Archive for Online Marketing

Jul
01

The Three Foundations For Your Powerful Online Presence

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Lunarpages, through our strategic partner, LocalDirective, is dedicated to helping you build a powerful online presence that accelerates your business growth.  Your most important goal is to establish a firm foundation from which to grow your online presence.  Even though it may seem overwhelming with all of the apparent choices, there are only three things you must focus on to achieve online success:

1) A Comprehensive Website that supports pre-defined objectives.  This means your first step in developing a new site is to determine what it is you want to accomplish.  For many businesses, it is to grow sales online through e-commerce, drive traffic to physical locations, or for phone or form lead generation.  But other purposes might be to build deeper brand loyalty or even to help people self-serve customer service functions.  Once you have your objective, then you can proceed to methodically follow best-practice guidelines for site development.  If you already have a website, you may want to consider a ‘Revitalization’ effort if your site is not delivering the results it should.

2) Once you have established your online destination, the next step is to drive traffic to it. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) in the major national and (potentially local or vertical) search engines enables you to choose to whom your advertising will show, presents a message you want to share, and delivers visitors to the website or landing page destination of your choosing.  SEM marketing is immediate, and you can expect results to begin within days from starting your program.  It is the ultimate form of directional advertising, boldly replacing the Yellow Pages in that function.  Search engine marketing is sometimes called Pay-Per-Click, Sponsored Search or Paid Search.  Google says that up to thousands can be earned for each dollar spent in search. Many advertisers report a high ROI as compared to most (if not all) other forms of advertising.  What is great about SEM is that it is very controllable – everything from where and when your ads show to how much is spent each day.

3) The third element of your powerful online foundation is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that builds a strong organic presence for a handful of your most important and highly trafficked keywords. Since the search engines determine your placement for keyword searches, a solid program will attend to both ‘On-Page’ factors (how your website is designed and the content) and ‘Off-Page’ factors that increase your ‘popularity’ for the best placement on search results pages.  SEO is a longer process than SEM, and Google suggests expecting up to a year for full optimization.  Note that many Social Media Marketing (SMM) opportunities serve as SEO techniques, including use of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, as well as on-site and off-site blog posting.  A good approach is to begin developing your SEO strategy a bit after the start of your SEM program, so you can use what you’ve learned to develop the most effective SEO approach.

Be sure to check out our website for information about our search engine marketing programs and learn more about how to build your powerful online presence.

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Oct
19

Understanding Online Ad Networks: A Web Publishers Guide

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Looking for more information about online ad networks and how they could help you increase your online ads revenues? In this MasterNewMedia guide, professional online publishers will find the best resources, tips, strategy and advice to make better sense and use of online ad networks.

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Photo credit: orson

An ad network is essentially a third-party service that acts like an intermediary between your web site and advertisers. Via the ad network you as a web publisher can connect with a large pool of advertisers who want to promote online their products or services.

When advertisers serve you ads, impressions and click on the ads can both generate revenues that are shared between you and the ad network, which in turn compensates the advertiser.

Using an ad network does not force you to run only ads served by the ad network. Large publishers, especially, use more ad networks chained together at the same time or go for a combination of direct campaigns and ad networks to fully monetize their web sites.

Services like Yieldbuild, PubMatic or Rubicon Project are built for this specific goal of optimizing your ad network(s). On the basis of statistical data, these ad optimization services identify the best performing ad network providers as well as the best performing ad position, layout, color and font style on your web pages to optimize your online advertising revenues.

But web publishers often prefer to work with multiple ad networks in order to avoid common problems like defaulting, which is the situation that takes place when no ads are displayed inside one of your reserved ad spots.

On the other hand more ad networks mean more ads to be served, which increases the opportunity of having relevant, and contextual ad content on your web pages.

If you are curious to learn what are the types of ad networks you can use to help you boost your online advertising profits, these are the three major different types of online advertising networks:

  1. Representative (Rep) networks: These networks are used by brand marketers and typically promote high-quality traffic at market prices. Rep networks allow advertisers to have full control over the destination and placement of their ads. Profits are generally made using a revenue-sharing business model.
  2. Blind networks: These companies offer low pricing in exchange for exclusive control over the destination of ads. Advertisers serve their ads, but they do not know exactly where. Blind networks are typically used by publishers to handle remnant inventory combined with campaign optimization and ad targeting technology. The financial model is arbitrage.
  3. Targeted Networks: These focus on specific targeting technologies such as behavioral or contextual. Targeted networks specialize in using consumer click stream data to enhance the value of the inventory they purchase.

There are also two bigger groups which advertising networks belong to:

  1. First-tier advertising networks: These have a large number of own advertisers and publishers that help them serve high-quality traffic. Revenues and traffic which first-tier networks make is also used to serve second-tier networks.

  2. Second-tier advertising networks: These generally syndicate ads from first-tier networks as their main source of revenue.

In this MasterNewMedia guide you can find out just about anything you need to know to understand and make greater sense of what ad networks are and of how you can leverage them to improve revenue deriving from your online advertising.

