Thus, it should start off with a “bang” and not be much longer than a few minutes.
• Links should either lead to a video posted on a site like YouTube or MySpace, or else should lead to specially-designed landing pages. Never use embedded video in email!
• Providing your video in the smallest file size possible, but still retaining a satisfactory image quality, is part of best practices for all Internet video. Flash compression is often the best comproise of file size and quality, making it ideal for online media.

Once you’ve deployed a video email marketing campaign, you need to determine how well it did. Read the rest of this entry »

mobileStorm’s six messaging types for marketers are all conducive to our stance that multi-channel campaigns are best. We’ve also long suggested that marketers be multi-channel within a single message–for example, by including video in an email marketing message, which engages the recipient and also makes the message viral.

We’re so forward-thinking that it’s only been recently that the rest of the marketing industry has caught up, and realized that–like chocolate and peanut butter–video and email can be combined into one message to really entice consumers. Two great tastes taste great together, indeed!

• According to analyst David Daniels at Forrester Research, putting a video link within an email, such as a clickable screen shot, “can increase click-through rates by two to three times.”
• Mr. Daniels also notes in his recent report that between July 2008 and July 2009, 17 percent of marketing executives surveyed planned to use video in email. Marketers are getting competitive with video email!
• Meanwhile, Nielsen Online reported that in April of this year, 119 billion unique viewers watched 7 trillion total streams during the month; total streams were up 24 percent from a year ago, while streams-per-viewer are up 27 percent and time-per-viewer is up 58 percent. Consumers love watching online video!
• Technological advances make viewing video in an email more seamless for the consumer. For example, Gmail Labs now has a feature that allows users to turn on previews of YouTube videos. Once consumers set this on their accounts, they’re able to watch YouTube videos from inside the email message. As word spreads, marketers will reach increasingly more Gmail users with video emails!

So savvy marketers will want to beat the competition before it beats them. This requires them to: (1) post videos where they can easily be found, and (2) incorporate video into their email marketing messages. This may be easier said than done, but with mobileStorm’s technology and expertise, it’ll still be relatively easy. Read the rest of this entry »

Many have heard about Girl Scout Wild Freeborn. Her father tried to aid her lofty goal of selling 12,000 boxes of the organization’s famous cookies, by creating a YouTube ad and an online order form. The scheme was successful–until Girl Scouts of the USA forced the little Brownie to shutter her Internet campaign, saying it went against Scouts rules. But the real story is, why have such a ban when current technology and best practices ensure both safety and big revenue?

I definitely understand the group’s concerns. As spokeswoman Denise Pesich said, “We want to make sure that whatever the girl is doing is integrated into the program that she’s studying, we want to make sure we are in the development stages of a technological platform that will integrate it and be fair and equitable for all girls. But more importantly, it’s girl safety at its core.”

However, everything Ms. Pesich noted absolutely can be achieved in a digital marketing campaign, as long as best practices and the right technology platform are used. Here’s how:

• Create an online form in which the customer has to input his or her contact information, including email address and perhaps cell phone number, as well as order information such as what kind of cookies and how many boxes. The form should be sent to a database for cookie campaigns. In this fashion, no personal contact information for any girl or troupe is ever given out.
• To make sure that sales are attributed fairly, the orders can be sorted via zip code or city that the purchaser inputs. Thus, each sale would be credited to the scout troop that is local to the buyer.
• If revenue is supposed to go toward a specific program for a certain troupe or individual scout, then instead of having a generic online form for the entire Girl Scout organization, the Scouts’ website should first ask a potential buyer where he/she resides. Then the buyer should be served up a form that was created for the troupe closest to his/her location. This way the form would earmark that order for that particular troupe’s coffers.
• Have a messaging system in place that, once the cookies have come in, will notify customers that their orders are ready, via email or SMS (whatever method the customer chooses). This message can also specify the time and place where they can pick up their goodies, perhaps in front of a local supermarket or another public place. Since the orders are sorted by locale, it will be easy to give each consumer the proper pick-up location–outgoing messages too can be sorted according to zip code or city. Troupe leaders and parents can hand out the boxes along with, or instead of, the girls themselves.
• The Scouts can save customers’ contact information and, come next cookie season, can send out an email or SMS message asking if they’d like to pre-order their Thin Mints and Tagalongs.

