A recent conversation with the small business, local marketing blog Local Biz Bits, reminded me of a great parody video, lambasting how the internet has killed the video star. It struck me further, that yesterday’s post, referring to marketing with video, is a medium with still as many questions about effectiveness as answers to our quest for the holy grail of online marketing.
I’m not going to get into my thoughts on answers this time but consider the questions:
Does the internet really make it easier to promote your business with video? Is video really the ideal medium for advertising online? Sure, we’re watching tons of videos on the internet but are we really paying attention? Both Yahoo and CNET have made significant efforts to make video a key part of their user experience; both have seemingly failed… is that a sign?
Creating a viral video that conquers YouTube isn’t always by accident. Many companies are achieving success promoting their brands, websites, and businesses through a video on YouTube that spreads through the Internet like wildfire. They do so through careful creation and promotion of the video that encourages people not only to watch, but to pass the video along to their friends.
When creating a viral video, always keep in mind “is this something that people will want to watch?†When was the last time your friend started sending you links to ads? Nobody wants to do free marketing for your company; they want to be entertained. Keep the content short, ideally less than 30 seconds per video, to hold interest. Make it shocking, unusual, funny, or use sex appeal to get people to watch.
Once you have the video, the most important step is promotion. Tens of thousands of clips are uploaded to YouTube every day – very few of them become viral videos. You’ll need to be proactive. For the initial views, promoting through relevant blogs and forums will help. It may be worth it to pay to get the content visible and in the hands of those who will pass it along and post it to other communities. Further, embedding YouTube videos directly into MySpace is a great way to get more views, as is using Facebook to share the video with your friends list. Once the video is out in the world, you are sure to see your traffic rise dramatically!
With a tremendous amount of fanfare (I had a parade come through the office this morning), I’m excited to share that Zvents has partnered with MTV to deliver a comprehensive local search experience to Campus Daily Guides published by mtvU.
Creating a unique opportunity to reach the affluent college demographic, Zvents is powering the local search experience used by college students on 25 mtvU Campus Daily Guides. mtvU is taking advantage of Zvents’ Media Platform to provide details about millions of important college and recreational events, local promotions and sales, sports, concerts, and performers, specific to the location of each university campus. Together, mtvU and Zvents are serving up local search like it’s never been done before.
How could I possibly be more excited? One of the initial 25 includes my Alma mater, Arizona State University
“Initial 25?” That’s right, mtvU General Manager Steven Friedman shared with MediaWeek their plans to roll out another 25 campuses by year end.
The partnership significantly extends and improves the value of a new advertising vehicle for local merchants. We’ve learned from Google that search reaches consumers as no medium before, bringing to advertisers a revolutionary advertising opportunity that allocates budgets to contextual, behaviorally targeted search results. You spend to advertise against highly qualified traffic; the perfect model for promoting a website. Heretofore however, local search has been limited to enabling local merchants to only highlight their own business listing, reaching consumers looking for that business. Effective when someone wants to find your business, to be sure, but not the game changing search experience delivered through the major search engines; not the ability to search for everything locally. Zvents is making that change, adding local promotions and event listings to the search index, enabling local merchants to reach local consumers with sales, promotions, and events. And now, with mtvU, to reach students as they look for the things they want to do.
Certainly, one has to have a degree of ego involved with starting one’s own blog, after all, these are my thoughts; thoughts I presume are of interest to someone. Sure, perhaps it isn’t really “ego” but, needless to say, I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t hope someone cared and derived a modicum of value. With that it mind, it is with great pride, continued hope, and a shedding of a layer of humility that I let id loose, take a moment to do more than wax poetic, and share with you one of my most honored moments.
Wiley, famed publisher of Frommers, For Dummies, and CliffsNotes, recently shipped, “Online Marketing Heroes: Interviews with 25 Successful Online Marketing Gurusâ€, to major bookstores. Internet advertising experts interviewed for the book include consultants, agencies, CEOs, PR professionals, advertisers, and publishers discussing everything from paid search to PR, social media marketing to affiliate marketing, SEO to online retail.
Lee Odden reached out to a few of us and asked of those involved to share a summary in a collaborative post. I’m not going to steal his thunder but I don’t think he’ll mind if I borrow the idea. Here are a few excerpts:
Yahoo’s Ron Belanger on search
It started out as a direct marketing medium, but today more and more traditional marketers–including brand marketers–are beginning to utilize search engine advertising.
* Use search advertising to take advantage of high-impact moments where a customer is interested in receiving a product or marketing message.
* Search marketing isn’t just for national advertisers; local businesses can use search marketing to target down to the individual market level.
* Social search lets you locate and communicate with passionistas–your most passionate brand advocates.
* Search advertising is a low-barrier, low-risk medium. It costs you very little to get started, and the potential results are huge. So dip your toe in the water and start advertising!
Didit Co-Founder Didit Kevin Lee on analytics and optimization
We are in the midst of a change in the advertising ecosystem and those marketers who embrace change with passion will triumph over those who fail to evolve with the massive shifts in consumer behavior and preference. Paid Search Marketing and Online Media is only the beginning of this macroeconomic shift in the way content and advertising is “consumed†by the consumer. Marketers will increasingly rely on data-driven models for media and advertising, but they better be sure the data is accurate and the models comprehensive. Bad data is sometimes worse than no data at all.
* Consumers are beginning to pay attention only to advertising that’s relevant to their needs.
* The way to reach consumers online is via narrowcasting a relevant message to each individual segment of your target audience; not by mass marketing a general message that everyone sees.
* Creativity in online marketing involves the ability to analyze data and formulate strategies based on that analysis.
* Search needs to be considered in relation to other forms for advertising; everything interacts with everything else; nothing is a silo onto itself.
* Carve out a portion of your marketing budget for experimentation with new media and advertising types.
KeyRelevance Director Internet Marketing Li Evans on priorities and SEO
“search marketing†isn’t about title tags and keyword densities anymore, search marketing has taken on a whole new meaning with the search engines trying to deliver the most relevant and engaging experiences for their users. Marketers need to realize, the days of “post-Florida†are gone, this is a whole new marketing medium that we ourselves need to adapt too.
* For the time being, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Ask are the most important search engines; the smaller players don’t have much chance of breaking through the ranks.
* Google is the big dog, of course, but other engines might be better to reach particular types of users.
* Even though search engines rank different factors differently, the same basic SEO techniques will help your ranking across the board.
* When optimizing your site, focus on relevant content first and link building second.
* Publish your media to different sites and channels to maximize the potential search engine hits—images to an image-sharing site, videos to YouTube, and so forth.
* All media are valuable, but none so much so as text, because of its importance to search engines.
* Most blog software is search-engine friendly out of the box and can provide a platform for delivering fresh content for the search bots.
* When content gets noticed and cited by multiple blogs, you get multiple links back to your main web site—which drives direct traffic and can increase search engine rankings.
* To succeed with social networking, you have to be transparent and honest. You must provide value in order to receive value.
I confess not knowing the illustrious set of folks interviewed as well as Lee so head over to Top Rank for more excerpts. Author Michael Miller though has done a fabulous job aggregating the most important considerations from the great variety of online marketing considerations. If you want a phenominal, general overview of everything you should know, grab a copy of the book.
. Internet advertising experts interviewed for the book include consultants, agencies, CEOs, PR professionals, advertisers, and publishers discussing everything from paid search to PR, social media marketing to affiliate marketing, SEO to online retail.
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