Here all the details:

Publishers Guide To Making Sense of Ad Networks

Publishers Guide to Ad networks

http://www.xenyo.com/blog/guide-to-ad-networks-for-publishers/

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Do you want to make more money on your website or blog? Only have Adsense on your site? It’s time you start looking into ways to add to your AdSense income and in this article, you can find reviewed the ad networks that can help publishers accomplish this goal.

by Xenio Editors – Xenio Blog

Advertising Exchange: Ad Exchanges Open Up Your Ad Inventory To Real-Time Bidding – Best Ad Exchanges Reviewed

http://www.masternewmedia.org/advertising-exchange-ad-exchanges-open-up-your-ad-inventory-to-real-time-bidding/

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When ad networks alone are not enough to sell all of your ad inventory, ad exchanges step in to help you maximize the money you make. Put simply, ad exchanges work on the same idea as stock markets. They allow buyers to bid on your inventory, and the demand for your inventory determines the price at which you can sell it.

by Andre Deutmeyer – MasterNewMedia

How To Create an Ad Network: A Publisher’s Guide

http://emediavitals.com/blog/38/how-create-ad-network-publishers-guide

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How can a publisher take advantage of the increase of behavioral ad targeting in ad spending? One way to attack the issue is to start your own ad network and charge the rates that are appropriate.

by Prescott Shibles – eMedia Vitals

Create Your Own Online Advertising Network – A Mini-Guide

http://www.masternewmedia.org/online-advertising/online-ad-networks/online-advertising-networks-guide-20070219.htm

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The ability to create your own advertising network is now indeed a reality. By bringing a series of content-connected blogs together into a single, vertical, “thematic” network, you have the opportunity of strengthening your authority and value by aggregating related high quality sources while maximizing potential revenue for you as well as for those you have invited to join the new network party.

by Michael Pick – MasterNewMedia

Ad Networks Are Transforming Online Advertising

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_09/b4121048726676.htm

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Earlier this year major web publishers, from Yahoo! to New York Times Co., have reported that revenues from their mainstay pictorial display ads are down. The poor economy isn’t their only problem either. It’s simply speeding up a shift in online advertising that’s challenging the Net’s leading destinations like never before.

by Robert D. Hof – BusinessWeek

What The Rise Of Demand-Side Ad Networks Means For Publishers

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-what-the-rise-of-demand-side-advertising-networks-means-for-publishers/

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If demand-side networks can squeeze out the supply-side networks, that would leave more margin for publishers and agencies to share. And agencies would actually pay less for non-premium display inventory while publishers could charge more.

by Michael Zimbalist – paidContent

Ad Exchanges Are The Future

http://www.clickz.com/3626556


Click to enlarge image

For the vast majority of ad inventory, auction based sales and exchanges that act as clearinghouses for inventory, will be the norm. This future is coming. For some companies, it’s already here.

by Eric Picard – ClickZ

AdSense Alternatives: Contextual Advertising Programs To Make Money Online

http://www.masternewmedia.org/online_marketing/content-monetization/Google-AdSense/AdSense-alternatives-contextual-advertising-solutions-20070307.htm

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Looking for AdSense Alternatives? Here is a reference guide to the most interesting alternative solutions to monetizing your online content with contextual ads.

by Robin Good and Michael Pick – MasterNewMedia

10 Things to Consider When Choosing an Ad Network

http://foodblogalliance.com/2009/03/10-things-to-consider-when-choosing-an-ad-network.php

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Your success with the ad network you choose depends in part on you, your willingness to work with your ad network, try out promotions, give feedback on the advertisers you would like to see on your site, make adjustments to your site layout.

by Elise Bauer – Food Blog Alliance

The Ad Networks, Exchanges and Analytics of Web 2.0

http://www.slideshare.net/smellow/tester2-presentation

A review and discussion of ad networks, ad exchanges and quantification services. From AdBrite to Quantcast this presentation is a practical guide to understanding and using ad networks and exchanges.

by Siddiq Bello – Digital Bootcamp

Originally prepared by Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia, and first published on October 19th, 2009 as “Understanding Online Ad Networks: A Web Publishers Guide“.

Photo credits:
Publishers Guide to Ad networks – Paul Maguire
Advertising Exchange: Ad Exchanges Open Up Your Ad Inventory To Real-Time Bidding – Best Ad Exchanges Reviewed – Travel Aficionado edited by Andre Deutmeyer
How To Create an Ad Network: A Publisher’s Guide – Ryan Pike
Create Your Own Online Advertising Network – A Mini-Guide – xlucas
Ad Networks Are Transforming Online Advertising – franckito
What The Rise Of Demand-Side Ad Networks Means For Publishers – norebbo
Ad Exchanges Are The Future – Eric Picard
AdSense Alternatives: Contextual Advertising Programs To Make Money Online – Kirsty Pargeter
10 Things To Consider When Choosing an Ad Network – Elise Bauer

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Oct
13

Making Search Engine Traffic a Priority

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Most online marketing approaches are risky and unfortunately, many of them will not result in the increased website traffic you desire.  Today’s internet marketing firms will try to sell you on everything from pop-up ads to mass email campaigns, both of which people tend to find very annoying.  Being that an email campaign is more like spam distribution and pop-up advertisements are so aggravating they could actually cause you to lose customers, investing in such marketing solutions just might equate to throwing money out the window.  Instead of wasting money on these risky strategies, perhaps you should focus on something that actually works – search engine optimization.