The preceding can be used for both pre-orders (the traditional method of hitting up friends and neighbors and asking them to order what they want) as well as for the buy-in-bulk method (in which troupes buy loads of boxes and then sell them at public places). As a consumer who doesn’t personally know any scouts, I’d love the latter–that way I don’t have to worry about driving around supermarkets and shopping centers trying to find a cookie table.

Meanwhile, I think Wild’s dad was on the right track with the online video commercial. After all, 700 boxes were sold before it was yanked! Such an ad could be created by an entire troupe; this would make a great project, as would creating the order form. And if using the right platform, the advert could be distributed to the top video upload sites with the same technology that handles the online sales form and order notification messages.

Too bad this isn’t happening already. I’ve got a hankering for Samoas and Lemon Chalet Cremes!

Eydie Cubarrubia, Marketing Communications Manager, mobileStorm
“I’d rather you text me”

Local traffic is always more targeted, and thus more likely to result in conversions. That is, consumers will more likely purchase what’s being offered to them. Always remember that you have this great advantage over national (and thus non-locally-friendly) businesses.

If you missed my previous posts about local search marketing strategies, you can find them here and here. After you get caught up, check out the following additional suggestions.

Create a directory—or better yet, a portal—devoted to your location. You can base it on your own site or have it as a separate resource. If your marketing budget allows it, you might want to consider buying such an existing portal. This solution is great even though it takes time and can be costly. It will allow you to drive targeted traffic to yourself easily. And then you can sell to this audience all day long.

Create a newsletter about local news related to your niche, as well as news about your own business. This will definitely increase conversions or revenue. Even a monthly newsletter can bring great results—there’s no need to bother the people on your list too often.

A great idea is to always include your local data in your signatures. And I don’t just mean email signatures, but also in blog post signatures, forum signatures, signatures used when you write articles for external resources, etc.

The web is increasingly moving towards video. People like watching information rather than reading it. So it’s time for you to get involved. Start making videos about your local business, place them on your own site, and also promote them through a good number of video resources available on the web. (A comprehensive list of video-sharing websites can be found here.) By the way, a little-known fact is that video results in the general search results page (SERP) are clicked much more than the text results, no matter what position they take on the page. Little video windows do stand out from boring texts, and that alone attracts people to click on them. (Read more about this fact here.) Because of this, it may be worthwhile to use a solution that posts a video to all major sharing sites at once.

One more interesting trick you can use in local marketing: Offer a locals-only discount. This is especially good if most leads you get are locals anyway. They’ll feel special and that will increase their signup chances for you. When I planned to go to Sea World in Orlando, I was pleasantly surprised that there is a permanent discount to Florida residents. Of course, I purchased the tickets right away.

More strategies are coming soon! Until then,

Shavkat Karimov, Internet Marketing Manager, mobileStorm
“Every problem comes with a solution”
SEO Consulting

Recent news about online video probably has marketers confused. Distill the mix of positive and negative facts, however, and you’ll boil down the truth: Online video is still important for marketers who want to entice consumers.

It’s true that in the short term, we’ll see a slowdown of online video ad spend. AccuStream iMedia Research says that growth of such spending will decrease in 2009 to 22.5 percent, down from 36 percent growth in 2008. Figures from eMarketer are even more dramatic, predicting that growth will slow to 44.9 percent in 2009, compared to 81 percent growth in 2008. It’s easy for a marketer to look at all this and say, “Well, why should I use video for advertising and marketing? It doesn’t seem that my competitors will.”

But that’s short-sighted.

First, online video spending is bound to grow again–and the wise marketer will be ready when it does. Consider that both AccuStream and eMarketer say that online video ad spend will increase again in 2010 (to 28.2 percent, AccuStream predicts).

And online video is becoming increasingly more important to consumers–even elderly ones! The Pew Internet & American Life Project found in its catchily-titled report, “Generations Online In 2009,” that the majority of people in many demographics enjoy online video. Among those ages 18 to 32 (“Generation Y”), 72 percent watch videos online. Of those ages 33 to 44 (“Generation X”), 57 percent do the same. More interestingly, the number of Internet users ages 73 and older who download online videos has increased significantly–to 13 percent, from 1 percent in 2005. Those ages 64-72 also increased their video downloading behavior to 13 percent of users.

So it makes sense to have a video marketing plan in place. For example, you should know where and how to place your videos so that they’ll gain the greatest viewership possible (mobileStorm Video, for example, lets users broadcast their clips to all the major online video sharing sites in a single click). These videos can be used to draw consumers to a brand–perhaps by advertising a short code to which they can send a keyword to subscribe for special messages; or by directing them to a Web site where they can fill out a form for an email message subscription.

