9 Moves to Strengthen Your Video Marketing
Dear Reader,
Welcome to Performance Marketing, the monthly newsletter for online marketers
looking for results. Online video has quickly become a favorite of Internet users around
the world. As issues of connectivity and speed have been overcome, many consumers
have abandoned their TVs, preferring to watch all types of video online or via mobile
phone. Online video views have surpassed search queries and YouTube has become a top
search engine. Yet despite this huge shift in viewing habits, most marketers are not using
online video in their marketing mix. This issue describes the benefits of video for online
marketers and offers 9 ways you can use this powerful tool to connect with consumers,
build your brand, and drive leads and sales.
All the Best,
Daniel Laury
Founder, President and CEO
LSF Interactive
Feature Article: Nine Moves to Strengthen Your Video Marketing
Online video is one of the most effective and efficient ways to communicate your
marketing message to your audience. This visual and dynamic format gives customers
another way to interact with your brand, and gives you a great opportunity to introduce
your product or service to a new audience or redefine an established brand's personality.
Video can be a buzz maker and the right campaign can quickly generate referrals, friends,
fans, and followers. With little or no media expense, depending on where it's posted,
your video can drive customer action, generating qualified sales leads with a lower cost
for customer acquisition and higher ROI.
Some marketers are taking advantage of this channel to connect with new consumers and markets, and having great success.
The recent Old Spice Body Wash video campaign is one good example. Built on the success of "The
Man Your Man Could Smell Like" TV ads featuring an ultra-manly spokesperson, the
ad team created 186 video responses culled from questions on Facebook and Twitter
and posted them on YouTube. This response campaign became the most successful viral
effort ever, with 40 million views after one week. In the six months since launch, the
campaign has become the #1 all time most viewed branded channel on YouTube and the
brand has seen a 107% increase in sales.
LSF Interactive client LoopFuse is enjoying success with its witty
YouTube series, "The Most Interesting Marketer in the World." LoopFuse is a leader in on-demand sales and marketing
automation solutions. Its three-part series, inspired by the humorous Dos Equis campaign,
introduces a spokesman who excels at marketing (once boasting a 99% open rate on an
email campaign) who, of course, uses LoopFuse. The company has also published almost
twenty short videos on lead generation and email marketing on YouTube.
Just over five years old, YouTube now has approximately 2 million searches daily, and it
is a great place for marketers to reach their target market by using their video assets from
TV commercials or promotions to increase brand awareness. While not every product
or service lends itself to a campaign like Old Spice Body Wash, there are things every
marketer can do to strengthen your video marketing.
Repurpose your current video assets.
Assets like commercials, user submissions, outtakes, or how-to videos make great content
on YouTube. Do an inventory to identity which assets can be easily repurposed and how
and where they can be used.
Make it search-engine friendly.
Google's Universal Search has made video an integral part of search results. Companies
can now gain visibility in the search engines quickly by providing video content that
is search-engine friendly. Use keywords and titles when naming your video files and
surround them with keyword-rich Web content. When you publish your videos on sites
like YouTube, add tags to each video that put them in easily searchable categories.
Keep it short.
Make sure each video is less than four minutes long, ideally not more than 1-2 minutes.
Shorter is better and you don't want viewers attention to wander.
Make it shareable.
The best video starts conversations and spreads among friends and their social networks.
Provide links and functionality to make it easy for people to email your video to friends,
embed on Web pages and blogs, and post to their various social networking profiles.
Use a call to action.
Your video should create a clear action path, and the surrounding Web content should
make executing that action easy. Create "buy" specific ad copy for use in YouTube
overlay ads and include a direct call to action. Maximize conversion opportunities by
clearly showing your offer and encouraging viewers to click.
Post wisely.
According to an eMarketer report, video can be the push customers need to complete a
purchase online. Video has also been shown to improve customer satisfaction and reduce
product returns and abandoned shopping carts. Post your video at key decision points in
your purchase funnel to retain customers who might otherwise abandon their purchase.
Use YouTube Paid Search
YouTube has developed a variety of methods to help advertisers reach their audience in
ways that are very similar to traditional paid search, making it a key competitor to other
engines.
Test and analyze.
Test message, offer, format, and call to action to see which mix resonates best with
your audience. You can also use your video at different points in the decision-making
process to determine what's most effective. By provide a unique coupon code or URL, or
other identifier, to let you track the impact of video on your online marketing initiatives.
Measure.
Some common video marketing metrics include video starts, post-video conversion,
referral numbers, video ratings, and viral embeds on non-video sharing sites. Choose the
metric that integrates best with your other marketing initiatives.
Strengthen your video marketing.
By applying these 9 tips, marketers in all industries can successfully incorporate video
into their online campaigns and see positive results in brand awareness, lead generation,
and sales.
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