Boost Traffic the Natural Way

It is a proven fact that the most effective way to reel in targeted traffic and potential customers is through the search engines.  A number of studies show that nearly 90% of first-time visitors find their way to a website via search engines powered by internet brands such as Google and Yahoo.  You yourself are probably in this high percentile of web surfers who bypass all the pop-ups, spam messages and PPC ads by relying on the convenient search box to find the content you seek.  Search engines offer a consistent stream of targeted website visitors and in most cases, leveraging this traffic is absolutely free.  What you have to do is make sure your content is relevant to the search results because if it isn’t, visitors will likely be very disappointed when landing on your site.   If you keep this is mind when optimizing your site, the search engines will reward you with increased traffic of excellent quality.

When Users Search, Everybody Wins

Search engine traffic results in a win-win situation for anyone trying to promote a website or business online.  Improving your volume of traffic does take a lot of money or hard work for that matter.  All that is required of you is good site optimization.  Despite the millions of active domains throughout the world, an alarming number of web pages are not indexed by the major search engines for the simple fact that most of them are not optimized correctly, or not optimized at all.  Unless you have a winning marketing strategy that simply cannot fail, this makes it very difficult for anyone to find your website.  Though it can be a challenge, optimizing a website is also something that can be done by an individual with little to no marketing knowledge.

Believe it or not, the search engines want to send you as much traffic as possible.  This is because the more users who find the content they want, the more they will rely on that search engine and recommended it to others.  The actual search engine benefits tremendously as these recommendations lead to increased popularity and advertising revenues.  Search engines can be an excellent resource that helps internet users find what they desire and provide you with the targeted traffic needed to keep your site alive.

How do organizations really use social networks? Is social media useful to acquire new customers or just to maintain strong relationships with existing clients?

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Photo credit: Kheng Guan Toh

The answer to whether social media are good for customer engagement or relationship building is: “Social media is good for both“.

As long as you do not get too greedy or “salesy” in your business approach, social media proves to be very useful to connect with your audience.

Social media is free to join, easy to use and, most importantly, it is “a way to supercharge the word of mouth“, and as every marketer will tell you, a positive word of mouth is the best mean to convert prospects into sales.

Shel Holtz, summarizes well the impact of social media in business strategies:

I see [social media] as a place to build relationships, but it is not for direct selling. That is not what people want to receive on Facebook. People are there to socialize, and if you can offer value through conversation, you can build relationships with those customers. If you pitch them, they will ignore you, or worse.

In part 3 of this report (Part 1Part 2), marketing analyst Josh Gordon shares interesting data to make sense of the penetration and main functions of social media inside the corporate world.

Here all the details:

The Coming Change In Social Media Business Applications: Separating The Biz From The Buzz

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by Josh Gordon

Business Applications of Social Networks

1. Sales Use of Social Networks

Top Uses of Social Networks

How organizations use social networks for sales

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Top uses of social networks for sales are to maintain and build relationships.

The most common use of social media networks, such as Facebook or LinkedIn, is “Maintaining social contact with clients” (67.6%). After that, about half of businesses surveyed use social media to achieve a “Better understanding of client attitudes” (50.6%).

Sales Use of Social Media Networks

Sales functions organizations plan to adopt in the future

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Sales use of social media networks could shift sharply toward an emphasis on customer prospecting.

As organizations look to the future, the same trend emerges as seen in the general social media and Twitter responses: a shift toward more customer communications and, in particular, toward prospecting.

The two sales prospecting options rise dramatically to become the top goals for social network usage.

Sales prospecting by targeting ’self-identified’ new customers” moves up to the top choice, from No. 5 currently, and “Sales prospecting by social networking” moves up as well, from third place to second.

Moving forward, it seems clear that social networks will be a top lead generation tool.

Practical Advice On Use of Social Networks

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Put this information to work:

According to Brian Solis, principal at FutureWorks,

Human interaction is still human interaction, and what it takes to be successful with it has not changed. What has changed is the places where it happens.

Says Solis:

Social media tools help you find conversations that can give you insight into what individuals in your market are saying about your product. This can give you an opportunity to engage people on their terms, not as a salesperson, but as a resource, and then get the sale because of it.

I use social networks to find out who my clients really are.

We all vary our modes of conversation when we speak to different types of people: an intimidating boss, a pesky child, a policeman giving a speeding ticket, or… a salesperson.

Often, when I “see” two of my clients “talking” to each other on a social network, their conversation with each other is very different from my conversations with either of them, as someone trying to sell them.

But when I see clients “talking” to their peers, I learn what is truly important to them, and it is rarely about me or my product. I look for what they are passionate enough to write about, how they react to each other, what they are afraid of, and who their heroes and villains are.

Understanding a person’s values and passions is a first step to understanding them, and a prerequisite to any sale.