True, it may not be the most important aspect of your overall marketing strategy. But considering consumer usage and expected growth, you can’t afford to ignore online video either.

Eydie Cubarrubia, Marketing Communications Manager, mobileStorm
“I’d rather you text me”

The Washington Post had a cautionary tale about video marketingyesterday–and quoted none other than the marketing manager of TubeMogul, mobileStorm’s partner in video distribution.

The news story was on President-elect Barack Obama’s video “fireside chats” dropping 50 percent in popularity within three weeks. “I’ve heard a lot of puffed-up rhetoric about how this is going to change the face of politics and how it’s going to be FDR’s fireside chats. The data doesn’t back it up,” said TubeMogul’s David Burch.

However, it may be too early judge the effectiveness of the videos. Sure, the audience dropped to 153,333 views for the third Obama video, down from 789,868 views for the first. However, that third video was posted during Thanksgiving week, the biggest U.S. holiday, during which time many people travel to visit family. And note that the fourth video had some 370,000 views by Monday evening.

Still, marketers should heed Burch’s words. After all, President Franklin Roosevelt had a fairly captive audience with his radio firesides, since TV hadn’t been invented and everyone was too shook up about World War II to engage in much extracurricular activity. So it’s almost unrealistic to hang the same expectations on the Obama vids.

Instead, video should be seen as a way to engage people already interested in a brand, or to entice those new or on the fence. It should be part of an overall multi-channel strategy.

Universal search is here. Regular Internet users are enjoying it without even noticing that sometimes, along with the normal text results, they see links to news stories regarding their query; related images and videos; and even blog posts and books about what they were searching for. This is what universal search is about. It brings results in all different shapes and forms, thus making the life of a searcher easier.

Would that simplify the life of an SEO expert? Of course, not—everyone will have to become wiser about using optimization and link building techniques for not just textual content pages, but also for videos, images, blog posts, press releases, and books. We now need to expand our skills and be able to optimize external pages and objects that will eventually bring us traffic and leads. We need to expand our expertise to other fields and fight for rankings with all these forms in the SERPs (search engine results pages).The competition now isn’t the first ten places of text results on the first page. Now, it might be just four or six text results, plus image, news, or video results.

Other search engines besides Google are trying universal search. Yahoo’s cool-looking Alpha Beta is a strong competitor. Live.com and Ask.com are implementing universal search as well.

Read the rest of this entry »

James Thurber said it best: “There are two kinds of light—the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.” I don’t think it could be summed up better, especially from a man who was partially blind. Continuing from my previous blog about Developing Video Content for the Web, in which I introduced this series and discussed the ins and outs of purchasing a camera, today we’re going to delve into the world of lighting.

The one thing I want to reiterate from the previous blog is that just like there are many cameras on the market, there are also numerous lighting solutions. These solutions, depending on the amount of light you need and your choice of brand, can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Purchase only what is needed to accomplish your shoot professionally while staying within your budget.

In the production world, many people say that lighting is the trickiest, most complex aspect of shooting. This is definitely true if you are not prepared. Today I will go over the preparation, set-up, and equipment needed to accomplish a professional-looking web video. With that said, let there be light!

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It’s only been three months since mobileStorm started offering digital video distribution—and using our own service to disseminate mobileStorm’s marketing news/comedy show. Already our product release and own leap into online video marketing have proved astute, at least according to a new survey.

Ipsos MediaCT—which researches the media, content, telecoms and tech industries—says that early this year, online video viewership rose while viewership of other types of media fell. Among those surveyed:

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The digital marketing world is one in constant flux, which is the nature of any industry that centers on technology. From Apple vs. PC to BluRay vs. HD DVD, standards for new technologies become the battlegrounds for many companies trying to have their chosen formats to be the winners. Of course, this is hardly surprising given the vast sums of money spent to win such format wars.

As a result, companies trying to establish their particular format as the standard tend to dismiss the other proposed suggestions. So-called “early adopters’ are used to such shifts but by the time a particular technology reaches the mass consumer audience, normally one standard is established… hopefully.

Digital marketing channels are no different when it comes to standards, both good and bad. Some communication vehicles are more or less uniform in their standards but others offer digital marketers a sometimes bewildering array of options, causing many to go with the less common denominator approach. To help sort through the mess, here’s a quick guide on how various digital marketing communications deal with standards, from the easiest to the most contentious.

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