Following on from the YouTube phenomenon, brands have realised the importance of creating an online presence through YouTube channels and have met great success with exponential return on investment. Here are a few success stories – Marks and Spencer launched their YouTube Channel - Your M&S TV in 2009. Simon Wood – head of M&S online operations mentions that the channel has a view through rate of 10% - which means one in ten viewers visit the M&S on viewing the videos on their channel – which is significant for any online content marketing channel. He also mentioned that the visitors from their YouTube channel spent longer time on the site and looked at 3 times as many product pages as the site averages for visits to marksandspencer.com Online baby products retailers Kiddicare.com use their YouTube channel as products How-To manual. They do not have a high street presence; hence it’s more important for them to focus on customer engagement through all possible channels online. Chris Wood, video commerce manager at Kiddicare shares that Kiddicare customer care team has been using the YouTube channel as a tool for customer support and once pointed to the right video on the channel 90% of the customers received the product information they were looking for. Imagine the number of hours Kiddicare saves each month on customer support by this simple addition to their customer engagement portfolio! What is the fastest growing online ad format in the US? Believe it or not, it’s not search engine optimisation as most of us would have guessed. It’s video advertising! Still not convinced? Have a look at the spend projections table based on International Advertising Bureau data for next 5 years based on 2011 figures: More spend equals to a bigger piece of the online advertising pie for the video ads. The current market share stands at 7.9%, which is just a little more than that for Classifieds and Directories ads. But according to the projections, market share for video ads is expected to double in next 5 years! If you add in the spend on search and banner ads on content sites, it climbs to a staggering 80% of all the money spend on online advertising. Search remains steady at 50% of the market share for now, but the growth rate nosedives as seen in the table, as the search advertising reaches saturation point in years to come. What does that mean for your online advertising strategy? Well, trying out video advertising for your brand if you haven’t so already. Although the data is for the American market, here is a quick pointer why it is on the rise world over – when was the last time you watched a video on YouTube without a banner or pre-roll ad on it? Marketing Implications of Search Plus your World Moving on from Facebook to its closest competitors Google +. Recently Google launched ‘Search Plus your World’ or ‘search+’ The feature was launched to achieve deeper integration of Google+ and Google search, thus making search a more sociable experience. As a result the search results served on Google domains would be more personal and customised to the users signed in on their Google accounts when searching. Google will use the social data like posts from the user on Google+, what people in their circles or they themselves have commented on or +1ed (plus oned) etc. to be able to serve these ‘customised’ search results to users. Having large number of +1s for your site has deeper SEO implications for the website than ‘likes’ on Facebook as the number of +1s will be one of the parameters along with the search algorithm which will be considered whilst serving the search results for that particular user. Since information posted by brands and companies on Google+ will gain prominence in search results, brands can no longer ignore social media as a part of their online marketing strategy and may have to consider running their Google+ profile on the similar lines as onsite search engine optimisation for their websites, using the right keywords and fresh content. Search + is in beta stage right now, but soon to be released to everyone. The feature focuses on search, content and social media presence and can no longer be seen as different things. Hence managing the Google+ profile should be an integral part of your SEO strategy now. So make sure you add it to your agenda for your next meeting with your SEO team. Ref: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z9TTBxarbs&feature=player_embedded#! Optimising your B2B Marketing and Sales with Online Video YouTube overtakes Yahoo! as second largest search engine after Google! Volkawagon Darth Vader ad aired in commercial breaks for Superbowl XLV accounts for 20% of the total viewership figures for the series within 36 hours of launching the ad on YouTube! Salesforce’s YouTube video generates as many qualified leads for the business as 46 highly efficient sales representatives! How long can we just look at these bits of information as news? It’s time for you B2B marketers to take the bull by the horn and think about using online videos to optimise your integrated marketing campaigns. Studies have shown that 65% of us are visual learners and another 30% are audio learners, knowing that, popularity of video marketing doesn’t come as a surprise does it? Which works quite well for B2B marketers as video conveys more information per minute than any other form of advertising to help key decision makers reach the desired conclusion faster. More facts to reinforce this – MarketingSherpa claims online video to be the second most influential medium after word of mouth when it comes to making key decisions. Video marketing helps you engage the prospects every stage of the buying cycle, by helping you generate interest with viral videos in the initial stage, reinforce value proposition through product videos, testimonials etc . in the mid stage and helps gather vital customer information by sharing detailed case studies and videos at the later stage. Stay tuned as we come back with optimising tips from the industry experts for B2B marketers. Top 5 Facebook Apps to promote Fan Engagement Moving on from video ads to social media- Do you represent a business that has a Facebook fan page but has no flippin clue what to do with it other than posting updates about latest offers on it and putting links on your homepage to follow you on Facebook or do you have an aggressive social media marketing strategy? Whichever one you are – we have something for everyone on our list of top 5 Facebook Apps to promote fan engagement with your Facebook page. First up is Fan of the Week for Pages – Fans like to be recognised – this app helps you do exactly that. It keeps a track of fan participations and automatically posts a ‘shout out’ on Fan of the Week’s wall. Would you like to be proclaimed Fan of the Week to your favourite page – sure you do! Or would you rather publish a list of your top fans? The next app helps you do that too - Booshaka highlights the fans who actively participate on your page. Fans get points for posting on your wall, commenting on the posts or the likes. Booshaka also has a Top Fans Pro version to reward your top fans. That ought to keep them hooked on to your page! On the other hand, if you have a company blog and would like the latest blog post to be automatically posted on your page wall, the next app is the one you are looking for. NetworkedBlogs is one of the most popular third-party posting applications which help you leverage your blog activity on social media. Are you planning to go on a holiday without having a break in your Facebook page activity? You can do that now using Post Planner. Unlike all the competitor apps available for Facebook, Post Planner enables you to schedule posts with images and videos too! The app comes at a miniscule cost of $4.95 a month, but considering the benefits, it’s totally worth it. How about integrating your YouTube channel activity with your Facebook fan page? That way, visitors to your page can access all the videos on your channel without having to juggle between windows. There are many competitor applications out there, but we recommend YouTube for Pages by Involver purely for the ease of use. Upload your video to multiple sites at once Wow your new online video looks great! Now it’s time for it to go viral…but hang on – you don’t plan on putting it up on YouTube, Dailymotion and blip.tv, share it on your FaceBook fan page and put a tweet out to tell everyone about it; one thing at a time right? Well if you are, you are doing too much admin work! Here’s a simple one click solution to upload it once and distribute it to all the above channels at once. Oneload is a video distribution service for brand advertisers and online content creators to seed their videos across all social media and video channels at once. To help all kinds of businesses their services are tiered as Business, Business Pro and Enterprise levels to help you choose just the right level for you. Powered by parent company TubeMogul, a media buying platform for video advertising, OneTube also comes with a powerful analytics tracking and reporting add-on that helps you measure your content’s success across various channels accurately. Their testimonials section boasts a clientele from the likes of MacWorld,TechCrunch, CBS Interactive and more… For more information visit their website at www.oneload.com Well that's all for this edition of eMarketingNews, if you would have any news that would interest the 20,000+ marketing professionals who view this channel email us at editorial@emarketingnews.tv and add this address top your press release circulation list. We're also interviewing marketing experts and professionals each week so if you have some invaluable knowledge to impart email or call us using the details below. We hope you found this Video News program interesting and useful, to make sure you receive your 10 minute emarketingnews update every week, take a few seconds to subscribe. Finally... you may be interested to know that we can produce a Video News program like this for your organisation from just £500 per issue. Visit the website below for further details. 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