Shel Holtz, principal of Holtz Communication + Technology, warns about being too “salesy” when you engage potential clients in a social media environment:

I see it as a place to build relationships, but it is not for direct selling. That is not what people want to receive on Facebook. People are there to socialize, and if you can offer value through conversation, you can build relationships with those customers. If you pitch them, they will ignore you, or worse.

Dan McCarthy, chairman and CEO of Network Communications Inc., shares that he becomes better at reaching out to new clients as they get to know him though his personal profile and postings on social media sites.

Years ago, McCarthy realized that the people with whom he had the best business relationships were also those who knew the most about his personal side.

Says McCarthy,

If you connect the way you live to the way you make a living, you create an incredible degree of authenticity, which is what today’s digital generation is looking for in the people they work with.

My professional identity and my personal identity are very connected.

Survey respondents also wrote in “other” uses of social media for sales, including:

  • Project opportunity identification;
  • posting discount codes on Facebook and Twitter;
  • promoting educational collateral and events;
  • listing salespeople in LinkedIn profiles; and
  • highlighting case studies.

2. Marketing Use of Social Networks

Promoting Organic Messages and Monitoring Customer Trends

Marketing functions organizations adopt now

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Top uses for marketing functions are promoting organic messages and monitoring customer trends.

About half of the organizations surveyed actively promote themselves through organic messaging (56%), monitor trends among their customers (53.1%), and provide ways for customers to interact with their company (51.5%).

About a third use social networks to research new product ideas (34.1%), while about one in four advertises on social networks (26.7%).

Providing Ways To Interact With Customers

Marketing functions organizations plan to adopt in the future

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Top marketing use of social networks shifts toward providing ways to interact with customers.

Looking ahead, we see the same trend repeated as organizations refocus their social media toward customer-focused programs.

The top choice moving forward is “We provide ways for customers to interact with our company,” which is only the third most-used marketing function at present.

Marketing is part of the shift toward using social media as a way to connect and acquire customers.

Understanding a person’s values and passions is a first step to understanding them, and a prerequisite to any sale.

Please check all of the marketing functions offered by social networks-like Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace – that your organization now uses.

Practical Advice On Marketing Use of Social Networks

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Put this information to work:

According to Dan Schawbel, social media specialist at EMC Corporation, and author of the book, Me 2.0:

Social media tools are popular marketing tools because they are free, people are already using them, and there is an opportunity cost for not getting involved today.

Depending on your line of business, certain social networks will work better for you than others. It is all about aligning business strategy to the use of each tool. Otherwise, you are wasting time and not reaching the right audience with the right message on the right network.

Brian Solis indicates that there could be more going on in social networks than you realize. He poses the question, “If a conversation takes place online and you are not there to hear or see it, did it actually happen?” In fact, there might even be dangers in not participating.

Says Solis,

Conversations are taking place, with or without you.

If you are not part of the conversation, then you are leaving it to others to answer questions and provide information, whether it is accurate or incorrect. Or, even worse, you may be leaving it up to your competition to jump in to become the resource for the community.

Monitoring and reacting to customer behavior is key. Ari Herzog, principal of Ari Herzog and Associates, learned that firsthand when a new pizza restaurant opened in his town. Herzog tried it, liked it, and wrote a positive review of it on the social media review site, Yelp.

A few months later, when he revisited the restaurant with his mother and sister, he was surprised when a waiter came by with a free order of chips and salsa as a thank you for the review.

What kind of impression did that make? Herzog shared the story with me when I interviewed him, and now you are among thousands reading about it here. Now that is good marketing!

Herzog ’s enthusiasm is typical of what social media can do for any brand.

Says Dan McCarthy:

The Holy Grail for a marketer is positive word of mouth. If you can capture this, it is the highest means of converting prospects to sales, and at the least expense. Social media is a way to supercharge word of mouth.

Survey respondents also wrote in “other” uses of social media for marketing, including:

  • Showcasing case studies,
  • running a professional group on LinkedIn, and
  • communicating with media outlets.

Link to an extensive list of social media marketing examples on Peter Kim’s blog, “Being Peter Kim.

3. Public Relations Use of Social Networks

Public Relations Functions

Public relations functions offered by social networks

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Social networks serve a variety of public relations functions.

The four most common public relations functions using social media are:

  1. Maintaining a company profile page (66.6%);
  2. using social networks to distribute press releases and news items (59.3%);
  3. monitoring and responding to mentions of the company and its products (58%); and
  4. interacting with bloggers and members of the traditional press (54.6%).

Looking to the future, organizations plan no changes in how they use social networks to support their public relations efforts, with future uses being identical in sequence and proportion to current use.

Practical Advice On Public Relations Use of Social Networks

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Put this information to work:

Public relations professionals would do well to monitor social networks for activity about their organization and products. Shel Holtz, calls this essential:

If you are monitoring, you can be part of the conversation.

Social media is becoming the communication channel for breaking news.

Remember that the first reports of the US Airways flight that water-landed in the Hudson River were first reported on Twitter by someone with a cell phone on a nearby ferry.

If your company gets in the news, you may find out about it first by monitoring social networks.

The other PR function unique to social media is the ability to post a company profile page. Some companies take this free service more seriously than others.

Annie Ta, from Facebook’s corporate communications team, says:

We encourage businesses to really engage with consumers on their profiles. For example, businesses should update their status, post videos and photos, and start discussion threads with their consumers.

Public profiles provide a way for businesses to talk to consumers and understand them. Some of the most successful public profiles are those that create a genuine dialogue with their fans.

Link to two great examples of company profile pages: Dell and Visa.

Survey respondents also wrote in “other” uses of social media for public relations, including:

  • Updating fans and customers on company news;
  • promoting company events;
  • registration for events;
  • maintaining an alumni group for past employees; and
  • promoting a fundraising program.

4. Use of Social Networks For Internal Communications

Save Money Using Social Networks

Internal workflow functions that social network use and plan to use.

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Organizations can save expense by using existing social networks to create work groups where documents, schedules, and communication are shared collaboratively, from anywhere on Earth.

While there are security concerns with posting potentially sensitive internal communications on a third party’s network, the irresistible “free” cost for simple groups is motivation for many.

Currently, the top uses of these services are “Sharing documents” and “Maintaining communication with teams.

Looking ahead, the use of social networks to help internal workflow will remain similar to usage today with one difference: Fewer organizations will use social networks for file sharing.

Among current uses, “file sharing” is tied with “maintaining communication with teams” for the top use. For the future, it drops to fourth place, near the bottom.

Practical Advice On The Use of Social Networks For Internal Communications

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Put this information to work:

The results speak for themselves here, and since not much is changing, there is little to add.

Survey respondents also wrote in “other” uses of social media for internal workflow, including:

  • Training,
  • building bonds with remote teams, and
  • general social use with no professional communications.

Conclusions

This study is the first to document the coming shift in the use of social media – from a helpful tool for a variety of communication needs, to an essential tool for customer engagement.

As organizations invest in social media programs, incorporating this shift into the plans should be considered a high priority.

Skeptics might say that a more customer-centric approach is natural in a recession when business is scarce. But a recession is not just a time of slow sales.

More significantly, it is also a time when the pace of change accelerates, and the competitive landscape of industries is reshaped.

A research study done by Bain & Co. in the aftermath of the 2001 recession discovered that competitive change during the recession occurred at about twice the normal rate. In addition, companies that changed competitive positions against one another during the recession remained in their new rankings long after it had passed.

In 1929, rival cereal makers Kellogg’s and Post were in a close race to win the emerging cold breakfast cereal market.

Through the Great Depression that followed, Kellogg’s maintained an aggressive marketing posture, while Post slashed its ad budgets. When the slow time ended, Kellogg’s had a market advantage over its rival that it maintains to this day-almost 70 years later. (More on that story here)

It would be a mistake to assume that this shift toward customer-centric usage of social media is temporary.

In fact, the shift toward customer engagement, and away from general communications, shows a more important role for social media use at organizations. As Peter Drucker, known as the father of modern management, said, “The purpose of a business is to create a customer.

On the same list as above, pick the one internal workflow function your organization is considering using in the future.

End of Part 3

Part 1: Business Applications Of Social Media Inside Organizations: An Overview

Part 2: Business Applications Of Social Media Inside Organizations: Twitter

Originally written by Josh Gordon for Social Media Biz Buzz, and first published on July 20th, 2009 as The Coming Change in Social Media Business Applications

About Josh Gordon

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Josh Gordon is president of Selling 2.0, where he works to improve the performance of organizations and sales teams with research-based training and consulting services. Josh has written four books on the subject. For more information, visit www.Selling2.com.

Photo credits:
The Coming Change In Social Media Business Applications: Separating The Biz From The Buzz – Pjcross
Practical Use of Twitter – Andrzej Tokarski

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Oct
02

Guide To Online Video For Business

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Do you use online video for business? Do you know which is the best type of video to improve sales or boost traffic on your site?

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Photo credit: picpics

Choosing which kind of video you want to produce depends on how you measure the return on your marketing spend. But while there are risks and rewards for each kind of video, you can take for granted the big impact that video has on your viewers and customers.

Have a quick look at these two recent statistics:

Despite the popularity of online video, though, do not think that a nice clip on your site will make you rich or bring you tons of visitors. It is a bit more complicated than that. Like any other component of your business strategy, you have to test and experiment how to achieve the best results for your specific situation.

To help you choose the right video solution for your business, the guys at EyeVIew have published a guide to outline and explore the three basic types of videos you can use in your business. These are:

  • Viral videos
  • Conversion videos
  • Educational videos

How do you know which solution is best for you? Is there a type of video which is more successful?

Here all the details:

The Three Types Of Online Video For Business

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by the EyeView Team

So much has changed about the way we absorb information in the past few years.

Can you even remember what accessing the Internet was like ten years ago? In 1999 one of the most used features in Netscape’s Navigator was the ability to uncheck Autoload Images. Once you did that you would only get text, no pictures. Page load times were crucial as users were often paying per minute to their phone service provider in addition to whatever they were paying their Internet service provider.

Jump forward to 2004 and everyone was starting to sign up for broadband, but no one was watching video online, it was still too heavy. Short clips would be distributed via email inevitably resulting in your inbox getting clogged up trying to download 5 Mb attachments from the server.

Then in early 2006, things started to change – instead of video being attached to emails people started sending links to a mysterious new site called YouTube. Even more exciting was when people started sending links to sites and blogs other than YouTube that had embedded videos that were hosted by YouTube.

By the time YouTube was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion in September 2006, everyone who used the Internet regularly had seen one of their videos. But YouTube was just the start of the online video revolution. Once it became common practice for people to watch video online, it was only a short time before it became an essential part of the experience.

As the commercial world started to exploit the power of the Internet for business, it became clear that online video would be co-opted into that fight and made available by almost every business with an online presence which, by 2009, meant every business.

Why Video

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The question of what video can do for a B2B company was addressed head on in a recent webinar sponsored by Brightcove, one of the leading online video platforms. The title of the presentation was “Top 6 Reasons B-to-B Marketers Need Videos”. The six reasons are worth repeating to emphasize the advantages video can offer a company.

  1. Grab people’s attention instantly
  2. Tell your story in less time
  3. Bring your ideas to life
  4. Make your site stickier
  5. Create a buzz with viral video
  6. Bring your website into the 21st century

Parsing that list into three types of video based on their natural homes – embedded offsite, on the site’s homepage and within the site – helped to identify the three kinds of online video for business:

  1. Viral Video
  2. Conversion Video
  3. Educational Video

1. Viral Video

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If online video got its first big break with the advent of YouTube, then Viral Video was the first breakout star for the medium. It’s a classic case of business noticing what’s going on in the real world and then trying hard to catch up.

Viral videos were the natural result of the culture of sharing that began once everyone you knew and / or did business with went online.

  • Before there were viral videos, people shared jokes or inspirational PowerPoint presentations. The first viral videos were just evolved versions of the same.
  • Then there were viral videos that became accidental hits. These were videos that were never meant for a mass audience like the Star Wars Kid, or at least they were videos that could never have anticipated how many people would end up seeing them like the Numa Numa guy.

As the demand for content grew, people started crafting video with one eye on making them go viral. There were several factors to consider. In order for a video to have a chance at becoming viral it needed
to be most of the following:

  • Original
  • Unusual
  • Unexpected
  • Funny / Mysterious / Sexy

In addition there was one more ingredient, a compound of timing, luck and Internet serendipity, that was required for true online ubiquity. Almost impossible to fabricate, this elusive quality is still the thing that prevents most attempts at creating a viral video from succeeding. Nevertheless businesses leapt at the chance of promoting themselves through video usually by replicating a formula that had already achieved some success or notoriety.

Viral video differs from the other types of video discussed in this paper in terms of its location. Viral video is at its best when it is found outside the company’s site. Viral video is all about distribution and promotion. The company’s aim is for the video to be embedded in many different sites to reach as wide an audience as possible. This is not always a good thing.

Once a video can be embedded outside the company’s site the company loses control over the surrounding text and, perhaps more worryingly, the surrounding pictures and ads. If you allow your video to be watched anywhere, you have to consider that viewers may see your logo and messaging juxtaposed with less savory images.

Metrics For Success

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How do you measure the success of a viral video? It’s not enough to consider the number of views only, although this is important. If you are looking at views, you need decide “how much is enough?

The most popular videos on YouTube have been seen millions of times. In order for your video to be considered a viral success, you might not need anywhere near those kinds of numbers. It depends who your products are targeting and whether or not you were noticed by the right kind of audience.

If the video is hosted on a video sharing site like YouTube, you might want to look at the number of comments your video receives to get an idea of the level of “buzz” you have created.

You can use a company like TubeMogul to upload and track your video across the internet but you probably need to combine that with your existing site analytics to judge whether or not it has an impact on your traffic.

If you’re aiming for a success metric that is even more intangible such as brand-building or buzz-making you will have to work out your own metric for success.

Creating a viral video is a bit like catching a fish… with your hands. It’s slippery and almost impossible, but if you manage it, you’ll feel fantastic.

2. Conversion Video

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With all the uncertainty surrounding viral video, it seems much safer to manage video with more tangible goals. There are a number of reasons why site owners would want to place a video on their site. Video is a great way of engaging site visitors. Engaged visitors spend more time on websites. More time spent on websites means more opportunities to make money.

Visitors to a website are more likely to convert the longer they stay on that website and the more they
are engaged with the messaging of the site. Video is great tool for increasing stickiness to a site and a
proven medium for increasing engagement.

The most important thing for a commercial website is to identify the goals of the site. The goal of the site can fall into a number of categories. Some sites even have multiple goals, but it’s better to maintain focus on a single goal for each landing page you want to consider. For most sites the landing page is the site’s homepage. As you build multiple points of entry to your site you should carefully define the conversion goal for each.

These are some of the most commonly seen conversion goals for commercial websites:

  • Enter Your Details – the aim of the site is to get visitors to give you contact details that can be used immediately or later to contact the customer and initiate business
  • Download This File – installing the file may be the first stage in turning the site visitor into a customer
  • Buy This Product – a direct inducement to the site visitor to pay money in return for a product or service
  • Deposit Now – used by companies to establish the financial relationship that turns browsers into committed customers

Once you have a clear conversion goal for your landing page, a good conversion video should focus on driving users to that goal. Video does that in a number of ways.

  1. To begin with, a conversion video, like any other kind of video, should be an engaging experience drawing viewers in and helping them to spend more time on the site.
  2. A successful conversion video should carry a clear call to action. This can be part of the script, part of the visual, part of the player or any combination of the three.
  3. The call to action in the video must be aligned with the conversion goal for the page the video sits in to ensure that there is a clear path for the viewer to follow.
  4. A brief review of the available material on the Internet throws up an abundance of lists of tips for making your corporate video. If you have questions about any aspect of video making from the perfect duration to the perfect volume, you will find someone with an opinion on the subject. The best thing you can do is to start with what you think makes sense and to test it on your site.But before you can test the effectiveness of your video, you need to make sure people are watching.

    There are many ways to promote the viewing of your video on your site. Once you have produced a video that you are happy with, you owe it to yourself to exploit as many of these methods as you can.

  1. First of all you want to ensure that people can find your video. Make it visible and accessible. If the video is a key part of your conversion strategy for a page then make sure people know where it is.
  2. Once you are happy with its location on the page, you should consider having the video autoplay. If autoplay seems too aggressive there are variations you can try such as having the video autoplay without sound (but with subtitles) until the viewer opts in to listening as well as watching.

Metrics For Success

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If the goal for your conversion video is to increase conversions then the metric for success should be easy. When the number, or the percentage, of your conversions rises then the video is a success.

Depending on the conversion goal, increased conversion can have a direct impact on the revenues of your company. It is no wonder that more and more companies are focusing on conversion video as the most likely to provide a return on their investment.

3. Educational Video

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Educational video probably doesn’t sit on your homepage. There are a number of reasons for adding educational videos to your site and, unlike viral and conversion videos your educational video can help you achieve multiple goals without detracting from the video’s success. That means your educational video doesn’t have to be quite as tightly focused on a single goal.

With educational video you have the freedom to build towards a number of achievements.

Primarily an educational video is there to educate. But, educational video can also help to establish trust and thought-leadership. Visitors to your site who move beyond the landing page and begin to delve deeper into everything your site has to offer may be looking for more information.

We know that video is an excellent medium for distilling information and enquiring visitors can find much to satisfy their curiosity in a well made video. But there are more advantages to putting educational videos in your site.

  • Good video can be a real differentiator for your company against your competitors. You can use the videos to do things that other people in your market are failing to do well. If a visitor learns everything he needs from you, he’s more likely to come back when he’s ready to become a consumer.
  • Educational video can also take the strain away from your customer support team. Linking your videos to an FAQ or any other part of your online support can help answer some of the questions and pain points that would otherwise make their way to a customer representative. The interaction can often be even more satisfying with the customer feeling they were able to get the answer they wanted in a format they are at ease with.
  • Educational videos can guide viewers through a difficult process and help to ease the concerns of nervous browsers. Educational videos can help to build a mentor-mentee relationship between the site and its visitors which must have a positive impact.

There are fewer restrictions in Educational video in terms of duration and messaging. It’s probably not smart to load your Educational videos with sales messaging, but beyond that there is a freedom to communicate clearly knowing that anyone watching is doing so with less enticement that other forms of video.

Metrics For Success

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Educational video may be one of the hardest types of video to manage in terms of ROI. The production costs are as high as other forms of video but success should not be measured by the number of views.

There are other metrics that should be captured such as ‘time spent on video’ or how many chapters of your video were viewed. Not every player will provide you with this kind of data, but it can be invaluable for establishing ROI.

Educational videos are less likely to be promoted than other kinds of videos. They are more correctly positioned and targeted to specific customers at different stages in the sales cycle.

Educational videos are designed to prevent customer confusion and deliver clarity. If your Educational video is aimed at reducing the number of referrals to customer support then, then a clear reduction is the best measure of success.

Beyond that tangible proof, the success of educational videos is notoriously difficult to determine.

Summary

Once you are committed to making video part of your corporate marketing strategy, there is still a number of questions to be asked.

Choosing which kind of video you want to produce may depend on how you measure the return on your marketing spend. There are risks and rewards for each kind of video, but there is no denying the potential impact of this exciting medium on Internet users. Harnessing that impact and using it to your advantage is one of the key challenges facing online marketers today.

Originally written by the EyeView Team for EyeView and first published on January 1st, 2009 as “The Three Types Of Online Video For Business“.

About EyeView

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EyeView creates engaging video content and then tests and proves that the inclusion of video on a site significantly increases conversion. The company also offers services to optimize conversion by continuously improving the video solution and analyzing and testing its impact on visitors.

Photo credits:
Why Video? – Pei Ling Hoo
All other images by EyeView

Does Twitter have the potential for reaching business customers? Is Twitter an effective communication platform to create strong, long-lasting relationships in the corporate world?

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Photo credit: Alessandro Viti

As organizations look to the future, the same trend emerges as seen in the general social media and Twitter responses: a shift toward more customer communications and, in particular, toward prospecting.

Twitter and, more generally, social media deliver the ability to communicate immediately. As a customer contact tool, where speed does count, this immediacy has great potential. Problem is, such potential can only be fulfilled if you and your customers are using social media.

In many B2B markets, Twitter is not yet considered as an effective customer contact tool because of its specific microblogging structure and its limited audience compared to other social media (e.g. Facebook). According to a study from ES Research Group, “The New Social Media: Do They Enable B2B Selling?” only 4% of sales respondents said that Twitter has ever directly helped them win a B2B sale.

However, Twitter is not entirely disregarded as a business communication tool. There are also many markets where Twitter is influential.

A recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that Twitter users are highly involved with other social media. Findings show that 23% of social network users employed Twitter or a similar service, while only 4% who do not use social media have ever tweeted. Chances are then, if your customer base is already engaged in social media, many will be reachable using Twitter.

In part 2 of this report (Part 1), Josh Gordon extends his analysis on business applications of social media inside organizations, focusing specifically on Twitter and how business organizations use and plan to use Twitter in the near future.

Here all the details:

The Coming Change In Social Media Business Applications: Separating The Biz From The Buzz

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by Josh Gordon

Business Applications For Twitter

External Use of Twitter

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External use of Twitter could shift sharply toward an emphasis on customer involvement.

For external communications, the business use of Twitter shows the same shift as seen in Part 1 on the general findings for all social media forms. That shift is away from general communications, toward a focus on connecting with the organization’s customers.

Right now, the most commonly used external Twitter function is “Sharing breaking news,” followed by “Extending a personal face to customers.

But as organizations look to the future, they are shifting their expectations. Looking ahead, their top pick is “Keeping in immediate touch with customers,” followed by “Extending a personal face to customers,” then followed by “Sharing breaking news.

The future use of Twitter could shift toward greater involvement in customer contact (see chart).

Internal Use of Twitter

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Internal use of Twitter focuses on information sharing.

Fewer organizations are using Twitter for internal communications. The top two measured options are about 20% lower than the top two external uses of Twitter.

The internal focus is on sharing information, knowledge, and resources, as well as networking.

Looking to the future, the internal uses of Twitter that organizations plan to use are almost identical to those of the present (see chart).

Practical Use of Twitter

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Put this information to work:

I initially signed on to Twitter because I once had to sell a high-level Silicon Valley executive who could not be reached any other way. After countless failed attempts to contact him through more traditional channels, his assistant told me,

Josh, forget the phone, he never answers it. And he will not answer e-mail either, because he thinks it is ancient technology that wastes time. He thinks of himself as a member of the digital elite and says that the only people who count are all on Twitter.

I quickly signed on to Twitter and got right through to him.

Twitter delivers the ability to communicate minimally but immediately. As a customer contact tool, where speed counts, it has great potential. But, that potential is only realized if your customers are on Twitter. As of now, Twitter’s market penetration is still uneven.

In many B2B markets, Twitter is not effective as a customer contact tool. According to a just-released study from ES Research Group, “The New Social Media: Do They Enable B2B Selling?,” only 4% of sales respondents said that Twitter had ever directly helped them win a B2B sale.

However, there are also many markets where Twitter is extremely influential.

You can estimate how many of your clients might be using Twitter from a finding in a recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. This study found Twitter users to be highly involved with other social media.

According to Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist at Pew, “Both blogging and social network use increase the likelihood that an individual also uses Twitter.

The study found that 23% of social network users used Twitter or a similar service, while only 4% who do not use social networks have ever Tweeted. Chances are, if your customer base is engaged in social media, many will be reachable by Twitter.

Survey respondents also wrote in “other” uses of Twitter, including:

  • Mindsharing” with industry peers;
  • providing thought leadership;
  • educating others;
  • recruiting talent;
  • providing tech support;
  • notifying constituents of upcoming events;
  • monitoring for issues regarding products or reputation;
  • keeping in touch with bloggers;
  • extending communities of interest; and
  • customer service.

To read examples of how Twitter is being used to connect with customers, click on the following links: Salesforce.com and Bank of America.

Twitter is also a great way to connect with media outlets. Here a long list of media outlets that you can connect to via Twitter.

End of Part 2

Part 1: Business Applications Of Social Media Inside Organizations: An Overview

Originally written by Josh Gordon for Social Media Biz Buzz, and first published on July 20th, 2009 as The Coming Change in Social Media Business Applications

About Josh Gordon

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Josh Gordon is president of Selling 2.0, where he works to improve the performance of organizations and sales teams with research-based training and consulting services. Josh has written four books on the subject. For more information, visit www.Selling2.com.

Photo credits:
The Coming Change In Social Media Business Applications: Separating The Biz From The Buzz – Marinini
Practical Use of Twitter – Andrzej Tokarski

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